she is best known in history.
It is doubtful if the sluggish moral natures of this time would have
been moved by this fact, if the king had not insisted that this baby
girl should be acknowledged as his daughter and heiress to the crown of
Castile. This was too much for the leaders of the opposition, and they
demanded that Henry's younger brother, Alfonso, be recognized as his
successor. This proposition brought about civil warfare, which was ended
by Alfonso's death in 1468, and then Isabella was generally recognized
as the real successor to her unworthy brother Henry, in spite of the
claims he continued to put forth in favor of La Beltraneja.

Before the cessation of domestic hostilities, Isabella had been sorely
tried by various projects which had been advanced for her marriage. She
had been brought up by her mother, Queen Isabella, in the little town of
Arevalo, which had been settled upon her at the time of the death of her
husband, King John II. There, in quiet and seclusion, quite apart from
the vice and tumult of the capital, the little princess had been under
the close tutelage of the Church, as her mother had grown quite devout
with advancing years; and as Isabella ripened into womanhood, it became
evident that she possessed a high seriousness and a strength of
character quite unusual. Still, all was uncertain as to her fate. Her
brother Henry had first endeavored to marry her to Alfonso V. of
Portugal, the elder and infamous brother of his own shameless queen, but
Isabella had declined this alliance on the ground that it had not been
properly ratified by the Cortes of Castile, and as a result the plan was
soon dropped. In the midst of the rebellion which had broken out after
Henry's attempt to foist La Beltraneja upon the state, he had proposed
as a conciliatory measure that one of the most turbulent of the
factional leaders, Don Pedro Giron, Grand Master of Calatrava, should
wed Isabella, and the offer had been accepted. This man, who was old
enough to be her father, was stained with vice, in spite of his exalted
position in the religious Order of Calatrava, and his character was so
notoriously vile that the mere mention of such an alliance was nothing
short of insult to Isabella. Again she did not allow herself to be
dominated by her brother, and after announcing that she utterly refused
to consent to such an arrangement, she shut herself up in her apartments
and declared her intention of resisting any attem