ABSTRACT
The Trastámara name dominates the history of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain. The family’s rise to prominence was a result of the messy personal life of King Alfonso XI of Castile (1312–50), who bequeathed a violent legacy to his children, legitimate and illegitimate. Alfonso’s son Pedro I (1350–66/1367–69) was murdered by his half-brother Enrique Trastámara, who as Enrique II (1366–67/1369–79) established the Trastámara dynasty in Castile-LeÓn. Enrique’s own family history was just as complicated as Alfonso XI’s, with three legitimate children from his wife Juana Manuel and at least 12 illegitimate children with as many as eight women. Enrique made sure that his children of various mothers married into royal and noble families and in so doing created a network of competing allegiances. Squabbles over land and lordship were exacerbated by European-wide social, medical, political, and religious tensions—sporadic outbreaks of plague, economic upheaval, social unrest, religious persecution, papal schism, and the Hundred Years War. Although Enrique II’s son and heir, Juan I (1379–90), was a model of marital stability, with two legitimate wives (Leonor of Aragon and Beatriz of Portugal) and four children (only one of whom may have been illegitimate), the tensions continued. The succession after Juan’s death was peaceful. His eldest son inherited and ruled Castile as Enrique III (1390–1406). His second son inherited the duchy of Peñafiel, county of Mayorga, and lordship of Lara, and then extended Trastámara hegemony when he succeeded to the Crown of Aragon as Fernando I (1412–16). Still, the sons of Enrique and Fernando continued to jockey for power, a struggle ultimately resolved when Isabel I of Castile (1474–1504) married Fernando II of Aragon (1479–1516), thus uniting the two branches of the family. 1
