Isabella I of Castile

Isabella I of Castile (1451 – 1504) was a Queen of Castile and León, and the wife of King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Furthermore, she was a very religious person and often had contact with Tomás de Torquemada, Grand Inquisitor and her personal confessor. Her beliefs led her to order the forced conversion, exile, or murder of their Muslim and Jewish subjects in Spain in what would later become known as the Reconquista.

Biography

In 1478, Isabella and Ferdinand, seeking further religious unity, requested permission from the Pope to establish an inquisition. Pope Sixtus IV permitted them to appoint priests as inquisitors.

By 1491, members of both the Assassin and Templar Orders had infiltrated Ferdinand and Isabella's close circles, the Templars being drawn by their religious initiatives and masterful diplomacy. That year, the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus, a close friend of Isabella's Jewish finance minister and secret Assassin Luis de Santángel, requested Isabella to fund his voyages to the East Indies. The Templars, aware that Columbus' route would lead him to discover the New World, deliberately influenced Isabella into prolonging the ongoing war with the Moors, thereby preventing her from funding Columbus.

In 1492, the Italian Assassin Ezio Auditore da Firenze rescued Sultan Muhammad XII from a Templar attack on his palace of Alhambra, and persuaded him into putting an end to the war with Ferdinand and Isabella. Queen Isabella, though grateful for Ezio's efforts, was still unable to finance Columbus' journey as her resources were still scarce. In addition to that, she revealed that the King of France had made Columbus an offer, though Ezio quickly realized it was a Templar trap and rescued Columbus. Luis de Santángel and Raphael Sanchez, Ferdinand's and Isabella's finance minister, eventually persuaded Isabella to fund half of Columbus' voyage, while they both paid the other half.

That same year, Isabella and Ferdinand were present during the public execution of heretics during which the Spanish Mentor, Benedicto, was burned to the stake by Torquemada. During the ordeal, they also witnessed the escape of Aguilar de Nerha and María, two other Assassins about to be executed.

When Luis de Santángel died in 1498, the Assassins no longer had any eyes within the Spanish royal circle. In the early 1500s, Ezio Auditore sent a team of Assassins to retrieve Santángel's journal, resulting in the discovery that he had been trying to poison the Queen. Upon investigating whether Santángel's motives were out of revenge for the Spanish Inquisition which had killed most of his family or because of Templar influence, the Assassins found out that Isabella had been exchanging letters with Cesare Borgia, and concluded that she was forced into serving the Borgia.

After establishing contact with Santángel's associate, one of Isabella's servants, the Assassins continued Santángel's work and started slowly poisoning the Queen. In 1504, Ferdinand and Isabella made an arrangement with Pope Julius II to have Cesare Borgia imprisoned in the Castillo de la Mota near Valencia. However, Isabella later succumbed to the Assassins' poisoning on 26 November.

Legacy

In 2012, Isabella was one of many historical people included in the Glyph puzzles the late Assassin Clay Kaczmarek had left behind in the Animus as messages for his successor Desmond Miles to decipher. Desmond later did in September of that year. Desmond solved this puzzle, which was part of a set titled "Instruments of Power" where Isabella was excluded from the list of individuals revealed by Clay to have wielded a Staff of Eden.

Behind the scenes

Isabella I of Castile is a historical figure and character introduced in the 2009 Nintendo DS video game Assassin's Creed II: Discovery, where she was voiced by Nicole Vigil. She later appeared in the 2016 film Assassin's Creed, where she was portrayed by Marysia S. Peres.

Gallery

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  Isabella in Seville with her husband and Torquemada
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  Isabella on her deathbed
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  The Return of Christopher Columbus by Eugène Delacroix
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  Queen Isabella in Assassin's Creed II: Discovery

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed II (appears in glyphs only)
• Assassin's Creed II: Discovery (first appearance)
• Assassin's Creed: Rebellion (mentioned only)
• Assassin's Creed (film)
• Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization