offered him the hand of one of their younger daughters, Maria, but he refused. There remained a stalemate between them until Princess Isabella agreed to marry Manuel on the condition that he expel all Jews from Portugal who would not convert to Christianity. He agreed to her ultimatum and they married in September 1497. Heir presumptive In the same year as her second marriage, Isabella became Princess of Asturias and heir presumptive of the Crown of Castile following the sudden death of her only brother, John, Prince of Asturias, in September 1497, and the stillbirth of his daughter. Philip of Austria, the husband of Isabella's younger sister Joanna, claimed the crown, although Isabella had precedence as the eldest daughter. The Catholic Monarchs, to counter the pretensions of their son-in-law Philip, held courts in the city of Toledo in 1498 a few months after the death of their son John and had Isabella and her husband Manuel sworn as the legitimate heirs presumptive. The royal family then went to Zaragoza to convene the courts of Aragon for the same purpose. Although female succession was permitted in Castile, Ferdinand II's kingdom of Aragon hesitated to accept a woman as their future ruler. If she were to give birth to a son, then the child could inherit everything, something much preferred to female rule. Isabella was pregnant at that time and, while in Zaragoza with the royal family, she gave birth on 23 August 1498 to her only child, Miguel da Paz, Prince of Portugal. Perhaps because of her constant fasting and self-denial, or the constant traveling at her advanced stage of pregnancy, she died within an hour of her son's birth. Her son was later recognized as heir presumptive by the courts of Portugal, Castile, and Aragon. Isabella asked to be buried dressed as a nun and to be interred at the Convent of Santa Isabel in Toledo. Manuel's chance to become King of Castile ended with Isabella's death, and the primary hope of uniting all of the Iberian kingdoms vanished with Prince Miguel's death just before his second birthday in 1500. When Queen Isabella of Castile died in 1504, she requested that the body of her daughter Isabella be moved to rest by her side in Granada, but this was never done. Ancestry References Bibliography |- |- 1470 births 1498 deaths House of Trastámara House of Aviz Portuguese queens consort Princes