Ferdinand V "The Catolic"

 - King of Castile and Aragon -

( 1452 - 1516 )
 


* List of the stories he appears in :
- W OS 62-03 : "That's no Fable!", from 1960, by Carl Barks (by name only) ;
- D 92380 : "Guardians of the Lost Library", from 1993, by Don Rosa (by name only) ;
- D 2001-024 : "The Crown of the Crusader Kings", from 2001, by Don Rosa.

 

* His biography :
     Ferdinand was born on March 10, 1452 to King John II of Aragón, and was was nicknamed "The Catholic".
   In 1468, he became king of Sicily as Ferdinand II of Sicily. In 1469, he married his cousin, Isabella I, Queen of Castile, sister of Henry IV of Castile, and so he united the Spanish kingdoms of Aragón and Castile. In 1474, he was made king of Aragón, and so became King Ferdinand II of Aragón, and in 1479, he became King Ferdinand V of Castile and León.
   Together with his wife, he ruled Castile, León, Aragón and Sicily, to which Granada, taken from the Moors in 1492, was added. His cruel and perfidious reforms contributed to the introduction of Inquisition in 1480 and to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492.
   In 1492, along with his wife, he sponsored Colombus' trip to the "West Indies" (ie America).
   In 1493, by the terms of a treaty between Spain and France, Ferdinand recovered from King Charles VIII of France the ancient province of Roussillon, which John II had mortgaged to King Louis XI of France.
   In 1504, his wife died and so he stopped being king of Castile but was regent for their daughter, Joanna the Mad, besause she became insane. The same year, he was made King Ferdinand III of Naples.
   In 1508, he joined the League of Cambrai against the republic of Venice, and in 1509, conquered Oran and Tripoli on the North African coast. In 1512, he annexed the kingdom of Navarre, extending the borders of Spain from the Pyrenées to the Rock of Gibraltar, still led by his insatiable thirst for power.
   He died on June 23, 1516, and was succeeded by his grandson Charles V.
 

* His place in the Barks/Rosa stories universe :
   In Barks' "That's no Fable!", Scrooge finds the fountain of youth and there, he meets two men who found it and worked for Poncey de Loon (Ponce de Leon), and who remained young during all this time. They say they joined the army of Ferdinand regent of Spain.
   In "Guardians of the Lost Library", it's said that Colombus had been helped by the Lost Library of Alexandria, to find "the route to the East Indies". He took the books to to his manor in Hispaniola island, so as to hide them, but finally, King Ferdinand learnt about the books and made him come back to Spain (that would be the true reason why Colombus had been imprisoned and put in irons and removed his title in 1450).
    In "The Crown of the Crusader Kings", it's said that the kings Ferdinand of Spain and John II of Portugal had links with the Templars, and that they made a deal with the Spanish bank of the Templars which told the Templar will receive a large part of the commercial treaties made with Cathay in exchange with the Crown of Baldwin I the two kings wanted to offer to the Great Khan. We also learn that Colombus' trip was sponsored by the Templars and that its purpose was to bring the crown in Cathay.
 

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