John, Prince of Asturias

John was born in 1478 as the male heir of the Catholic Monarchs. In 1497 he married Margaret of Austria as part of the alliance between the Trastámara and Habsburg dynasties.

He died only months after the wedding, creating a succession crisis that eventually brought the Spanish inheritance to his sister Joanna and her Habsburg descendants. His brief adult life leaves room for imaginative reconstruction, but narratives should retain the major political consequences of his death.

In Rozsa Gaston’s Margaret of Austria, Returned to her Habsburg family, Margaret is sent into two further dynastic marriages: first to John, Prince of Asturias, and then to Philibert II of Savoy.