Ferdinand II of Aragon, husband of Isabella I of Castile, joined the two great Christian crowns of Iberia; together the "Catholic Monarchs" conquered Granada in 1492, ending the Reconquista.
Ferdinand II of Aragon ruled his own kingdom from 1479 and, through his marriage in 1469 to Isabella I of Castile, shared in the government of Castile as well. Between them the two monarchs united the strength of Christian Iberia.
As the "Catholic Monarchs" they completed the Reconquista with the conquest of Granada in 1492, and in the same year backed Christopher Columbus's first Atlantic voyage. Ferdinand was long remembered as a model of cunning statecraft.
Ferdinand and Isabella pooled the resources of Aragon and Castile against the last Muslim state in Iberia, the Emirate of Granada, weakened by its own civil wars. Their decade-long war of sieges, 1482 to 1492, ground the emirate down town by town.
On 2 January 1492 Granada surrendered, ending nearly eight centuries of Muslim rule in the peninsula. The same year saw the expulsion of the Jews and the voyage of Columbus, financed by the monarchs. Ferdinand ruled on until 1516; he is buried beside Isabella in the Royal Chapel of Granada, the city that crowned their reign.
Ferdinand became a byword for calculating statecraft — Machiavelli, a near contemporary, held him up as the model of a successful prince. Contemporaries admired and feared his patience, his readiness to use marriage, diplomacy and force by turns, and his grip on power.
The partnership with Isabella was central to how he was seen: the two were presented as a single royal will, though their kingdoms kept their own laws and institutions. Judged by results — a united crown, a completed reconquest, an empire begun — he ranks among the most effective rulers of his age, admired for competence more than warmth.