Amid all the turns of Fortune’s wheel that were to bring in search of Isabel’s hand now one suitor, now another, this first alliance alone was to reach consummation; yet few, versed in the changing politics of the day, could have believed it likely. The kings had sworn eternal friendship; but in little more than twelve months an event happened that made of their treaties and complimentary letters a heap of waste paper. In 1458, Alfonso V. died at Naples leaving his newly acquired Italian kingdom to his illegitimate son Ferrante, and the rest of his dominions, including the island of Sicily, to his brother John. The latter was now in a far stronger position than ever before; he need not depend on Henry’s friendship; indeed his inheritance from past rulers was rather a policy of feud and aggression against the neighbouring kingdom, while the influence of his father-in-law, the Admiral of Castile, drew him in the same direction. This Admiral, Don Fadrique Enriquez, was himself a descendant of the royal House of Trastamara; and his haughty and choleric nature found the dreary level of loyalty little to its taste. His sense of importance, vastly increased by his daughter’s brilliant marriage, revelled in plots of all sorts; and soon conspiracy was afoot, and he and the majority of Castilian nobles were secretly leagued with John of Aragon against their own sovereign. Even the Marquis of Villena consented to flirt with their proposals, in the hope of reaping some benefit; while his uncle, the Archbishop of Toledo, and his brother, Don Pedro Giron, Master of Calatrava, were amongst the leading members of the league. Looking about him for an ally, Henry’s glance lit naturally on Charles of Viana, whose disputes with his father had reached a stage beyond the chance of any peaceful settlement. Navarre, always a prey to factions as irreconcilable as Montagues and Capulets, had broken into civil war on the advent of Queen Joanna as regent; the powerful family of the Agramonts welcoming her eagerly; while the Beaumonts, their rivals, out of favour at Court and wild with jealousy, called hourly upon Charles to avenge their wrongs and his own. His mother’s will, leaving Navarre to her husband during his lifetime, had, they declared, been made null and void by the King’s subsequent remarriage. Not only was it the duty of a son to resist such unlawful tyranny, but it was folly to refuse with imprisonment or a poison cup lurking in the background.