The young people who were used by their parents as pieces on the political chessboard were, of course, innocent, except the Archduke Philip, who, as soon as he was able to take an independent hand in the game, outdid his seniors in depravity; and, as usually happens in the world, it was the innocent--Joanna the Mad, Katharine of Aragon, and Margaret of Austria--who had to suffer the unhappiness caused by the ambition and unscrupulousness of others. Of the three, Margaret was by far the most fortunate, because she was stronger-minded and abler than her sisters-in-law, and, after her early inexperienced youth, she was worldly wise enough to look after her own interests. But even her life was full of pathos and sacrifice, nobly and cheerfully borne, and of heavy responsibility assumed serenely for the sake of the nephew whom she reared so worthily and served so well. Mrs. Tremayne in the pages of this book has dwelt fully upon the busy later years of Margaret's life, drawing her information from many sources, in some cases not previously utilised, and there is little more to be told of these years than is here set forth. But it happens that since this book was in print a series of hitherto unknown documents of the highest interest have been printed for the first time in Spanish by the Duke of Berwick and Alba, which throw many sidelights upon Margaret's early widowhood, and upon her share in the intrigues by which her brother, Philip, endeavoured to deprive his father-in-law, Ferdinand, of the regency of Castile, after the death of Isabella the Catholic. It is fair to say that, although on one or two occasions Ferdinand's agents complained that Margaret favoured her brother as against his unhappy, distraught wife, which, if true, was quite natural, she generally appears throughout the documents in question as a kindly, gentle mediatress, endeavouring to reconcile the bitter feud that ended so tragically, and to safeguard the children whom she loved and cared for tenderly when their father's death and their mother's madness left them doubly orphaned. The Fuensalida correspondence, to which reference has been made, opens at the end of 1495, when the treaty for alliance and the double marriages of Philip and Joanna, and John and Margaret, had just been signed, and the instructions given by Ferdinand to the new ambassador, Fuensalida, whom he sent to Germany to keep Maximilian up to the mark, even thus early show the profound distrust which underlay the ostensibly cordial alliance upon which double marriages were to set the seal. 'What you have to do,' run the instructions, 'is to take care to maintain the King of the Romans in his good will to carry through these marriages... and to strive to get him to give in the Milanese such aid and support as may be needed, declaring war against the King of France, as we have done for his sake.'