Isabella I of Castile

Born in 1451, Isabella married Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469, stitching two kingdoms into what would become Spain. She fought a succession war to secure Castile's throne, then set about dismantling the chaos her half-brother Henry IV had left: reorganized the government, crushed the crime rate, cleared the debt. With Ferdinand she finished the Reconquista in 1492, the same year she issued the Alhambra Decree ordering mass Jewish expulsion and funded a Genoese sailor named Columbus. The Spanish Inquisition followed. Pope Alexander VI named them the Catholic Monarchs; Spain became the pole around…