John II of Castile

John succeeded his older sister as Prince of Asturias in 1405, then inherited the Castilian throne a year later at barely a year old. The crown sat on his head from 1406 until his death in 1454, a reign stretching forty-eight years across the first half of the fifteenth century. What that long tenure actually built remains the harder question: he ruled through regencies, favorites, and noble factions, his reign a study in how duration and control are not the same thing. He died in July 1454, having outlasted most of his contemporaries but leaving Castile to sort out what his decades had meant.