Eleanor of Navarre

Eleanor of Aragon (Basque: Leonor and Spanish: Leonor) (2 February 1426 – 12 February 1479), Regent (1455–1479) and the queen regnant of Navarre in 1479. She was crowned on 28 January 1479 in Tudela.

Life

She was born in Olite, Navarre (now Spain), the third and youngest child of King John II of Aragon and Queen Blanche I of Navarre and the younger sister of Blanche II of Navarre. She was born 2 February 1426, and was acclaimed by the Cortes in Pamplona, 9 August 1427, as the legitimate heir of Charles IV, and Blanche II in succession to their mother. After their mother's death, however, their father occupied Navarre.

She married Gaston IV, Count of Foix, in 1441. In 1442, Eleanor moved with her spouse to Bearn. In 1455, her father deposed her brother and her sister as heirs of Navarre and proclaimed Eleanor as the heir and the regent and general governor of Navarre, and she moved to Sangüesa. She continued as regent after the death of her brother in 1461. In 1462, she signed the treaty of Olite, where she recognized her father as the monarch of Navarre and accepted to have her sister Blanche imprisoned under her care.

In 1464, Blanche died in her care, suspected to have been poisoned. By the treaty, she was recognized by her father as the heir of Navarre and his regent (governor) in Navarre. In 1468, her father killed her advisor Nicolas de Etchabarri, and deposed her as governor. In 1471, however, her father recognized her as the governor of Navarre until his death. At her father's death in 1479, she gave her oath as the monarch of Navarre, and died two weeks later at Tudela, Navarre, aged 53.

Marriage and children

In 1441, she married Gaston IV, count of Foix, and had the following children with him:

• Gaston (1444–1470), he married Magdalena of France in 1462 and their children Francis and Catherine both succeeded to Navarre in turn upon the death of their grandmother Eleanor.
• Peter (1449–1490), cardinal and bishop of Arles,
• John (1450–1500), viscount of Narbonne, whose daughter Germaine of Foix was second wife to Ferdinand II of Aragon.
• Marie (1452–1467), married William VIII, marquess of Montferrat.
• Joan (1454–1476), married John V, count of Armagnac.
• Margaret (1458–1486), married Francis II, duke of Brittany.
• Catherine (1460–1494), married Gaston II de Foix, Count of Candale and Benauges.
• Isabella (1462–?), married Guy de Pons, viscount of Turenne.
• Anne (born and died 1464).
• Eleanor (1467–1480), engaged firstly with Charles, duke de Guyenne (who died in 1472) and secondly with the duke of Medinacelli, but she died before the wedding.
• James (1469–1500), count of Cortes, married Catherine of Beaumont.

• TOULOUSE NOBILITY in: Foundation for Medieval Genealogy (FMG) [retrieved 7 June 2016].
• Hijos de la reina Leonor I de Navarra Trastamara y Gastón de Foix-Grailly-Béarn in: lebrelblanco.com (in Spanish) [retrieved 7 June 2016].
• 1494: Hieronymous Munzer, Compostela, and the Codex Calixtinus, Jeanne E. Krochalis, The Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages, ed. Maryjane Dunn and Linda Kay Davidson, (Routledge, 1996), 96.
• Isabel de Foix, infanta of Navarre in: geneall.net [retrieved 7 June 2016].

Ancestry