At thirteen years old, Isabel was no longer a child, but she was not yet a woman either. She was a queen, and on that November day in 1843, the general who stood before her was not asking for her signature. He was demanding it. When she hesitated, he grabbed her by the dress, forced her to sit, and took her hand in his, pressing it down until she had no choice but to set her mark to whatever document he placed before her.

She would remember that moment for the rest of her life. Years later, in exile, she would describe it plainly: “He grabbed me by the dress, forced me to sit down, and took me by the hand until he made me sign. ” The general was Ramón María Narváez, a man who would dominate Spanish politics for decades. But the man who had set this pattern in motion, the one she called her first lover, had done something far worse two years earlier.

General Serrano, whom she nicknamed “the handsome general,” had taken what she had not yet learned to give. She was eleven years old. To understand how Isabel II came to occupy a throne she was never prepared to hold, one must go back to her birth. She came into the world in Madrid on October 10, 1830, and was baptized María Isabel Luisa.

Her father was Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, and her mother was his fourth wife, María Cristina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Ferdinand had spent his reign cycling through wives and confidants, but he had never managed to produce an heir. His younger brother, Carlos María Isidro, stood as Prince of Asturias, ready to inherit the crown the moment Ferdinand died. But Ferdinand had other plans.

Six months before his daughter was born, he abolished the Salic Law, the centuries-old rule that barred women from the Spanish throne. On October 14, 1830, just four days after her birth, Isabel was proclaimed Princess of Asturias. Her father announced: “As my legitimate heiress and successor to my crown, until God grants me a male child. ” Carlos María Isidro did not accept his niece’s new position.

He would not accept it for the rest of his life. Ferdinand VII died on September 29, 1833. Isabel was three years old. Her mother, María Cristina, assumed the regency, and the country erupted.

The absolutists, those who wanted to preserve the old order and keep the king’s brother on the path to the throne, rose up in Carlos’s name. The Carlist Wars had begun, and they would tear Spain apart for decades. Isabel, meanwhile, was left to grow up almost entirely neglected. Her mother was preoccupied with a secret second marriage to Fernando Muñoz, a former guardsman, and with the children that union produced.

The young queen was handed over to servants and tutors who gave her little genuine instruction. She could barely read. Her writing was so poor that her spelling errors became the stuff of court gossip. The Count of Romanones later left a damning description of her education: at ten years old, Isabel was backward, reading slowly and with difficulty, her handwriting like that of a common woman.

She could barely add, and only when the numbers were simple. Her spelling was terrible. She hated reading. Her only entertainments were toys and puppies.

Because she had been raised exclusively by chambermaids, she had never learned the rules of proper table manners. Her behavior at meals was deplorable. These characteristics, he noted, stayed with her for the rest of her life. In 1840, María Cristina abandoned the regency.

She fled to France to live openly with Fernando Muñoz and the growing family they had built together. The regency passed to General Baldomero Espartero, a liberal hero of the Carlist wars, and Isabel and her younger sister, Luisa Fernanda, were placed under his control. Espartero’s rule proved unpopular. By 1843, a wave of revolts across the country forced him to flee to England.

On November 8, 1843, Isabel was declared of age. She was thirteen years old, and she was now, officially and irrevocably, Isabel II, Queen of Spain. Her reign began with a fateful political choice. She aligned herself with the Moderate Party rather than remaining neutral above the factions that fought to control the government.

It was a decision that would define her rule and ultimately destroy it. Just a short time after her coronation, the young queen experienced what would be the first of many betrayals of her body. General Serrano, the man she called “the handsome general,” effectively raped her. She was barely fourteen.

The encounter, described in her own words years later, left deep scars. In the aftermath, Isabel developed a pattern of scandalous sexual behavior, a pattern that those around her recognized as typical of someone who had suffered abuse so young. Her mother, watching from Paris, began the search for a husband. María Cristina proposed her own brother, Francisco de Paula of the Two Sicilies, Count of Trapani, who was also Isabel’s uncle.

The Progressive Party rejected the match outright. France put forward its own candidates, Enrique and Antonio of Orleans, though Antonio eventually married Isabel’s younger sister, Luisa Fernanda, instead. There was talk of the Infante Enrique, a cousin on both sides of Isabel’s family, but his Carlist sympathies ruled him out. The favorite was Carlos Luis de Bourbon, another cousin, the son of Carlos María Isidro himself.

Such a marriage would have ended the dynastic feud at a stroke, but Isabel flatly refused. Her refusal helped trigger the Second Carlist War. María Cristina then proposed Leopold of Saxony, a relative of Queen Victoria. In the end, the decision fell on Francisco de Asís of Bourbon, Isabel’s first cousin, a man of little character who, everyone agreed, would never meddle in politics.

He satisfied all the political parties precisely because he was so harmless. When Isabel learned who her husband would be, she broke down. She wept and begged her mother, pleading: “Not with Paquita, no. ” Francisco de Asís, known mockingly across Spain as “Paquita Natillas,” was widely considered effeminate, coquettish, and homosexual.

No one ever knew him to have a female friend. The wedding was held on October 10, 1846, in a double ceremony: Isabel married Francisco, and her sister Luisa Fernanda married Antonio of Orleans. The day before, Isabel had told her mother: “I have asked as queen, but not as a woman. I have not sought this man to be my husband.

They have imposed him on me, and I did not want him. ” The wedding night was a disaster. To her closest friends, Isabel confided: “What could I expect from a man who wore more lace on his wedding night than I did? ”

The couple despised each other at first.

Slowly, though, the hatred softened into something like a working relationship, and then into friendship. Over the years, Francisco became Isabel’s advisor and her confidant, even as they both pursued their own private lives. Isabel’s life at court was one long celebration. She went to bed at five in the morning and rose at three in the afternoon.

Her first lover, after the abuse she had suffered, was General Serrano. Court gossip held that the queen chased him through every barracks in Madrid, and the scandal was enormous. Other lovers followed: the singer José Mirall, the composer Emilio Arrieta, the Count of Gándara, Manuel Lorenzo de Acuña, the Marquis of Bedmar. The most famous of all was Captain José María Arana, known as “Pollo Arana.

” Others included Enrique Puig Moltó, nicknamed “Pollo Real,” and General O’Donnell. There were lesser-known names too: the secretary Miguel Tenorio, the singer Tirsio Obregón, the Marquis of Linares, José de Murga, the governor of Madrid Carlos Marfori, and Captain José Ramón de la Puente. Isabel bore eleven children. All of them were officially recognized as the children of Francisco de Asís, though it was widely believed that he was the father of none.

On May 20, 1849, she gave birth to a stillborn son, Luis Fernando, the child of the Marquis of Bedmar. On July 11, 1850, she lost another son, Francisco, who died five minutes after his birth. On December 20, 1851, the Infanta Isabel was born, nicknamed “La Chata,” and she survived to adulthood; her father was believed to be Captain José María Ruiz Arana. On January 5, 1854, María Cristina was born and died shortly after; her father is unknown.

On September 23, 1855, Margarita was born prematurely and died; her father is also unknown. On June 20, 1856, the queen suffered a miscarriage. On November 28, 1857, she gave birth to Alfonso, the future Alfonso XII of Spain; his father was Enrique Puig Moltó. On December 26, 1859, María de la Concepción Francisca de Asís was born; she died at twenty-one months.

On June 4, 1861, María del Pilar Berenguela arrived; she died at eighteen, unmarried. On June 23, 1862, María de la Paz was born and reached adulthood. On February 12, 1864, María Eulalia was born and also reached adulthood. Finally, on January 24, 1866, Francisco de Asís Leopoldo was born and died within weeks.

In 1852, Isabel nearly died at the hands of a priest. She had gone to the Church of Atocha to give thanks for the birth of her daughter Isabel, La Chata, whose predecessors had died so young. Father Martín Merino approached her, and the guards stopped him. But he had already closed the distance, and he stabbed her with a dagger.

The blade struck one of the metal stays of her corset, leaving only a fifteen-millimeter incision, though the blood flowed dramatically from the wound. The priest was executed. Isabel survived. Her reign continued on its chaotic course.

She reopened the universities her father had closed, but education in Spain remained in shambles. The country drifted. The political parties fought each other for the right to govern, and there were constant revolts and uprisings. The queen’s reputation deteriorated further with each passing year, as she devoted herself to lovers, pleasure trips, and palace parties.

The government lurched from crisis to crisis. In 1868, the Glorious Revolution broke out. Isabel was on holiday in San Sebastián when the news reached her. She fled by train, crossing into France, where Napoleon III and his wife, Empress Eugénie de Montijo, took her in.

She would never again rule Spain. From exile in Paris, Isabel abdicated in favor of her son Alfonso on June 25, 1870. In Spain, the political parties, unable to agree on any other solution, chose Amadeo of Savoy as king. He became Amadeo I.

His reign was brief and unhappy. The First Spanish Republic was proclaimed in 1873, followed by chaos. In 1874, the monarchy was restored, and Isabel’s son ascended the throne as Alfonso XII. Isabel was overjoyed at the prospect of returning home.

She exchanged letters with Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, the architect of the restoration, but he advised her to stay away. For a long time, she obeyed. When illness struck her, however, she insisted, and finally she was permitted to return to her former kingdom, with one condition: she could not live in Madrid. She chose Seville.

Isabel settled in the Alcázar of Seville with her three youngest daughters. She rebuilt a cordial relationship with her sister, Luisa Fernanda, and chose to overlook the old conflicts with her brother-in-law, Antonio of Orleans. The fragile peace of the family shattered when Alfonso XII fell in love with his cousin, María de las Mercedes, the daughter of Luisa Fernanda and Antonio. Isabel loathed Antonio, and she refused to accept the match.

But Alfonso was determined, and the queen mother finally gave her approval, though she stayed away from the wedding. In 1877, she left Seville and returned to Paris, while her daughters remained in Madrid. In 1879, Isabel returned to Spain. Her son was now a widower, María de las Mercedes having died young, and he was about to marry María Cristina of Habsburg.

Isabel and her second daughter-in-law developed a warm relationship. When Alfonso XII died, in 1885, Isabel and María Cristina were at the opera when the news arrived. Isabel, in her grief, cried out: “My son is dying, and the government lets him die alone, like a dog. ” She had loved her son deeply, and his death broke something in her.

Isabel spent the rest of her life in Paris, visited frequently by her daughter-in-law and her grandchildren. In 1902, Francisco de Asís died. The couple had lived largely separate lives throughout their marriage. When they went into exile in France, Francisco had asked for a divorce so he could live quietly with his own lover.

Yet despite everything, Isabel and Francisco had maintained a friendship that lasted for years. His death was a hard blow. She had lost her friend and her confidant. Isabel II died on April 9, 1904, in Paris, at the age of seventy-four.

She and her husband were both buried in the monastery of El Escorial. She died loving Spain, a country she had always adored with all her heart. She always considered herself a madrileña, and in her long exile she never stopped longing for Spanish soil. She was honest enough with herself to admit, in the quiet years of her exile, that she had been a bad queen.

She repented of her errors, and she wished she had paid more attention to her government. And yet her reign was not without its achievements. It was during her time on the throne that Spain acquired its first railways, binding together towns and provinces that had previously been isolated. The Canal de Isabel II was built to bring water to Madrid.

A more modern and mature journalism took root. The paintings of the Prado Museum, which had been part of the private royal collection, were donated by Isabel to the Spanish nation so that the public could enjoy the works freely. The Teatro Real of Madrid opened its doors during her reign. Spain made the transition from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional and parliamentary one, even if the road was rocky and unfinished.

Isabel loved her people, but she never learned how to govern them. A childhood without affection and an adolescence scarred by violence had shaped a woman who preferred her private life to the demands of a crown she had been given at three years old. In the end, history remembered her by the name her own generation gave her: the Queen of the Sad Destinies.