Dan Jones

speaker

253 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 11 Jun

Dan Jones’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford · Presenting...This is History: A Dynasty to Die For · 11 Jun 2026 podcast

But Edward's very glad the ambassadors waited, because he's been told they have quite a proposal for him.

Which is right.

The ambassadors explain they've been sent to England to make Edward the offer of a wife.

And not just any wife.

The King of Castile is Enrique IV, and he wants to suggest that Edward marries his sister, Isabella.

That's not a bad offer.

Castile is a major kingdom.

Isabella is just approaching her 13th birthday, but as Margaret Beaufort could have told them, the medieval marriage market takes a remarkably liberal view of that sort of thing.

And she is, assuredly, a top-rank European princess.

Edward listens to the ambassador's proposal and then makes a big show of rewarding them for their generosity in even delivering this wonderful message.

He gives them a free pass to bring some trading ships to England under his protection any time in the next year to trade as much wine as they like in exchange for as much English produce as they can carry.

It's a nice little sweetener.

But then again, it needs to be, because actually, for all Edward's enthusiastic demeanour, he's already decided that he isn't going to take them up on this marriage offer.

There are a few reasons.

One is that there's something of a stain hanging over Isabella's family.

Her brother

King Enrique, who's making the offer, is nicknamed Enrique the Impotent.

That's a direct reference to his own first marriage, which Enrique found himself unable to consummate despite years of trying.

Enrique claims that someone had, hard to know how to phrase this politely, laid a curse on his royal wiener.

This was a special sort of curse that only affected his ability to get it on with his wife and not with any number of mistresses and sex workers, several of whom were called to give evidence to that effect in a court case to annul his marriage.

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