Infidel: The Daughters of Aragon
(Six Tudor Queens)
By Nicola Harris
(Six Tudor Queens)
By Nicola Harris
Born in the glittering courts of Castile and Aragon and forged in the shadow of war, Catalina de Aragón grows up surrounded by queens, rebels, and explorers. She is her mother’s last daughter, the final jewel of a dynasty built on conquest and faith, and the one child Isabella of Castile cannot bear to lose.
But destiny has already claimed Catalina.
Promised to Prince Arthur of England since childhood, she is raised to bind kingdoms, soothe old wounds, and carry the hopes of an empire across the sea. Yet, Spain fractures under rebellion, grief, and the ruthless zeal of its own rulers.
From the burning streets of Granada to the storm lashed Bay of Biscay, Catalina and her sisters must navigate a treacherous path shaped by ambition, betrayal, and the dangerous love of men who fear the power of queens. She learns to read cyphers, to read hearts, and to stand unbroken even as her childhood is stripped from her piece by piece.
And when she finally sails for England armed with her mother’s lessons, her father’s steel, and the ghosts of the Alhambra at her back, Catalina steps into her fate not as a girl, but as a force.
A princess.
A survivor.
A daughter of Aragon.
Infidel is the story of a young woman raised for greatness and destined to reshape the fate of nations. This is Catalina, as she has never been seen before. She is fierce, vulnerable, and unforgettable.
A sweeping, intimate portrait of sisterhood, survival, and the making of a dynasty, Infidel reveals the hidden lives of a woman whose courage shaped the Tudor world.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I went in expecting a stately procession of royal marriages, polite alliances, and the occasional bit of historical intrigue.
What I got instead was a steady emotional ambush.
This is one of those books that looks, at first glance, as though it’s going to behave itself—courtly settings, careful diplomacy, everyone dressed beautifully and saying the right things at the right time. And then, quite quickly, it becomes apparent that absolutely no one is having a good time and the entire future of Spain is balancing precariously on a series of increasingly unfortunate events.
At the centre of it all is Catherine of Aragon—Catalina—who begins as a well-educated, observant princess and ends up, rather alarmingly quickly, as the last emotional support pillar holding up what remains of her family’s hopes. Not a role she applied for, but here we are.
It all starts to unravel with the death of Prince Juan of Asturias, which is handled with a kind of quiet devastation that sets the tone for everything that follows. From that point on, it’s less “dynastic stability” and more “everyone please remain calm while everything collapses in a very dignified manner”.
Spoiler: they do not remain calm.
There is a particularly sharp thread running through Joanna of Castile’s chapters. Her life in Flanders has all the outward sparkle you might expect—wealth, pageantry, a husband who looks excellent in portraits—but underneath it is a slow, creeping sense of isolation. Her marriage to Philip the Handsome is less passionate drama and more… polite emotional frostbite.
He is not loudly terrible. He is, if anything, worse than that. Efficient. Ambitious. Entirely untroubled by other people’s feelings.
Which, as it turns out, is not ideal in a husband.
Meanwhile, back in Spain, grief is doing the rounds with impressive consistency. Loss follows loss, each one shifting the political landscape just enough to make everyone slightly more anxious than before. Babies are born with enormous expectations placed upon them, which feels deeply unfair given that they’ve only just arrived.
The book does a wonderful job of showing how these women are constantly being moved about like pieces on a chess board—and yet still managing to think, observe, and, occasionally, push back in small but meaningful ways. There’s a quiet defiance running through it, even when outright resistance isn’t an option.
Catalina, especially, is absorbing everything. By the time she leaves Spain, she’s not the same girl who started the journey. She’s sharper, sadder, and very aware that her future is less about Arthurian romance and more about survival with good posture.
The political side of things is neatly woven in—always present, never overwhelming. You understand what’s at stake, but it never feels like you’re being marched through a lecture. Instead, it’s more like watching a very complicated game where the rules keep changing and no one fully trusts anyone else.
Which seems accurate, frankly.
And then there’s Isabella I of Castile, who is absolutely formidable, right up until grief starts to wear her down. Watching her try to hold everything together—kingdom, legacy, family—while losing more than anyone reasonably should is quietly heartbreaking.
It becomes increasingly clear that even the most powerful woman in Europe cannot negotiate her way out of everything.
What I liked most is how the story builds. It doesn’t rush. It accumulates—loss, pressure, expectation—until by the time Catalina is standing on that ship, ready to leave, you fully understand what she’s carrying with her.
And it’s not just an impressive collection of embroidered gowns.
It’s grief. It’s duty. It’s the faint but stubborn belief that she can endure whatever comes next, largely because she has already survived quite a lot.
In the end, this isn’t really a story about a princess going to England. It’s about everything that has to fall apart first.
I had an excellent (if slightly emotionally exhausting) time with this book, and it is one I would highly recommend.
I really do recommend this book to anyone interested in this era in history. You can grab your copy over on Amazon and get this if you have #KindleUnlimited subscription then it is free to read.
Nicola Harris
I’ve always been a writer, but it was only when illness forced me to stop everything that I finally had the time to write a novel. After decades of misdiagnosis, I learned I was born with a serious genetic condition, not rare, but profoundly misunderstood. The clues were there from birth, and suddenly, a lifetime of struggle made sense.
Writing became my lifeline: a way to step beyond my pain, to shape my experience into a story, and to find meaning where there had once been only endurance.
I have a lifelong love of children, Counselling, and Psychotherapy Theory and history.
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