The period of the Catholic Monarchs was defined by the expression ‘so much rides, rides so much’ in the popular imagination. A reference to Fernando’s personal motto ‘Tanto mounta’, which he in turn took from the classical myth (we already know what people liked to evoke Antiquity at the time) about the impossible knot that Alexander the Great cut in half in a town southeast of what is now Ankara.
Legend has it that Alexander the Great was challenged to untie the knot that tied the spear of Gordio’s chariot to the yoke, ancient King of Phrygia, whose invoice was of such perfection that its two ends could not be located. The inhabitants of Phrygia (present-day Anatolia, Turkey) had elected a farmer named Gordias as their king, whose only possessions were his cart and his oxen. After his coronation he founded the city of Gordión and, as a sign of gratitude, offered to the temple of Zeus his chariot, tying the spear and the yoke with a knot whose ends were hidden inside.
Whoever managed to untie this knot, said the oracle, would be the owner of Asia. In order not to waste time, Alejandro cut the rope with one cut with his sword at the same time that he pronounced the sentence. ‘It doesn’t matter how they are paid’ (‘it matters little how it is unleashed’). He then headed to conquer the East.
The master Antonio de Nebrija is considered to be responsible for King Fernando taking the knot as a symbol (yoke with a loose rope) together with the nickname “tanto monta”, an abbreviation of his personal currency, given the tradition of the Aragonese Crown to expand across the Mediterranean. The couple’s shared shield showed this yoke with the letter “Y”, which was the initial of Isabel (often written in her time Ysabel), together with a bundle of arrows (in a variable number), which was the symbol of Isabel I. The arrows contained the “F”, Fernando’s initial. In this way each of the spouses remembered his partner in their own heraldic emblems.
actual complicity
The expression ‘So much rides, rides both, Isabel and Fernando’ comes after the kings, but the harmony they shared is very real despite the inevitable discrepancies of all marriages. «I already rabid to do to see you […] I beg your lordship to come more often these letters that, by my life, come very late, “the lovebird wrote to his wife on one occasion. Fernando loved Isabel, and Isabel loved Fernando, but more importantly, they both trusted each other’s political skills. “They were king and queen together (…) and although in bodies two, in will and union they were only one,” said a chronicler about such a thick communion. Another one came so high that he wrote down to give the news of a birth of Isabel that “this year the kings our lords gave birth.”
It may be that Fernando was more extreme in the use of his political weapons than Isabel, but, according to the chroniclers, he was more lenient than she in the application of justice. Fernando was more worldly, reflective and unfaithful, politically and personally, and she was more intransigent, impulsive and devoted. She is relentless when it comes to religion and noble causes, she is an enemy of deceit. Fernando and Isabel shared an unrepeatable complicity that was felt in public. During the hearings they looked for each other with their eyes. A slight arch of Fernando’s eyebrow It was quite an open letter for Isabel.