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Castile; she was equally resolute to preserve her rights as Queen Regnant.
        Finally their quarrel was submitted to formal arbitration. This established the principle of co-sovereignty between the two. Justice was executed jointly when they were together and independently if they were apart. Both their heads appeared on the coinage and both their signatures on royal charters, while the seals included the arms of both Castile and Aragon. And these were quartered, as a gesture of equality, rather than Ferdinand's arms of Aragon 'impaling' Isabella's arms of Castile, as was usual between husband and wife. Such power-couple equality was unusual enough in a medieval royal marriage. But, in fact, Isabella was the first among equals since, with the exception of the agreed areas of joint sovereignty, the administration of Castile was reserved to her in her own right.
        Not surprisingly, Ferdinand jibbed. But he soon submitted and, united, the pair carried all before them. For, despite Ferdinand's four bastards by as many different mothers, he and his wife were genuinely, even passionately, in love. But even in this there was rivalry. 'My Lady,' one of Ferdinand's letters to the Queen begins, 'now it is clear which of us two loves best.' But they were in love with their growing power even more than with each other. Granada, the last stronghold of the Moors in Spain, surrendered in 1492 and the following year Columbus returned from his first voyage to America, having taken possession of several of the West Indies in the name of the 'Catholic Kings', as Ferdinand and Isabella were to be entitled by a grateful Pope in 1496. Catherine was at her parents' side to witness both these momentous events. 3
        And there is no doubt which had the most effect. Years later, when she was sent a present of a ceremonial Indian chair and robe, she ignored them. But the memory of Granada was forever green.
        This is shown by Catherine's choice of badge. In both Spain and England it had become the practice for important people to have a badge as well as a coat of arms. A coat of arms was a given, as it was inherited. But a badge was a matter of personal selection. Some badges, it is true, ran in families – including many of the most famous ones, including the Red Rose of Lancaster or the White Rose of York. But even these were regularly modified, added to or discarded by individual family members to suit their own purposes or circumstances. Badges were also more freely used. They appeared on personal possessions, in interior decoration and on servants' clothing. At one level, therefore, they were a mere form of labelling – like nametapes; at another, they were a personal symbol, even a form of self-expression in an age where such opportunities were limited.
        Catherine's choice fell on the pomegranate. This was a tribute to her parents' decision to add the pomegranate to the Spanish coat of arms in a punning reference to the conquest of Granada. (The wordplay does not really work in English. But it is clear in a Romance language like French, where the name of the fruit and the city is the same: grenade .) But there were other layers of meaning as well. In classical mythology the pomegranate is the symbol of Proserpina, the queen of the underworld, whose return to earth each spring heralds the reawakening of life after the death of winter. Christianity borrowed this idea, like so much else, and turned the pomegranate into a symbol of the Resurrection. Finally it represented the two, opposed aspects of female sexuality. These derived from the fruit's appearance. The outside is covered in a hard, smooth skin. But the inside (always revealed in Catherine's version of the badge by a cut in the surface of the fruit) teems with a multitude of seeds, each surrounded with succulent, blood-red jelly. The hard exterior suggested chastity; the teeming interior fertility.
        This range of meanings was to play itself out,