g, but essential dimensions of it, in a context more or less generalized in the West and that Machiavelli left accurately defined in asserting that to govern is to make to believe."
In the years since 1992, Isabel's historical stature has if anything increased, as is reflected in a stream of Isabelline studies. This new edition has benefited from recent scholarship as well as my own further researches and reconsiderations. New monographs and the resurgence of scholarly interest in Spanish political history and in royal figures has served to confirm Isabel's power and effectiveness, illuminate her personality, times, and governance, and affirm her place as a mover and shaker in Western history. And that historians have become more concerned with religious influences on politics has served to project a queen who provides a stellar instance of counting on the interplay of the religious and the political to achieve cultural impact into even greater historical prominence. In particular, the writings of Miguel Àngel Ladero Quesada continue to illuminate ruler and period most broadly. And in the past decade, Nieto Soria has tirelessly delineated the fundamental political theory and the ideology of Isabel's dynasty and mapped out the paths of diffusion of royal ideology and its interplay with popular belief and sentiment. Citations to a number of their newer works and others appear in the endnotes here. I have also restored some annotations omitted from the first edition and corrected some errors and misprints appearing there.