Fernando I of Navarre

Fernando I
Fernando I in a 13th-century miniature
King of Navarre and Aragon
Reign	21 July 1104 - 23 August 1127
Predecessor	Antso IV
Successor	Fernando II
King of Valencia
Reign	20 December 1108 - 23 August 1127
Successor	Fernando II
Born	18 August 1073 Pampalona
Died	23 August 1127 (aged 54) Jaca
Burial	Santa María la Real de Nájera
Consort	Patricia de Poitou (m. 1091; d. 1125)
Issue	Rodrigo Fernandez Fernando II of Navarre Estefania, Queen of Castile
House	Jimena
Father	Antso IV of Navarre
Mother	Adelhaid of Hungary

Fernando I, known as Fernando the Careless (Fernando el Descuidado; 18 August 1073 - 23 August 1127), was king of Navarre and Aragon from 1104 and the first king of Valencia from 1108 until his death. In his wars against the Muslims of the Iberian Peninsula he conquered considerable portions of land in southeastern Spain. Despite his cognomen he is remembered as a capable administrator.

Before the throne

Fernando was born at Pampalona on 18 August 1073, three months after his father King Antso IV had crowned himself king of Aragon. His childhood is obscure except for references to the prince being provided with a riding-master. In 1080 his mother Queen Adelhaid was murdered. In 1089 Fernando attained his majority and was dubbed a knight by his father in the presence of the nobles and prelates of Navarre and Aragon.

On 1 August 1091 Fernando married Patricia de Poitou, duchess of Gascony. During most of the 1090s he lived as duke of Gascony at Roquefort in southern France, where he gained valuable administrative experience leading his wife's council. In 1097 Patricia inherited the duchy of Poitou on the death of her sister Aines and the duke and duchess moved to Poitiers. In the spring of 1099 Fernando acted as regent of Gascony and Poitou during his wife's pregnancy. After the duchess gave birth to a son, Rodrigo Fernandez, in July the prince was recalled to Navarre by his father.

King of Valencia

On 21 July 1104 Antso IV died and Fernando became king of Navarre and Aragon. On 28 August he was crowned king of Navarre at Pampalona, and on 7 October he received the Aragonese crown at Barbastro. In 1105 the new king took the cross for the upcoming Egyptian crusade and renewed his alliance with Alfonso VII, king of Castile, León, and Galicia. After Alfonso VII died in 1107 the alliance was preserved by the betrothal of his infant son and heir, Alfonso VIII, to Fernando's daughter Estefania.

In 1106 Fernando opened a campaign to conquer Valencia from the Dhunnunid emirate. In the winter of 1106-07 he campaigned against the Muslims with an army of 8,000 men. The pitched battles of the war were fought at Castelló (June 1107) and Alacuás (September 1107), where the Dhunnunid emir Ismail II was wounded and captured. At the start of 1108 the king advanced into Almansa and defeated the army of the Jyadid emirate. In the spring he sailed briefly for Egypt, returning in November for the signing of the treaty of Albacete by which the Dhunnunids and Jyadids recognized him as lord of all Valencia. On 20 December 1108 Fernando was crowned king of Valencia at Xàtiva.

Domestic conflict and relations with Castile

Gartzia de Noboa, duke of Valencia and chancellor, the bastard son of Antso IV, died in 1111 and was succeeded by his son Antso Gartzez. At the end of the year Fernando forced Antso Gartzez to resign both his duchy and the chancellorship, pushing him into open rebellion. Fernando defeated the rebels at Teruel on 22 January 1112 and again at Solsona in April. Antso Gartsez was exiled from the realm at the end of 1112. Meanwhile the king's brother Prince Ramiro, duke of Murcia, had died. He was ultimately succeeded by his second son Duke Carlos Ramirez, who was taken into the royal court.

The death of Prince Rodrigo Fernandez in 1110 triggered mourning throughout Fernando's kingdoms. Queen Patricia delivered another son, Prince Fernando Fernandez, in May 1113, securing the succession. In 1116-17 Fernando decreed agnatic succession to his crowns, excluding his daughters from the succession and placing Carlos Ramirez directly in the line of succession behind the young prince.

With the formal renewal of the alliance between Fernando and the young Alfonso VIII in 1114 the king was sucked into the constant struggle to preserve Castile from Muslim encroachment. An army of 6,000 men was sent to Castile and defeated the Muslims at Castrobarte in November 1114. In 1115 Fernando raised another army in Valencia and led it himself on a plundering campaign into the Dhunnunid emirate in support of Castile. At Almazàn in March 1116 he defeated another Muslim incursion into Castile. When Alfonso VIII attained his majority in 1119 he again asked for Fernando's assistance; a Navarrese army was defeated at Alcalà and in September 1119 Alfonso VIII himself was defeated heavily at El Pedrigal.

El Descuidado

The Castilian wars continued for the rest of Fernando's reign. In 1121 another Castilian-Navarrese army was defeated at El Burgo. In 1123 Fernando raised a new army in Valencia but did not move to support Alfonso VIII, instead plundering French Denia. On 16 September 1124 the two kings met for the first and only time when Alfonso VIII married Princess Estefania in a grand ceremony at Burgos. In 1126 Castile became embroiled in a new war with the Aftasid emirate, during which Fernando's new son-in-law lost an eye.

Queen Patricia died at Poitiers of a heart attack on 1 May 1125, leaving Prince Fernando Fernandez as legitimate duke of Gascony and Poitou. In the summer he was sent to St. Savin with a Navarrese guard for his investiture as duke. The death of his wife seems to have been the decisive turning point in the king's health. He toured Barcelona and Murcia in the winter of 1125-26 but no longer bestirred himself to any great effort. In 1127 Fernando founded a university at Huesca in Alto Aragón. In the summer he visited Huesca before moving on to the nearby castle of Jaca. It was there on 23 August 1127 that Fernando complained of a pain in his neck and was taken to bed, where he died suddenly with a massive nosebleed.