Infidel: The Daughters of Aragon
(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.
A Five Star Read
Most people who know anything about the Tudors will have heard of Catherine of Aragon, and I went into this expecting to learn more about her early years. What I wasn’t expecting—at all—was Joanna of Castile. I’ll happily admit I’d never even heard of her before, which now feels like a glaring gap considering how much she adds to the story.
What really makes this work is how it centres Juana in a way that feels both intimate and unsettling. She isn’t written to be conveniently likeable or easy to understand; instead, she reacts honestly to what’s happening around her, and that honesty puts her at odds with the world she’s been born into. In a court where silence and obedience are expected, her instinct to question things feels quietly rebellious, even when she doesn’t intend it to be.
There’s an early scene where the children are made to watch an execution, and it completely sets the tone. While everyone else remains composed, Juana can’t hide her reaction, and her response—“Jesus told us to love one another. He said nothing about burning anyone alive”—cuts through all the ceremony and justification. It’s not dramatic in delivery, but it lands hard, because it voices exactly what the reader is thinking while exposing how normalised that violence has become.
That sense of unease continues in smaller moments too, like when Prince Juan of Asturias later reenacts a hanging with his slave. It’s written almost in passing, but it’s incredibly effective. It highlights how deeply these behaviours are embedded in their world, and how even the most gentle characters are shaped by it without question. It adds weight to it, and you can’t help but think how these things don’t just disappear. They carry forward. Long before Mary I of England earns her reputation, you can already see how a world like this makes that kind of thinking feel… normal.
What also comes through quite strongly is the hypocrisy at the top. You have figures like Pope Alexander VI, who is meant to represent moral authority, yet is widely known for keeping a mistress and fathering children, all while condemning others and shaping the religious direction of Europe. It adds another layer to everything Juana is questioning—this sense that the rules are rigid for some, and conveniently flexible for others.
The court itself feels convincing without being overdone. It’s grand and devout on the surface, but there’s a constant undercurrent of tension—political, religious, and personal—that never quite settles. You can feel how carefully everything is being held together, and how quickly it could shift.
What stood out most to me was how Juana’s relationships are handled. There is genuine love within the family, but it’s complicated by expectation and control, and it becomes clear how easily concern can turn into dismissal. Her emotional responses, which feel entirely reasonable to the reader, are treated as something suspect, and that slow shift in perception is where the story really begins to sting.
By the end, it doesn’t feel like a dramatic retelling so much as a quiet reframing. You’re left not just understanding Juana, but questioning the version of her history has handed down.
I went in expecting to learn more about Catherine of Aragon, but came away thinking about Juana long after I’d finished—and that, more than anything, is what made this stand out.
* Quietly unsettling moments that linger longer than you expect
*Characters shaped by power, faith, and the things they’re not allowed to question
*A story that doesn’t shout, but still manages to hit hard
My thoughts summed up in one posh sentence
A thoughtful and quietly disquieting historical novel that re-examines familiar history through a more questioning, and far more human, lens.
This book is available in the following formats:
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.
Connect with Nicola Harris:
Publication Date: 5th March 2026
Publisher: Independently Published
Print Length: 268 Pages
Genre: Biographical Historical Fiction | Tudor Fiction | Historical Fiction
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