Gold Ecu - John II

John II of Navarre ruled the kingdom in an almost permanent state of dynastic crisis — his first wife Blanche I held the actual hereditary claim to Navarre, and after her death in 1441 his son Charles of Viana spent years in open rebellion contesting his father's continued control of the realm. The civil war between the two factions, the Beaumonteses and the Agramonteses, made stable royal finances a persistent problem throughout this coinage's long span.

John simultaneously held Aragon from 1458, making Navarrese coinage of this period a footnote to a much larger Iberian political drama.