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The Kingdom of Navarre (824-1512), originally the Kingdom of Pamplona, was the Basque kingdom of the western Pyrenees. Its founder Inigo Arista threw off Frankish overlordship about 824, and under the Jimenez dynasty the kingdom grew into the greatest Christian power in Spain: Sancho III 'the Great' (1004-1035) ruled Navarre, Castile, Aragon and much of Leon, patronized the pilgrimage road to Compostela, and on his death divided his lands among his sons, creating the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Thereafter Navarre was the smallest of the Iberian kingdoms, surviving between its larger neighbors through diplomacy and the defense of its Pyrenean passes.
The kingdom was a meeting place: Basques in the western valleys, Romance-speakers in the Ebro plain, plus important Jewish and Muslim communities, all under laws, the fueros, that limited royal power. From 1234 Navarre passed to French dynasties, the counts of Champagne and then the Capetian house, and from 1284 to 1328 its kings were also kings of France. French rule brought administrators, Gothic building and closer ties northward, but also resentment. Under Charles II 'the Bad' (1349-1387), a schemer of genius with a claim to the French throne, Navarre played England against France throughout the Hundred Years' War, holding Normandy as well as the Pyrenean kingdom until his son Charles III 'the Noble' made peace and gave Navarre a final age of prosperity, law-giving and splendid building at Olite.
The 15th century weakened Navarre fatally. The throne passed to the house of Trastamara and then Foix, entangling the kingdom in Aragonese politics, and civil war broke out between two noble factions, the Agramonts and Beaumonts, while the kingdom's French and Iberian neighbors circled. Ferdinand II of Aragon, having married Isabella of Castile, intervened in Navarre's civil strife, and in 1512 his armies conquered the kingdom south of the Pyrenees, invoking a papal bull. The Navarrese Cortes resisted, and King Catherine and John III kept only tiny Lower Navarre north of the mountains.
Spanish Navarre kept its own fueros, Cortes and administration within the Crown of Castile and later Spain, a distinct legal existence that lasted into the 19th century. The remnant north of the Pyrenees eventually passed to Henry of Bourbon, who in 1589 became Henry IV of France, uniting the old kingdom's name to the French crown. Navarre's history, the smallest Iberian kingdom, yet mother of Castile and Aragon, and the crucible where Basque, Spanish and French worlds met, left an outsized mark on both Spain and France.
Britannica: Navarra
Britannica: Kingdom of Navarre