Laurie Voss#OneThousandYearsOfWomen continues today with Juana, Queen of Castile, often called (both rudely and incorrectly) Juana La Loca (the mad). Her life is pretty bereft of fun facts: she was born a political pawn, cruelly used, abused and endlessly gaslit by her husband, her father and her son, branded mentally ill for the convenience of others, and died without having experienced any real agency over her affairs in her entire life.
It's particularly disappointing that Juana would be so powerless given that her mother, Isabella of Castile, was an incredibly impressive (if not very nice) lady: https://twitter.com/seldo/status/1363701464305000448 Isabella and her self-important appendix of a husband Ferdinand had united Spain, expelled the Moors, funded the brutal colonization of the new world, and started the murderous Inquisition (I did say she wasn't nice, but she was certainly very powerful).
Laurie Voss moved to @[email protected] on Twitter
“It's Sunday night so here's entry #38 in #EuropeanBios: our subject is Isabella of Castille, who was pretty awe-inspiring so I hope to do her justice. She overcame centuries of sexism to become every bit the equal of her male peers in being a murderous, traitorous nightmare.”
Juana was born in 1479 while her warlike mother was still very much in the middle of her campaign, and spent much of her childhood being ferried around the kingdom in tow of her parents as they prosecuted various wars, Isabella being in charge of strategy and logistics and Ferdinand being a figurehead war leader.
Her mother saw to it that she had an extensive education, especially for a woman of the time: she spoke French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, and even Latin. She received training in law, grammar, history, mathematics, philosophy and more. This was all in view of her mother's big plans for her: she was to be an attractive and accomplished bride to cement a major political alliance (which one exactly was yet to be decided). She was not expected to have any choice in the matter.
What was eventually arranged for her seemed like a pretty lucky outcome for her, to start with: at age 16 she was engaged to Philip of Austria, who was 18 and known as Philip the Handsome (though he was a Hapsburg, they of the inbreeding and the giant underbite, so these descriptions are pretty relative). She certainly found him very attractive, she declared her love and they also began immediately having kids, ending up with six who survived to adulthood, which was great going for the period.
Unfortunately Philip turned out to be a total bastard. He seized control of all of her money (which was supposed to be hers to control independently), ignored all of her preferences and demands, and refused to pay her servants who had come with her to the Netherlands from Spain. When her retinue, unable to feed and clothe themselves, left court they were replaced by Philip's own choices, further limiting her freedom and agency.
She did not take all of this lying down, but her power to control anything was almost zero. With no other weapons at her disposal she took to emotional blackmail, throwing tantrums, refusing to eat and (most seriously, from the perspective of 15th century royalty) refusing to pray. This occasionally resulted in her getting her way on minor matters but it also set a dangerous precedent, which is that she became known for emotional outbursts. These would be used horrifyingly against her.
Then came a series of untimely deaths: her older brother John and the stillbirth of his only child, then her older sister Isabella and Isabella's son Miguel. This left her heir to her mother's Spanish throne, which she inherited at age 25 when her mother died. Instead of giving her the great power she was due to inherit at this time, things went from bad to worse.
Her father, Ferdinand, had always been annoyed that he was strictly second fiddle to his much more powerful wife. With her dead, he felt it was his turn to run things, but he technically had no power in Castile. Unfortunately a clause in Isabella's will allowed him to rule if Juana was "unwilling" or "absent" so he made sure she was both, by leaving her with Philip in the Netherlands and spreading totally unfounded rumors that she was mentally unstable and therefore unable to rule.
Of course, Philip wasn't cool with this: he thought *he* should run Spain, on behalf of Juana. For him to do that, he also needed the same clause in Isabella's will to be true, so despite fighting over who should be illegally in charge of Spain, Ferdinand and Philip cooperated on reinforcing the belief that Juana was mentally incapable, despite everyone who met her agreeing she was completely normal apart from being really frustrated at being imprisoned up by her husband.
Ferdinand then made a tactical error, marrying the niece of the King of France in an attempt to have more kids and produce a successor who would (arguably) outrank Juana while having French military assistance to defend against Philip. But France was very unpopular, so the nobility of Spain went over to Philip's side. Ferdinand was told to fuck off back to Aragon (which unlike the rest of Spain he did rule) and Philip was now in charge of Spain, with Juana still sidelined and called crazy.
Then Philip died unexpectedly, aged 28. Surely now, with her imprisoner husband gone and her father sidelined, Juana could claim the throne at last! Nope. She tried to form her own chamber of councilors, tried proclaiming decrees reversing unpopular policies from Philip, but a combination of sexism, lack of funds and her total inexperience with rule (remember, she'd basically been in prison for 11 years) meant Ferdinand was able to swoop back in, declare her incompetent again, and take charge.
Ferdinand was really gross to his daughter. He imprisoned her just like Philip had but with even stricter controls on her movement and cut her off from all news of the outside world. He continued to call her crazy, and spread the most persistent rumor of Juana's life: that she refused to bury Philip and kept his corpse around to look at and even to kiss.
What was actually happening was that Juana was determined that Philip should be buried in Granada, next to her mother. Ferdinand wouldn't let her do that, and she would not let him be buried anywhere else, so Ferdinand made use of the stalemate to create another baseless accusation of mental instability on her part. He kept things like this for another 10 years, and then he himself died in 1516, when Juana was 37.
Okay. Evil husband dead, evil father dead, NOW she gets to rule...? Nope. Nobles loyal to Ferdinand kept her imprisoned and in control simply by not telling her that Ferdinand had died. In the meantime, her son Charles had grown up. Charles, now 17, had been raised in the Netherlands by Philip's family and was loyal to them. He showed up, took over Spain, and continued to lie to his mother that Ferdinand was alive and had simply abdicated to Charles. They kept this up for 4 years!
The only reason she found out her father had died at all was that Charles was unpopular with the Spanish nobility for various boring reasons, so there was revolt. A military junta overthrew Charles, and went to her, informing her that her father was dead, she was supposed to have been in charge all this time, could she please sign this document saying them overthrowing her son was all fine and legal? She hesitated, and it was too late: Charles struck back and regained control.
This had been her final chance and now it was gone. Charles imprisoned her yet again, under even stricter controls, and kept her there for the rest of her life -- another 38 years! -- while continuing to maintain to the outside world that she was mentally unfit to be queen, when in reality she was just incredibly sick of being pushed around and powerless to do anything about it. Like I said, there's not a lot of fun facts about her long, incredibly depressing life.
Flaki@seldo incredibly depressing, unfun, and yet, living up to the "gold" in alpaca.gold 🙃
ty! 
Owen Blacker
nev@seldo heads up, image alt text isn't showing—maybe an Elk bug?
Julio J. 🀲@seldo oh, I missed these threads!! Keep them coming!! 👏
Eph Baum*Lemony Snicket Voice* Turn back now, reader