Joanna of Castile

Joanna (Spanish: Juana) (November 6, 1479 – April 12, 1555), called Joanna the Mad (Juana La Loca), queen of Castile and mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was the second daughter of Ferdinand, king of Aragon, and Isabella, queen of Castile, and was born at Toledo on November 6, 1479.

Her youngest sister was Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII. In 1496 at Lille, Joanna was married to the archduke Philip the Handsome, son of the German King Maximilian I, and at Ghent in February 1500, she gave birth to future emperor Charles V.

The death of her only brother John, Prince of Asturias, of her eldest sister Isabella of Asturias, queen of Portugal, and then of the latter's infant son Miguel, Prince of Asturias, made Joanna the heiress of the Spanish kingdoms, and in 1502 the cortes of Castile and of Aragon recognized her and her husband as their future sovereigns, already Princess and Prince of Asturias.

Soon after this, Joanna's reason began to give way. She pined in an extravagant fashion for her absent husband, whom at length she joined in Flanders; in this country her passionate jealousy, although justified by Philip's conduct, led to deplorable scenes.

Her mother's death left Joanna Queen of Castile in November of 1504. She and Philip set sail from Flanders to Spain, where he would assume the kingship as her husband. Their ships were wrecked on the English coast and the couple became guests of Henry VII at Windsor Castle. After they continued their trip to Spain, they landed at Coruña in 1506 and started their trip south for the coronation. Ferdinand, her father, claimed that Joanna was being kept prisoner by Philip and that he was speaking for her, and therefore he should be made co-regent with her. This conflict threatened to lead to civil war. However, Philip unexpectedly died due to typhus fever in Burgos in September 1506. Joanna became completely deranged — it was almost impossible to get her away from the corpse of her husband. Ferdinand's way to the regency was clear. Ferdinand convinced Joanna to grant him co-regency, and, in turn, kept her isolated in the castle of Tordesillas. After his death in 1516, her son Charles assumed the regency and was proclaimed co-king. Joanna was kept prisoner at Tordesillas, however, with the revolt of the comuneros she had a chance to resume her sole sovereignty but failed to take it. When Charles succeeded in quelling the uprising, Joanna was locked up for good in a windowless room in the castle of Tordesillas for the rest of her life. She died on Good Friday, April 12, 1555.

Joanna was the last of the original Spanish royals; after her, all royalty on the Spanish throne was from houses that had come from abroad - though most of the future monarchs also were born in Spain. Most historians believe she suffered from schizophrenia, and this weakness was ruthlessly exploited by the people closest to her: her husband, her father, and her son. She had no friends or confidants. They all lied to her, kept her in the dark (metaphorically and literally), manipulated, and used her unscrupulously for their own power plays. Locked away and imprisoned, she was needed by each of them to legitimize the claim to the throne. Nominally, Joanna remained queen of Castile until her death.

She is entombed in the Capilla Real of Granada, alongside her parents, her husband, and her nephew Miguel.

She had six children:

Eleanor (1498-1558), Queen consort first to Manuel I of Portugal and secondly to Francis I of France.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain (1500-1558).
Isabella of Burgundy (1501-1525), Queen consort of Christian II of Denmark.
Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor (1503-1564).
Maria of Austria (1505-1558), Queen consort of Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia.
Catarina of Spain(1507-1578), Queen consort of John III of Portugal.

Joanna in literature, art, music, and film

The figure of Queen Joanna attracted authors, composers, and artists of the romanticist movement, due to her characteristics of unrequited love, obsessive jealousy, and undying fidelity. Many later authors have followed this trend of portraying Joanna as a lovesick, and later griefstricken, woman, preferring to focus on her love for her husband than on her mental illness. An incomplete list of these works follows:

Felipe el Hermoso (1845) — Eusebio Asquerino and Gregorio Romero. A play in four acts.
La Locura de Amor (1855) – Manuel Tamayo y Baus. Play
Doña Juana la Loca (late 19th Cent.) – Emilio Serrano. Opera.
Juana la Loca (1877) — Francisco Pradilla. Painting (shown above). Currently in the Prado museum of Madrid, Spain.
Juana la Loca (2001) — directed by Vicente Aranda and starring Pilar Lopez de Ayala as Joanna, was nominated for 12 Goya Awards, and was released in the US as Mad Love. Based on La Locura de Amor by Manuel Tamayo y Baus.
El Pergamino de la Seduccion (2005) – Gioconda Belli. Novel in Spanish.

Biographies

W. H. Prescott, Hist. of Ferdinand and Isabella (1854)
Rosier, Johanna die Wahnsinnige (Vienna, 1890)
H. Tighe, A Queen of Unrest (1907).
R. Villa, La Reina doña Juana la Loca (Madrid, 1892)
Bethany Aram, "Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe" (2005)

References

Miller T: The Castles and the Crown. Coward-McCann, New York, 1963

External link

Juana of Castile at Find-A-Grave

1479 births | 1555 deaths | Castilian monarchs | Queens regnant

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Joanna in literature, art, music, and film

Biographies

References

External link