Joanna of Castile

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Joanna (Spanish: Juana) (November 6, 1479 – April 12, 1555), called Joanna the Mad (Juana La Loca), Queen regnant 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.

[edit] Life

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.

Joanna was said to pine day and night for her husband while he was overseas, and when she eventually joined Philip in Flanders, her passionate jealousy and constant suspicion of him made her notorious, if not necessarily beloved, in the local court.

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.

F.Pradilla Ortiz: Juana la Loca Depicts Queen Joanna in vigil over her husband's coffin

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 she was kept locked away and imprisoned. Needed to legitimize the claims of her father and son to the throne, Joanna only nominally remained queen of Castile until her death. Many historians, not understanding the nature and severity of a disease like schizophrenia, have made her story into an archtypal victim parable, without adequately understanding the dangers which her condition posed to the governance of Castile.

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

[edit] Ancestry and Descent

[edit] Ancestors

[edit] Issue

[edit] 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 Seducción (2005) – Gioconda Belli. Novel in Spanish.

[edit] 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)

[edit] References

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

[edit] External link

• Juana of Castile at Find-A-Grave

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