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.
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[edit] Life
In 1496 at Lille, Joanna was married to the archduke Philip the Handsome, son of the the Holy Roman Emperor 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, 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, the 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. Some believe that Joanna became completely deranged at this point — it was almost impossible to get her away from the corpse of her husband. Another possibility is that she was using her status as a widow taking her husband to his desired place of rest as an excuse to travel freely through Spain. She may have been afraid to be shut away as had happened before. Joanna was in her last trimester of pregnancy and may have felt especially vulnerable.
This worked in Ferdinand's favor and he was able to convince Joanna to grant him co-regency. He kept her isolated in the castle of Tordesillas and became sole regent. After his death in 1516, Joanna's son Charles assumed the regency and was proclaimed co-king. Joanna was kept prisoner at Tordesillas, however, with the Revolt of the Comuneros (1520-1522) she had a chance to resume her sole sovereignty but failed to take it. She had been kept ignorant of everything that had happened in the twenty years since she had been captive. When Charles succeeded in quelling the uprising, Joanna was locked up for the rest of her life in a windowless room in the castle of Tordesillas. 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.
She is entombed in the Capilla Real of Granada, alongside her parents, her husband, and her nephew Miguel.
Her youngest sister was Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII.
[edit] Ancestry and Descent
[edit] Ancestors
| Joanna of Castile | Father: Ferdinand II of Aragon |
Paternal Grandfather: John II of Aragon |
Paternal Great-Grandfather: Ferdinand I of Aragon |
| Paternal Great-grandmother: Eleanor of Alburquerque |
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| Paternal Grandmother: Juana Enríquez |
Paternal Great-Grandfather: Frederick Enríquez, Count of Melgar |
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| Paternal Great-Grandmother: Merina de Cordova |
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| Mother: Isabella of Castile |
Maternal Grandfather: John II of Castile |
Maternal Great-Grandfather: Henry III of Castile |
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| Maternal Great-Grandmother: Katherine of Lancaster |
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| Maternal Grandmother: Infanta Isabel of Portugal |
Maternal Great-grandfather: Infante João of Portugal |
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| Maternal Great-Grandmother: Isabella of Braganza |
[edit] Issue
| Name | Birth | Death | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| By Philip of Habsburg (July 22, 1478–September 25, 1506; married in 1496) | |||
| Eleanor | November 15, 1498 | February 25, 1558 | married firstly in 1518, Manuel I of Portugal and had issue; married secondly in 1530, Francis I of France and had no issue. |
| Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor | February 24, 1500 | September 21, 1558 | married in 1526, Isabella of Portugal and had issue. |
| Isabella | July 18, 1501 | January 19, 1526 | married in 1515, Christian II of Denmark and had issue. |
| Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor | March 10, 1503 | July 25, 1564 | married in 1521, Anna of Bohemia and Hungary and had issue. |
| Mary | September 18, 1505 | October 18, 1558 | married in 1522, Louis II of Hungary and Bohemia and had no issue. |
| Catherine | January 14, 1507 | February 12, 1578 | married in 1525, John III of Portugal and had 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.
- La Loca (1979) — Gian Carlo Menotti. Opera.
- 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
| House of Trastámara Born: November 6, 1479 Died: April 12, 1555 |
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| Regnal Titles | ||
| Preceded by Isabella I |
Queen of Castile and León 1504–1555 with Philip I (1504–1506) Ferdinand V (1508–1516) Charles I (1516–1555) |
Succeeded by Charles I |
| Vacant Title last held by Infante Miguel de la Paz |
Princess of Asturias 1502-1504 |
Succeeded by Prince Charles |
