Joanna of Castile

Joanna "the Mad" of Castile
Queen of Castile
File:JuanadeCastilla.jpg
Reign	de jure 26 November 1504 – 12 April 1555
Burial	Capilla Real, Granada, Spain
Spouse	Philip the Handsome, Duke of Bergundy
Issue	Eleanor Charles V Isabella Ferdinand I Mary Catherine
House	House of Trastámara
Father	Ferdinand of Aragon
Mother	Isabella of Castile

Joanna of Aragon and Castile (Spanish: Juana de Aragón y de Castilla) (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.

Life

In 1496 at Lille, Joanna was married to the archduke Philip the Handsome, son of 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. Her only living sibling was Catherine of Aragon, six years younger than Joanna. 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 Ferdinand 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 favour 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. Her niece was Mary I of England, better known as Bloody Mary.

Ancestry and Descent

Ancestors

Joanna's ancestors in three generations

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
		Paternal Grandmother: Juana Enríquez	Paternal Great-Grandfather: Frederick Enríquez, Count of Melgar
			Paternal Great-Grandmother: Merina de Cordova
	Mother: Isabella of Castile	Maternal Grandfather: John II of Castile	Maternal Great-Grandfather: Henry III of Castile
			Maternal Great-Grandmother: Katherine of Lancaster
		Maternal Grandmother: Infanta Isabel of Portugal	Maternal Great-grandfather: Infante João of Portugal
			Maternal Great-Grandmother: Isabella of Braganza

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.

Joanna in literature, art, music, and film

File:Juana la Loca.jpg

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

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.
• Locura de amor (1948) — Juan de Orduña. Film.
• 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.

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 links

• Biography of Juana the Mad of Castile (1479–1555)
• Juana of Castile at Find-A-Grave