If we talk about famous queens in Spain, Isabel the Catholic is the best known, but her daughter, Juana the Crazy is highly known even if it is only for the nickname by which she is known. However, Why did they call her "the crazy one"? Was she really?
We discover the life of Juana I of Castile, popularly known as "La Loca", the daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, a queen who He never really exercised any power.
Juana I of Castile
Juana the crazy He was born in Toledo in 1479 according to the most accepted version by historians and would be baptized in the church of San Salvador. Although the truth is that she does not have her birth certificate and there are other versions that assure her birth in Cifuentes. What we can see of her is her baptismal font preserved in the Museum of Santa Cruz de Toledo. The court of the Catholic kings was itinerant, so it is difficult to ascertain where Queen Elizabeth could have given birth for the third time.
Juana I was a woman whose destiny was to reign but who would never do so due to three people that she had in her environment and that we could say drove her crazy: her father Fernando El Católico, her husband Felipe El Hermoso and her son Carlos V.
The doctor in Modern History, María Lara, in her study on "Juana the rope" exposes different documents where it was assured that the queen was not crazy. One of them talks about the visit of the bishop of Córdoba in 1501, where Juana was already married to Felipe El Hermoso, and where The bishop describes her as: "a very sane woman." In any case, let's know the story of this queen who did not reign and this crazy woman who was not so crazy.
How Juana becomes Juana “La Loca”
Juana spent much of his life confined, the legitimate queen of Spain remained locked up in a palace in Tordesillas for almost 50 years due to having an undeniable mental illness. Or that is what was told at the time and what has been transmitted throughout history. But everyone also knows the power struggles that have always existed around royal thrones and power itself. Perhaps more than crazy she was the victim of a family conspiracy, of three men who preferred to have more power than the legitimate queen.
The beginning
Juana, from a very young age, was a beautiful girl who she became an attractive young woman, but not only attractive on the outside. Juana was intelligent, he knew Latin, poetry, music... What's more, music would be his lifeline on more than one occasion. Everything seemed to indicate that the new queen of Spain would be as important as her mother Isabel.
In 1497, At the age of 17, Juana traveled to the Netherlands where she would get married. with the Archduke of Austria, Philip nicknamed "The Fair", a man who was destined to inherit the houses of Burgundy and Habsburg. That, like many, was a marriage of convenience, a strategy of the Catholic Monarchs to surround the French enemy.
A series of deaths in Juana's family, such as that of her brother Juan or that of her sister Isabel, the latter's son, changed Juana's outlook since she would not only be archduchess and princess of Flanders. In 1500 Juana was the only heir to the crowns of Castile and Aragon and had to return to Spain urgently. No one seemed to doubt at that moment that the heir to the throne was crazy, quite the opposite "considered very sane and very settled" they said. "I don't think so much sanity has ever been seen in a person of such a young age." they also said. It was true that she had a strong character like her mother and had bouts of melancholy.
Juana heir to the throne
With the return of Juana and recognized as heir to the throne, her husband Felipe seemed relegated to being a consort, something that did not seem to his liking and he would leave Spain 6 months after arriving, leaving his wife pregnant for the fourth time. Even with that, Isabel's intention was for Juana to reign in Castile with or without the support of her husband Philip.
However, it seemed that Juana All she wanted was to return to her husband. for whom she professed a great love and that made her argue on numerous occasions with her mother, Isabel, who wanted Juana to be in Spain as an heir. It is said that those discussions would have repercussions on the health of both of them and that Juana would end up confined to the castle of La Mota.
During that first confinement, They found Juana outside the castle, barefoot and without a coat on one of the coldest nights there had been that year. This is how Juana got her mother to meet with her. to try to convince her to let her return to her husband. The problem that this incident caused Elizabeth herself to begin to doubt whether her daughter was suitable to govern.
Complications arise
In 1502 the Cortes of Toledo met and for the first time It began to be questioned whether Juana was suitable for the throne. Later in 1504, when Queen Elizabeth wrote her dying will, it was clearly doubted whether Joan was in good mental health. Now in said will Isabel made her heir to her kingdom "being in them, she does not want or cannot understand their governance" which stated that it would be her father, Fernando "El Católico" who would remain as regent. . That seemed to imply that the queen herself doubted her daughter's mental health, However, it was surely a way to ensure that no one could take the throne from her daughter even if she finally managed to leave with her husband.
By then, Juana was fully aware that her husband was unfaithful to her, despite that first crush between the couple. Felipe was a party animal and a womanizer and left many illegitimate children. So it is understandable that Juana could get angry. However, the moment it became known that she was finally going to be queen in 1506 is when the marriage worsened noticeably. There are historians who maintain that At that moment Juana did not feel love for Felipe and that "the madness" of love would not be sustained.
Madness for love?
It has been said many times that Juana was in love with Felipe and could not bear that he was unfaithful to her. But we have seen that according to other historians Juana was no longer in love with her, yes, she must have felt a lot of anger towards her husband. Philip, for his part, was trying to be king and do not consort something that I try to achieve by all means. One strategy to achieve his goal was to show that his wife was not suitable for the task he had to perform. Although not only he was involved in that plot to "drive mad" the queen, Pedro Mártir de Anglería, who was Juana's teacher, also helped spread the gossip.
Some incidents such as that a year after the death of Queen Elizabeth, Felipe and Fernando signed the agreement of Villafáfila by which if Juana did not want or could not govern, it would be Felipe who would assume the government until the death of his wife. Fernando in turn promised to retire to Aragon. That was a hard blow for Juana, but instead of protesting, she went away to see the gardens of the Count of Benavente and when she had the opportunity she ran to take refuge in a woman's kitchen, and from there she refused to leave despite the pleas and army of her husband. What Juana wanted was to stop being the puppet of everyone around her.
The end of Juana
Something that some historians rely on to say that Juana was not as crazy as she seemed is that Upon the death of her husband, she ordered his remains to be unearthed and paraded his body throughout much of Spanish territory. This was not out of madness but to prevent them from remarrying her. According to Castilian tradition, being a widow prevented a new marriage since she was a highly sought-after widow. However, she let it be known that a year and a day would have to pass before he could marry her again. With that strategy, Juana prevented her from being married to Henry VII of England.
Philip's death in 1506 was another hard blow for Juana, who was pregnant with her sixth child. Juana refused to attend to the urgent matters of the kingdom and Finally it was his father who would take back the reins of the kingdom of Castile.
His son, Carlos, would not take long to ascend to the throne and prevent Juana from reigning. She never opposed her son, not even because she had been imprisoned for almost her entire life, and of course until her death in 1555. A death in which no one from her family accompanied her although it is known that she had a very good relationship with some from them.
Was Joan I of Castile crazy?
Many historians maintain that the "madness" that invaded the queen and incapacitated her was nothing more than a political conspiracy. If the queen could rule, it would be a problem, an obstacle for her own father or her own husband who could not have power. The deranged behavior she seemed to present would just be an attempt to defend herself in a world dominated by men. All of this would lead them to decide that the best option for her is for Juana to be locked up where she could do no wrong while others ruled for her.
On the other hand, There are those who claim that in reality there was madness in her, a madness inherited from her grandmother Isabel of Portugal. But that madness was tremendously exaggerated to remove it from the political landscape. She would reach a point where it was thought that she was possessed by the devil and that she was unstable to be trusted with government.
Crazy or not, how crazy she went down in the history books and only history will be able to deny whether she was really as crazy as they painted her. We can only analyze the difficult life he had, see some episodes of madness and rage and other episodes of great ingenuity.