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Every single man in her life had brought her closer to ruin and had plotted to take from her everything, sanity included. It was all she had left to think about now. Endlessly wandering these corridors of the Royal Palace of Santa Clara in Tordesillas, Spain, time had left this once so fine a mind as to be almost void, nothing but some grief and a lot of cold hatred.
Whenever she sat in her chaise-longue, here in this prison of a room, she was confronted with the ghost of one of these men. Just outside her window, but ten metres removed from her windowpanes, lies her dead husband, Philip the Handsome. May he rot in anguish.
For her, there is no escape, no solace, no refuge. She has lost all but her life and she will hold on to it for as long as she can, even if it is just to spite the men that still live.
Intermezzo
The woman you have just met, imprisoned in a Royal Palace, is none other than Juana la Loca. She will sit in this palace for 46 years with almost no visitors, no contact with the outside world and absolutely no freedom. This is her epic and extremely tragic story. Buckle in.
Act One — Maximilian and the Wedding Machine
He didn’t get this far without having to suffer for it at the hands of the people of Bruges first, during the initial rebellion against Habsburg take-over. But now that he had ironed out every fold in this finely woven tapestry of Flemish cloth, it was Habsburg business as usual. The wedding machine kicks back into fifth gear and Europe shakes in its boots, while shaking those very same boots to a political game of musical chairs.
Maestro, cue the wedding music.
The Habsburg motto of the era: Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube. Let others wage war. You, happy Austria, marry. Max would stay true to this established Habsburg tradition. His firstborn is a man some of you will already know as he who accidentally gave way to ‘Flamenco’, the name we gave to that fiery dance and music of the Andalusian Roma gypsy’s. This is mentioned in my first installment of Strange Origins. His name is Philip the Handsome.
A nickname easily earned when one stems from the Habsburg dynasty, a family known for many things. Beauty not being one of them. In the spirit of full disclosure and honesty, the chroniclers, such as Venetian ambassador Querini, indeed describe him as to be genuinely beautiful. Readers of my latest Sunday article will know the worst king to have ever lived, which was roundabout his actual nickname, Louis XI, who tried to steal the regions of the fallen Burgundian duke. Now in direct opposition of Maximilian, who married this duke’s daughter and reclaimed all the territories for himself. To undermine the authority of Maximilian and his now firstborn son, he spread rumours that Philip was in fact a girl. Medieval gossip, surviving the tooth of time. Oddly enough, later on in his life, during his actual reign, Philip the Handsome would foster relationships with France, in stark opposition to his very anti-French father, Max.
Max’s daughter was named Margaret, later known as the Lady of Mourning, which bodes well for her love life, does it not? The nickname was given to her by her own court poet, which is a job I am willing to take if you are employing. She earned the nickname by jumping out of a window after her second husband, Philibert of Savoy, dies. She was saved and had her husband’s heart embalmed to keep it with her forever. She vowed then and there never to marry again and became a very successful and respected woman in politics. All this leads me personally to believe she was much more clever and cunning than most historians give her credit. I believe the window-jumping and coincidental surviving was all staged as a political move towards independence, claiming her right to not be married off again in her father’s political aspirations and if so, Margaret, I applaud thee.
Her first marriage explains her father’s resentment for the French and her own resentment towards her father and fight for independence. To calm both sides of the Burgundian borders, the French king on one side and soon to become Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian of Austria, on the other, Max married off his daughter to Louis XI’s Dauphin, which indeed means both dolphin as does it mean the firstborn of the French king. She was sent off to the French court to be raised there, at the age of three. So she just tragically lost her mother and is now sent to a different country to be raised by a family that was hitherto a mortal enemy of hers, at the age of three. Dang these middle ages… Worst of all, nine years later, Max makes a political move that Louis XI didn’t like all that much so Louis calls off the wedding and sends Margaret packing, back “home” after nine years. She is now twelve years old.
Fernando and Isabella — The Other Side of the Deal
Back in Spain, the country is being united under one crown for the first time in its history, not counting old Rome or the Visigoths for technical reasons. The king of Aragon, named unsurprisingly Fernando, married the queen of Castilia, Isabella and they each ruled over their own regions, while establishing one empire. As of yet, two crowns. These would merge into one in just a generation. When Isabella and Fernando take back Granada and such from the Muslims, from the Moors, Europe rejoices. This is the first time since the fall of Constantinople that a Christian emperor manages to kick the Islamic infidels off of mainland Europe. Isabella is also the woman that would finance the trip overseas of none other than Columbus himself. All the spoils and riches that would flow to Spain afterwards can be accredited to Isabella. She is yet another phenomenally successful woman from the middle ages with claim to her name both the discovery of the Americas and the first defeat of the Muslims since the fall of Constantinople.
Here their children in birth order: Isabella (eldest daughter), Juan (the heir, Prince of Asturias), Juana (third child, second daughter), Maria, and Catherine, who will become Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII of England.
Isabella and Fernando take a look across the borders and find Maximilian looking back at them. Nothing but those pesky French in between them. France would become stuck in a medieval, political, wall of death.
The Double Wedding — 1496
The deal was made, they somehow managed without having read Trump’s book ‘The Art of the Deal’, amazing. The arrangement was as follows: Philip marries Juana of Castilia. Margaret marries Juan of Castilia. Two Habsburgs into Spain, two Trastámaras into the empire. France encircled on two sides without a single battle fought. While growing into his role as a leader, Philip the Handsome danced a beautiful, and historically extremely boring, rope-dance between his Spanish engagement and his pro-France stance.
His Spanish princess, Juana, sailed from Laredo in August of 1496 with a fleet of 120 ships and 15,000 soldiers. A massive storm completely derails the schedule, wrecks big parts of the fleet and totally destroys one ship, killing its 700 passengers. She actually goes through hell the moment she sets forth towards this marriage of hers. Eventually Juana does indeed arrive, presumably at the port of Antwerp, where her soon to be husband is not even awaiting her. She travels with her entourage to Lier, modern day Belgium, where finally they meet. And the historians would have us believe that soon as their eyes lock
ZAP
electricity sparks. She is 16 years of age, he is 18, they are both chronicled to have been beautiful and intelligent. A priest is demanded on the spot to wed them there and then. The consummation of the wedding was also derailed from its schedule and accidentally managed to happen before the actual wedding. Must have been a medieval glitch in the matrix. Love was in the air, for Juana, that is. For Philip it was more a sexy start to a political marriage. The reality, sadly enough, was that Philip would never be able to fully comprehend his beautiful and extremely intelligent wife’s past and how it led her into his arms. She grew up in a dogmatic and extremely strict religious culture. She was the type of intelligent that does not fare well with dogmas. Though receiving the best education medieval Europe had to offer, or maybe because of it, she estranged from the church as far as politically possible and with it estranged from her family. Something obvious to us today, seeing as we have a paper trail of her parents paying a spy to actually stalk her and assess her piety. She gets a golden ticket out of this rotten family and the first thing that happens to her is witness 700 people die in bloody agony. She arrives in a world vastly different from hers where she recognizes nothing and then, the man she is betrothed to just stirs something in her soul. She is home now, here, with him. And he shows every sign of feeling the exact same way, for now. It would not last.
Part Two — Juana, Who She Actually Was
Childhood and Character
Juana was born in Toledo, Spain on the sixth of November, 1479. Strawberry-blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, she looked a lot like her mother. She inherited from her mother more than just her looks alone. The same strong, independent disposition that led her mother to the top might well be what caused the first rift between her and her parents, mostly with her father. Her father had married Isabella for clear political and military purposes but had not counted on such a strong adversary of a wife. His wife kept ‘undermining’ his authority, so his youngest child, who was already last in line and acted so much like her troublesome mother, would never be meant to wield any power. Not if he could help it.
Her education was exceptional. Isabella ran a humanist court and surrounded her children with serious intellectuals; Lucio Marineo Sículo, Pietro Martire d’Anghiera, the Geraldini brothers. Juana studied canon and civil law, genealogy and heraldry, grammar, history, mathematics, philosophy. She spoke five languages: Castilian, Catalan, Galaico-Portuguese, Latin, and French. She played the clavichord, harp, and lute. She rode horses and flew falcons. By her teenage years she was discussing statecraft with her tutors.
By almost every account, she was the brightest of Fernando and Isabella’s children. And yet she was also the most difficult, sullen, withdrawn, bookish, preferring solitude and books to court life. Her aloofness was so total that people mistook it for exaggerated royal dignity.
She travelled constantly with her parents between palaces, cities, and military camps. She grew up witnessing the annexation of Granada, and Columbus arriving in Barcelona with news of a new world.
Religious Skepticism
In a court built on the Inquisition, burning heretics, expelling Jews, defining Spain through Catholic orthodoxy and all that other good old Catholic stuff, Juana asked uncomfortable questions about God. She was reportedly impious, often expressing religious doubt that made her parents nervous.
Her parents apparently dispatched a Dominican prior, Tomás de Matienzo, the aforementioned spy, to Brussels in 1499 specifically to report on her piety or lack thereof. Some historians believe this was actually political cover for concern about Philip’s behaviour, but the religious skepticism was real enough to generate official concern.
Later in Tordesillas her refusal of sacraments would be weaponised as further evidence of madness. In reality she reportedly expressed nothing but doubt about Catholic dogma and rule rather than outright atheism. The powerful have known for a long time that perception of power is one of the most incredible tools in a monarch’s toolbox. Just ask Xi Jinping why Winnie the Pooh was outlawed in China a couple of years ago. If you rule by the grace of God, then casting doubt on God is casting doubt on your right to rule. Seeing as Juana was an obvious humanist, she probably did doubt somewhat her own Godly right to rule. The seed was planted, Juana was an unstable, impious woman, one to be wary of.
The Deaths That Changed Everything
Juana was the third child. She was never meant to rule. Her value was wholly assessed through the all-mighty marriage machine. Two birds with one stone. Get rid of the outlier by sending her to the other side of the world and use her to strengthen bonds and gain territories at the same time. All was planned, all was well.
Fate rolls the dice and the other players, sat round the table of the universe, hold their breaths as they look at the outcome. Juan, her brother, dies in 1497, aged only 19. Her older sister, Isabella, dies while delivering upon this world her child, Miguel, who would have united Spain and Portugal when he came of age. He never does. He dies two years later.
Three deaths in three years. The third child educated for a useful marriage and never expected to inherit anything is suddenly the sole heir to Castilia, Aragon, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and the expanding empire in the Americas. A generation earlier, Mary had to marry Max, tongue-twister-time, in order to save Burgundy. No succession through the female side was allowed there. The same counted not for Spain.
Philip had, quite accidentally, married the most powerful woman in Europe. He has no interest whatsoever in sharing that power with her and her very own parents had been helping him build the narrative that would drag her asunder, namely that she is stark raving mad, crazy, bonkers I tell you!!
Life in Flanders — The Unravelling
So, now all pawns are in place for this Greek Epic checkers-board of life to unfold and spin Juana’s sad fate before our very eyes.
Juana is completely cut off and isolated at the Flemish court. Everything is foreign, the language, the food, the awful Flemish weather, the drinking, the Burgundian debauchery. No friends, no family, no allies. She is surrounded by Philip’s people and Philip, well, let’s take a look at Philip’s behaviour. Although Philip is a serial cheater, jumping from one mistress to the other and flaunting his affairs openly in court and public, he still manages to keep Juana pregnant for the better part of a decade.
Six children between 1498 and 1507: Eleanor (1498), Charles (1500), Isabella (1501), Fernando (1503), Mary (1505), Catalina (1507). All six survive and all six become emperors or queens, an extraordinary dynastic record not often matched.
One day, Juana simply has had enough of the total disrespect and confronts one of the mistresses and publicly cuts her hair off. Honestly, for the level of disrespect given, this was not even overly dramatic but the drama builds. The next mistress she confronts is reportedly struck in the face and another might even have been stabbed. Constantly pregnant, constantly being cheated on openly, she goes stretches without eating, without sleeping. She stalks and wanders the corridors at night, sobbing, screaming out in rage and fury. Eventually she starts throwing herself at walls and things start seriously escalating.
A normal and decent man might start taking actions towards change or divorce but this is the middle ages, and these are the Habsburgs. Philip couldn’t have had it better if he would have planned it all out. He locks her in her rooms and deprives her of the only thing she is actually craving, his attention and love. He has his treasurer keep a meticulous diary, which would become the nail in her political coffin, a testament to her madness. Grief, trauma, isolation and a constant barrage of hormone deregulation due to all the pregnancies and the incredible side effects of giving birth such as post-natal depression kept battering at the walls of her sanity and eventually, something broke. Modern psychologists suggest bipolar disorder and/or schizoaffective disorder. She was basically kidnapped and isolated and constantly humiliated until her mind coped with the trauma through disorder.
Part Three — The Double Crosses
Isabella Dies — November 26, 1504
The queen, Isabella of Castilia, dies and her death leaves a gaping hole in the political ecosystem, the game of musical chairs is now being played to the tunes of some Norwegian black metal band or other, things are starting to get real gritty.
Because of primogeniture, the law of succession, the crown now officially passed to Juana, with Fernando, her father, acting as regent. This is where it gets hairy. The empire was not as of yet united under one crown. Fernando ruled over his part and only had influence over the other through his now deceased wife. Soon as Juana would take her seat as queen, she would push out her own father from both regions at once by uniting them under one crown. This was always the plan, Juana was just not meant to be the one executing it.
Before her death, Isabella had explicitly named Juana as the heir to the throne, adding a clause that makes a whole world of a difference. The clause stated that Fernando would act as regent if Juana was absent, unwilling or unable to rule. Isabella had presumably added this clause for when her daughter would be residing in Flanders, half a world away, so that stability could be kept. Fernando read the clause as a thank-you-note for years of planning and scheming. Unable could also mean not mentally able, you see.
Meanwhile, over in that half a world away, Flanders, our dear Philip is having the very same thoughts. He, of course, has a desire for the very same crown, wouldn’t you? And here he happens to be, having kept a diary as a testament to exactly how unfit Juana is to rule. He has the right cards in hand for a power-grab. He keeps the news of her mother’s death from Juana for some time and he plots and he broods.
Fernando moves first. He has coins minted with his own name and face, alongside Juana’s. He positions himself as regent, citing her instability. Philip then does the old ‘if he does it, I will do it too’ routine and starts minting his own coins. His specific coins were minted in Antwerp and Bruges and named him alongside Juana as monarchs of Spain. The power of minting your own coins, having your right to rule printed on the legal currency everyone traded in, was enormous. Both men made sure the coins were there to back their claims. Here in Ghent, we still have an entire shopping street named after the mint where the residing men and women of power would mint their coins. It’s called the Lange Munt and this street is also the introduction in my soon to be released Ghent Unguided. More information on that another time.
Both men sign documents as though the queen is an inconvenience rather than the actual monarch. By the time Juana is actually told about the death of her mother, she sees rather quickly and easily what is going on. She was not oblivious. She writes a letter to a nobleman named Señor Vere, explicitly denying madness. She says she has jealousy issues, claiming she probably inherited them from her mother. She is lucid, precise, and furious. It must have been horrible to realise nobody cared about reality.
Her father and her husband proceeded to arrange a meeting concerning the fate of Spain and the queen. The trip is well documented and will have you at the edge of your seats, if ever a Hollywood producer decides to actually make a new movie of some calibre again. Until then you might want to read my first installment of ‘Strange Origins’ where I, myself, detail the voyage overseas, and some of its strange consequences.
Through representatives, two treaties were signed. The Treaty of Salamanca was signed first. In this document both men were equally recognised as co-regent in Juana’s name. Neither man trusted the other or intended to share a crown.
After arrival in Spain, the next treaty is signed. Both parties sign, each from a different city and one day apart from each other. Fernando arrived with a small party carried by mules. Philip arrived with an army of men on horseback. Philip wanted to show force, something Fernando had accounted for. That’s why he played the role of the sympathetic, Spanish father that was being bullied by the foreigner. The treaty they both sign was a formal document declaring Juana mentally incapable of ruling Castilia. Fernando renounces the governorship entirely. Philip is proclaimed king jure uxoris, through his wife’s right, not in his own. Juana keeps the royal title on paper. But she loses what little else she had left.
The very same day that Fernando signs the treaty, a day ahead of Philip and in a different city altogether, he secretly writes documents saying he signed the treaty under coercion. He states the treaty does ‘enormous damage to the said most serene Queen, my daughter, and me.’ He files the repudiation and says nothing, he bides his time. The political theater is genius. Philip marching into town the next day armed on horseback proves what Fernando was already stating. Now he would slowly but surely gather forces and position his pawns correctly.
Like every single plan this man ever came up with, it was brilliant, and it totally failed. Fate rolled its dice and laughed out loud when she looked at the other players’ faces.
Philip is proclaimed King of Castilia by the Cortes of Valladolid on July 12, 1506. He is, however, never formally crowned. He has the title for an entire 75 days.
The Death of Philip — September 1506
For the sake of newcomers to the Kobi One podcast I will read an excerpt here from that first ‘Strange Origins’ mentioned above.
On September 14, 1506, after lunch with his prime minister, he played a ball game, medieval tennis, with a group of gentlemen. Back then the king always had a group of friends called ‘les mignons de couche’, because they would even share the king’s bed at night, comment later on if you want me to elaborate further. Being overheated from the game of tennis, he drank a glass of cold river water and immediately felt unwell. He died eleven days later on September 25, aged 28, the exact cause of death still being debated.
Often the death is acclaimed to stem from drinking the cold river water after heat and this leading to pneumonia. A good story for a joke on why Flemish people mostly drink beer but it never sat comfortably with me nor a lot of historians.
A Spanish historian, José María Doussinague, dedicated an entire book to the case for poisoning; Un proceso por envenenamiento: La muerte de Felipe El Hermoso (1947).
Fernando was conveniently in Naples. The secret repudiation was already written and waiting. He had already undermined the treaty on the day it was signed. Philip dying within 75 days of being proclaimed king, of drinking a glass of water, with Fernando positioned to benefit immediately, the timing is, at minimum, extraordinary.
Fernando returns to Castilia in 1507, during plague and famine, as the apparent saviour. He meets Juana face to face for the first time since Philip’s death. A year had passed already. The records of this meeting are vague.
The Coffin and the Pilgrimage of Hell
The morning after Philip’s death, two surgeons opened his body completely to remove the entrails, then cut open his calves, legs and remaining flesh to drain every single droplet of blood and slow decomposition. We had learned by then, much thanks to William the Conqueror of England, that royal corpses should be stripped of their insides as soon as possible. In William’s case the surgeons overlooked it.
When the attendants tried to force the swollen body into a stone sarcophagus that turned out to be too small, the bloated abdomen burst under the pressure. Contemporary chronicler Orderic Vitalis describes the stench as filling the entire church and the mourners fleeing.
Philip’s body was embalmed, dressed in a royal robe of brocade with ermine, a crucifix on the chest, laid on a bier. His heart was placed in a lead casket and transported to Brussels, to be interred in the Church of Our Lady in Bruges beside his mother Mary of Burgundy. It had become Burgundian tradition for the heart to be buried apart from the body. The powerfully deceased would have their corpses boiled in a great kettle, filled with boiling water and wine, to rid it of the flesh and then the bones would be transported elsewhere. The heart would be taken out first of course. Together, they would be transported in lead containers to their final destination. Quite some of these hearts and bones can be visited until this very day. Three months after Philip’s death, Juana insists on having the casket opened to ‘verify he is really there’ and she ends up kissing the dead man’s feet.
Wow that was intense, coffee?
With Philip properly prepared, the real journey commences. Juana sets out towards Granada, with Philip’s remains in a leaden casket. They travelled only by night to keep the body out of the day’s heat and to avoid the plague ravaging the lands. They have a 700 km walk ahead of them. According to the chronicler Peter Martyr, Juana would regularly hold religious services for Philip in the many churches they would take their rest at during the days. Hundreds and hundreds of candles would be lit, possibly to keep at bay the horrible stench of the rotting carcass of her husband. The procession left the church each time so blackened by smoke Martyr accounted: “Our skin has been completely blackened by the smoke as if from Abyssinians.” If we are to believe the chroniclers, she actually believed her husband would rise again.
She would leave two churches completely burned down in her wake. During the last one, Philip’s casket caught fire and was only narrowly saved. She would have the casket opened every so often to check in on him and kiss his feet. Come December, when the casket was opened for yet another check-up, Peter Martyr stated he could by then only vaguely see the shape of a human being, let alone recognise Philip. With all the wax and smudge it looked a bit like a face made out of plaster.
Juana would give birth to Catalina, the future Queen of Portugal, during this horrible pilgrimage. Her father pauses the monstrous quest for a year and a half before letting it finally resume again. It is speculated he did this to keep Juana out of the hands of other power-hungry men seeking to marry into Spain. All the while, the casket stays with Juana. When she sets off once again, she takes another year and a half to reach Tordesillas, arriving in 1509. Philip died in September 1506. She has officially guarded the body day and night for three years, letting almost nobody else ever near it. Eventually the body was moved to the chapel in Granada in 1525. The pilgrimage had come to a close.
Part Four — Tordesillas
Imprisonment Begins — 1509
Fernando has his daughter confined, once and for all it will turn out, to the Royal Palace of Santa Clara in Tordesillas in February 1509. A convent town on the river Duero in Castilia, about 30km southwest of Valladolid. Her remaining faithful servants are all dismissed. A small retinue loyal to Fernando is installed. And then the doors of Santa Clara close.
Fernando is named administrator of the kingdom by the Cortes of Castilia in 1510. Archbishop Cisneros governs in practice. All documents are issued in Juana’s name but signed with Fernando’s signature: ‘I the King.’
Juana rebels by raging against her jailer Luis Ferrer and once more, refusing to eat or sleep.
Life Inside Tordesillas
Under Fernando, she had her youngest daughter Catalina with her and her older daughter, Eleanor, had created a semblance of a household within the convent rooms.
By the time her son, Charles V, takes over, it got progressively worse. Windowless rooms. No more daylight. No more visitors without special permission. No news from court. Not allowed to sign decrees or read government papers. Correspondence monitored or intercepted entirely. Clothing regulated. Long stretches where she saw no one but her daughter and some assorted nuns.
Charles wrote to the Convent of Santa Clara caretakers: ‘It seems to me that the best and most suitable thing for you to do is to make sure that no person speaks with Her Majesty, for no good could come from it.’
She apparently became convinced some of the nuns wanted to kill her. Given what was being done to her, this may not have been entirely paranoia. It was never proved either way.
She was not told her father Fernando had died in 1516. She may have died believing he was still alive. Philip’s coffin was buried just outside her window. She never once asked to visit his grave.
She ends up spending the rest of her life, 46 years, locked up as a political prisoner. Her death becomes a footnote in the annals of history. Juana died on Good Friday, April 12, 1555, aged 75. She had been Queen of Castilia for 51 years and had governed for none of them. She outlived her father, Fernando (died 1516), her husband Philip (died 1506), and nearly outlived her son. Charles V abdicated his entire empire in 1555, broken by age and illness, just months after his mother’s death.
She was buried in the Royal Chapel of Granada, beside Philip, exactly as she had always insisted.
No grand procession. No public mourning. The empire was busy.
Part Five — The Verdict
The first Dutch biography of Juana was written in 1940 by a Dutch man named Johan Brouwer. I will translate a passage here:
“What a fact, for a romantic poet! The nightly entry of the mistrustful, grief-driven queen, the funeral carriage, flickering torches, monks, prelates, noblemen, soldiers and musicians. An old village, a sloping landscape. A frightened farming population. Old women whispering of the mysterious powers about death. And then, suddenly, while the dark silhouette of the church where the dead king lay opened, and the dark flames from the tower set…”
We can even directly quote an English king, Henry VII, for making a case against Juana’s supposed madness. He is known to have said of Juana “not mad but a prisoner”. Let’s line up the known culprits.
Philip: needed her declared incapable to rule Castilia alone through her right. Had his treasurer document every episode of distress. Signed the Treaty of Villafáfila declaring her unfit.
Fernando: needed her declared incapable to maintain the regency of Castilia after Philip’s death. Spread the coffin procession rumours deliberately across European courts. Had her imprisoned in 1509. Issued all documents in her name.
Charles: needed her declared incapable to rule Spain and the Holy Roman Empire without challenge. Kept her imprisoned for 46 years. Ordered that no one speak to her. Stripped her possessions. Took her daughter.
All three men benefited directly from her incapacity. All three men signed or endorsed documents declaring her mad. Modern scholarship describes this as a conspiracy; documented, systematic, and devastatingly effective.
The Case Against Madness
Earlier in the article, I mention the Señor Vere letter, wherein Juana explicitly denies her own insanity and tries to establish her clarity of mind. This on its own does not mean all that much, seeing as many “mad” people do not consider themselves as such. What for me lends actual credence to her claim is her obvious self awareness. She mentions her own jealousy and notes how she probably inherited it from her mother.
During her imprisonment, she features in a document known as the Comuneros testimony of 1520. The document is notarised and shows her speaking, after 11 years of solitary confinement, with clear intelligence and sound judgement. The document itself is quite an important one and will be further investigated at a later time, for different purposes.
The Treaty of Villafáfila itself also tells us something. Fernando secretly repudiated it on the day of signing. If he genuinely believed his daughter to be so mad, why bother repudiating? The repudiation reveals the declaration was but a political move, not a medical one.
Then, our smoking gun, the Bergenroth finding: she never asked to visit Philip’s grave despite it being only ten metres from her window. This directly contradicts the entire romantic madwoman narrative. She supposedly spent three years walking around with a corpse because of romantic jealousy and such. She couldn’t part with his body, she kept believing he would reappear yada yada yada. Yet here she is, locked away forever with nobody but that husband she kept loving so intensely after his death. I don’t believe it for a second.
The Case For Mental Illness
Too many different sources and on too many different occasions, is Juana chronicled to have thrown herself against walls, refusing to eat or sleep, confront mistresses physically, wander the corridors at night, constantly sobbing, all the while being pregnant for most of it. The unstable behaviour, though extremely understandable, was quite real.
Her family had a documented history of mental illness, her grandmother Isabel of Portugal suffered severe depression and paranoia, spending her final years in seclusion in Arévalo. Juana spent part of her childhood there with her.
Modern psychologists working from the historical record suggest bipolar disorder or schizoaffective disorder, characterised by mood episodes and symptoms overlapping with schizophrenia. These are manageable conditions, not grounds for 46 years of imprisonment.
The key question is not whether she had some form of mental illness. The question is whether any illness she had was genuinely incapacitating, or whether it was amplified, weaponised, and manufactured into political justification by men with everything to gain.
The Scholarly Verdict
The definitive academic work comes to us through Bethany Aram’s Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). Aram spent years in Spanish state archives. The conclusion she finally draws, the very same conclusion I have been making a case for here, is that Juana was neither the romantic madwoman of legend nor simply a victim. She was a complicated political actor who used pious practices, strategic silences, and careful refusals to defend her own interests and secure her children’s succession. She was misunderstood and mostly, very much abused, rather than mad.
For centuries this misunderstanding lingered and gave way to oh so many plays and poems. Bergenroth called her behaviour heresy, Gachard named her a lunatic, Rodriguez Villa calls her an exceptionally devoted wife and then Von Höfler says she was consumed by love. Something that stands out, these were once more all men, possibly themselves still something to gain from Juana’s supposed madness, fame and admiration.
Only when another woman, Aram, takes a closer look, the world slowly opens its eyes. Aram broke the mould. The quote that sits at the centre of the modern rehabilitation: ‘Madness, like gender, proved a flexible concept in the realm of sovereignty.’ I think that sums it up better than I ever could.
Part Six — The Holy War, or What Has Juana Wrought?
Now, I have been slowly dancing around a name this entire article. A name dropped here and there but never fully explained in more than a couple of sentences. His name is Charles V, the son of Juana that would inherit everything and unleash upon this world a fury that would see the European continent and half of the world soaked in blood for years to come.
What has Juana wrought? Both devastatingly nothing and at the same time, one of the most brutal eras in modern history. Her legacy is very much the legacy of her son, Charles V. All that Juana does and does not leads to Charles V taking the throne of Spain and establishing the biggest empire the world had ever seen. Stretching from places like the Philippines, named after his first-born, Philip II, to Latin-America, north-Africa and half the European continent.
Discontent and disarray have been spreading over the European continent. Monarchs, so often far removed from the places they rule over, physically, mentally and culturally, have been taxing their subjects into oblivion and the people start rising up.
In Spain, we have the Comuneros rebellion. In Ghent, the great revolt that would see its proudest citizens parade through the streets with nooses around their necks. And in 1517, which is coincidentally the very same year Charles V arrives in Spain from Flanders, Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg.
Grinning from ear to ear, wild-eyed, Fate picks up the dice.
And she rolls.
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