Penthesilea's Wish [Vol.2]

Chapter Twenty-three

(Santa Clara convent in , Castile, Spain. 1553)

Though Joanna of Castile was still considered Queen of the Spanish Empire by her loyal subjects-standing in at times for her son Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, she had early in her life acquired the cruel title "Juana la Loca,"-'Joanna the Mad,' This legacy derived from a mandate by her father, King Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1509 that she be detained outside of the royal palace due to her mental condition. This perception of her madness was to follow her for most of her life, much of it from her second home, a small but comfortable room in the convent of Tordesilles in the northwest of Spain.

This highly irregular situation existed for the reason that both Queen Joanna's husband, Duke of Burgundy, and her father insisted that she was mentally incompetent to rule. This once beautiful Spanish queen, who was adored by her subjects, became early maligned in her life simply for falling deeply in love with the man she was directed to marry as a political maneuver by her parents. By all observations and historical accounts, she truly loved Phillip, the Arch Duke of Burgundy, with an uncommon passion. Despite the efforts by the men in her life to keep her at a distance from the reigns of power, when it came to certain issues-such as events and decisions involving missions of exploration in the Americas-she demanded to be kept appraised of them from the convent. And through this capacity, she often stood in to rule on such matters abroad competently and with resolve.

Joanna had been perhaps the strongest of the four daughters of Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II, though she endured bouts of depression and a lifetime of condemnations by her father and husband that she was incapable of leading the newly emerging Spanish Empire. Upon coming of age at seventeen, she left the palace of her parents in Granada and traveled to the Low Countries by ship to dutifully marry 'Philipp the Handsome,' as this Duke of the Netherlands was called. Their royal marriage united her parents' Iberian kingdoms and provinces in Italy with the Low Countries to the north of Europe under the House of the Hapsburgs.

However, Joanna's happiness would always be just out of her reach due to the curse of her new husband's well-known infidelities both within and outside of the court. Phillip, early in his marriage began to show his diffident feelings toward his beautiful Castilian bride whom adored him with extraordinary devotion. Her affections were indeed a rare phenomenon for such political unions of convenience. His coldness toward her began in earnest with the birth of their first son, Charles I, and his constant unreturned affections soon unhinged her emotions. Her reactions were witnessed inside the northern foreign court to which she had moved, and many in the Flanders palace were quick to find fault with her. Her fiery antics of despair and bold accusations of Phillip's dalliances with other women publically, caused her to be seen as emotionally unstable by those close to the royal household.

In fairness, however, Joanna over time went on to be the loving mother of six of Phillip's children. And when both her own mother Isabella I, and older sister, Isabella II of Portugal had died prematurely, Joanna suddenly became heir to the throne of the Spanish Empire, along with her husband Phillip. This caused an instant and jealous rivalry between her husband, now titled Phillip I of Spain, and her father Ferdinand II. Both men clearly saw themselves as rightful co-rulers of the vast, joint territories of the new Queen Joanna. This auburn-haired, blue-eyed 'daughter of Visigoths,' would nonetheless be consistently known for her moody difficulties associated with Phillip.

Her legacy as "the mad queen," interfered entirely with her political and religious responsibilities, putting her competence always in question. She was soon viewed as 'unpredictable' to both the courts of the Netherlands and eventually Spain when she and Phillip relocated to Castile. For this reason she intermittently shared the throne at times with her father and also her husband-up until Phillip's untimely death, thought by many to be the result of poisoning by Ferdinand. When rumors had it that Joanna was spending long hours in the crypt of her dead husband, for whom she deeply loved despite his own indifference to her, Joanna was definitively labeled by her own subjects as Queen "Juana Loca."