Vulgar History Podcast
Juana I of Castile (Ann’s Version)
March 5, 2025
Ann Foster:
Hello and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and today, we’re going to be revisiting a classic episode. March is Women’s History Month, and, you know, I’m always here for women’s rights, women’s wrongs, the “Go girl! Yes!” stories, but also the stories that are kind of like, “Oh god… what?” And today’s kind of like an “Oh god… what?” type saga. You know, when we’re talking about women in history, sometimes we talk about, like, people who overcame great odds, people who succeeded despite so many things being stacked against them. But there are also stories in women’s history when you look at it of people who could not overcome those odds, where the situation was just set up for them to fail. People like today’s heroine, Juana of Castile, she fought so hard, but just so much was against her.
I think it’s important to remember that… You know, it can be easy to, when you’re thinking about women’s history, think about all these, like, the people who you get, you know, the fridge magnets or like the T-shirts about the, like, you know, “We are the witches they couldn’t kill,” or whatever. It’s like, yeah, but also a lot of women have had shitty experiences due to the patriarchy and all of the shitty things that are in the world still. I don’t want to be like, “Today’s episode’s a bummer,” but it’s like, there’s a lot of melodrama in this episode. It’s, like, telenovela, the way, the high-key way that people are living. Last week, we were talking about Isabella of Castile, and there’s a lot of murder, there was a coup parade, just a lot of high drama. And this week we’re talking about Isabella’s, one of her daughters, Juana of Castile, and this is just truly soap opera-level, just like, it’s the sort of episode that, just looking back on my notes about this again, I was just like, “Oh my god! Oh my!” It’s a lot of, like, “Herman, my pills!” vibes, just every twist and turn in this. And Juana just, she was in it. She was, like, a passionate person, and I respect that so much.
And you know what? I don’t know, it’s women’s history months, like happy Women’s History Month. But also just like, [laughs] I don’t know, like it’s Women’s History Month, and this is the sort of stuff that a lot of women in history have dealt with and are still dealing with and I think it’s good to have like, chat about it every now and then and just share our exasperation sometimes. I do think that this is an episode, the twists and turns, I think, make it enjoyable, even as the story is unrelentingly not great for our heroine, but she never gave up. So, this is the saga of Juana of Castile.
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Hello, my name is Ann Foster, and this is the Vulgar History podcast. This is a feminist women’s history comedy podcast, and we’re in Season Two right now. The Season Two theme is and continues to be Women Leaders in History and the Men Who Whined About It. And in looking at which women to feature this season, lots of considerations, and I caught myself making the optimistic and misguided effort of seeing this as some sort of thing where it’s, like, you know, things were kind of shitty, you know, Cleopatra, Agrippina, they face some blowback, Matilda didn’t get to be queen and then look at how everything turned out great. But that’s not how this works because there’s still lots of women leaders now, there’s still lots of men whining about them, there’s still way more opportunities for men to be leaders of basically anything, any industries or whatever.
Even that being said, the women who we’re looking at this season are entirely women who were born into their leadership roles. So, it’s like, they did cool things, but it wasn’t just, like, people looked around to say, “Hey, her, she’s great. Let’s make her be in charge of whatever.” It’s like, you know, “Well, there’s not any dudes on the family tree. So, I guess this woman has to take over.” And then even someone who are not covering in the season, like Elizabeth I, she took over and did a very successful job of being queen for decades and decades, even Queen Victoria, people like that, they were among some of England’s most effective rulers, but it’s not what they did didn’t make the patriarchal society necessarily think like, “Oh wow! You know, Elizabeth I was a great, great queen. Let’s make women be the heads of guilds. Let’s like women be judges or lawyers or whatever.” It’s like, no, they just kind of got in there because the family tree meant there was literally no one else who could do it, and they did a fine job, but it didn’t really… It’s not a story where it just keeps getting better and better. I mean, I think, I think, now, recording this in 2020, there’s more women in leadership positions than there have been, ever before? But it’s still way more men in charge of way more stuff.
So, all of that being said, the season isn’t going to wrap up with some sort of, like, happy ending of like, “Yay. And then this woman was great, and then it’s great for women ever since.” This is just kind of like, augh! This bullshit has been going on forever, it continues to go on. The modernity of some of these stories is still sort of striking to me where, like, the things that people said who were criticizing the women leaders is really similar to the rhetoric that’s out there now criticizing women leaders. Anyways, it’s just a lot of bullshit, but there’s some stories here that I think are worth sharing and worth elevating. Today, we are looking at the daughter of last week’s subject. So, last week, we looked at the very complex life and legacy of Isabella I, and this week, we are looking at the woman who would become her heir, Juana I of Castile. So, even within that… So, Isabella I was a very effective leader. In terms of what her goals were, she was successful, she was respected, people were okay with her being in charge. She was really, the fact that she was a woman, like after she took over — oh, and especially she had a husband with her who sort of made people less scared about having a woman in charge — but this is, like, a case study of how she did well for herself as a queen and then her daughter Juana did not. So, it’s kind of like, Isabella broke through, like, with a little tiny hammer, it’s getting rid of a little tiny piece of the glass ceiling, but it’s still 10 million percent still there.
So, just to orient everybody, us all, to remind us all of what the world we’re entering into here, the history of Spain. So, Juana of Castile was the daughter of Isabella I. She was also the older sister of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII’s first wife, which makes Juana the aunt of Queen Mary I of England. And isn’t it interesting how each of these women— I’m going to include also Juana’s grandmother, Isabel of Portugal, who was the woman who people said was insane and then she went insane, she lived in the ghost castle. So, each of these women, Isabel, Isabella, Catherine, Juana, and Mary are all, to varying extents, remembered for being very passionate and stubborn as well as for being allegedly insane. They’re also all women with a larger amount of power than usual for the era, which meant that they were seen as threats and/or pawns by the ambitious men who surrounded them. So, isn’t it interesting that they were so often described as being hysterical and insane when that’s just, sort of, the main argument? Men had to try and get them out of the way so they could do the man things they wanted to do. So, Juana…
So, she’s Juana of Castile, and she is known, even in some books, in documents as Juana la loca or Juana the Mad. So, that’s how she became known, and it was a lot of, sort of a smear campaign against her. And I think when we look through what happened to her, the ways she behaved that some people felt demonstrated insanity actually, to me, I think seem, like, reasonable reactions to extraordinary circumstances.
So, Juana was born November 6, 1479. She was the third child and the second daughter of Isabella I and Ferdinand. Her older siblings were… The oldest sister was Isabel, and then she had a brother, Juan. Anyway, Juana had pale skin, blue eyes and strawberry blonde hair, like most of her family members did, even though because it takes place in Spain, a lot of times, for sort of a shortcut when portraying her and her family in films, dark-haired, dark-complexioned people are often used.
Juana was a moody child who liked to spend time alone, especially reading books. Her mother, Isabella, who hadn’t herself been super well-educated for the first part of her life — because if you listened to last week’s podcast, Isabella grew up in a ghost castle — she provided much more extensive schooling for Juana and her sisters, Isabel, Catherine and Maria than other women at that time would have received or that would have been typical for young girls in general. So, we have a situation of four sisters and one brother. So, we’ve got sort of like, a little Kardashian-esque thing going on; bunch of sisters, one brother. Like the Brontë sisters type thing as well, like the Romanovs, Anastasia and her sisters and the one brother. I don’t know, there’s something very mythical to me about this setup of just, like, a bunch of sisters and one brother. Anyway, Juan, the brother, was being groomed to take over the throne of Spain because boys always inherited things instead of girls, and that was his job. So, with Juan covering the role of heir to the throne, the four sisters grew up knowing they would be married off to princes or kings of other kingdoms to strengthen alliances, which was their job. They knew that, they were all, like, cool with it.
So, point of clarity. Queen Isabella, her mother, ruled Castile and León and King Ferdinand, the father, ruled Aragon. So, these countries or these kingdoms never actually, sort of, amalgamated officially, it’s just that they all happened to be ruled by a married couple. So, whichever of them died first, the parents, their eldest child would inherit the kingdom that that parent had, but not the kingdoms that the other parent had, because it wasn’t a united thing, if you see what I mean, and even if you don’t see what I mean, which is fine, I didn’t explain that to the best of my ability. All you need to know is that Juan was the heir to both kingdoms and then his children. So, if for some reason he and all of his children all died, then the next heir to the throne would be the oldest sister, Isabel, and then her children. So, Juana, being the third oldest, was never expected to inherit anything, but sometimes life takes you by surprise.
Juana was an excellent student and became fluent in numerous languages, including French, Latin, Castilian and Catalan. She was also a skilled musician and was extremely knowledgeable about history, politics and the arts and was also skilled at hunting and riding, because Isabella was making sure her children were, like, the most, best accomplished people ever, because it was a situation where the sort of Catholicism, Christianity that was going on then was sort of, like, if you demonstrate that you’re really good and proficient and smart and wonderful, then everyone around you assumes that’s because God prefers you. So, you kind of cultivate those traits so people know that God prefers you, but also that demonstrates that God does prefer you. So, Juana was not known to be as extremely pious as her mother or her other sisters, especially Isabel, her older sister, was super, super, super pious and religious. But the four sisters were all exemplary models of the type of femininity that their mother advocated for. Well-read, talented in just about every conceivable way, devoted to their faith and expected to be subservient to the men in their lives. So, that was kind of, it was sort of like, this is what I’m telling you to do, but what they were witnessing was their mother being this one-woman powerhouse who bulldozed her way through life and was able to wield power on her own terms. So, they were kind of seeing that also, even as they’re being taught to be subservient and quiet and whatever.
So, from what is left of Juana’s writings, there are hints that she was also witty and again that she didn’t take religion quite as seriously as the rest of her family, but really, who could? As we talked about last time, Queen Isabella had sort of a performative and violent way of proving her religious devotion, e.g. the Spanish Inquisition, genocides, that sort of stuff. So, there are some reports that are probably wrong, but there are rumours that Isabella might have tortured Juana for not being religious enough, but that’s never been verified, and I don’t think she did.
By 1496, Juana, 17 years old, and her family arranged her betrothal to the 18-year-old guy named Philip of Flanders. Philip was known as Philip the Handsome, but frankly, if you google that, I find that name debatable. I think the name, like the translation of it, could also mean Philip the Fair, which means he had a light complexion and light eyes as well. But either way, his pedigree was just perfect for a marriage to Juana. His father was Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and he was from the Habsburg family. So, the Habsburgs are this dynasty of German princes who existed through many centuries of European history, and I’m sure this will come up in the podcast as well because this comes up in my research all the time, just like, goddamn Habsburgs pop up in, like, every person I ever research, they’re always there. Oh, they were around last season. Elizabeth Báthory, the Habsburgs, I think, were her enemies there. It’s just, like, they always pop up, and they’re always the enemies of whoever I’m researching. It’s just like, to the point that I feel like they are my personal nemeses. But anyway, and guess what? Philip the Handsome is awful. So, spoiler, Habsburg villain, yet again. So, the connection of marrying Juana to Philip was this connection between these two wildly, like, the preeminent most powerful families in Western Europe. Coincidentally, both his family and Juana’s families all hated the French. So, this meant that the countries could kind of join up and go to war against the French.
On the positive side of things, Philip wasn’t, like, 5,000 years older than her. They were similarly aged. He was allegedly good-looking. So, okay. Juana left Castile in August 1496 to Flanders to go and be with Philip. Their wedding ceremony was held that October, and the pair was apparently so physically attracted to each other upon their first meeting that Philip insisted they get married right away and not wait because he just wanted to seal the deal with her. She was really into him. She’s a passionate person, and she was passionate about her relationship with him. How did he feel? Spoiler: not the same.
So, from the beginning, the relationship was… So, this passion, which at first was, like, that they just couldn’t wait to get married and have sex with each other, that passion was not always positive or productive. Juana was completely and entirely in love with Philip. But Philip, because every man in every episode of this podcast is always the worst, was a philanderer, cheated on her basically constantly. Part of the “evidence” of Juana’s “madness” is the way that she would freak out when she found out about his infidelity. She would go into it, like, she would scream at him in rage fits, which I don’t consider madness. I consider this reasonable behaviour of a really smart, really accomplished, really beautiful woman who is also really sensitive, really passionate, and whose husband is treating her like garbage and who was raised by Isabella I. She wasn’t going to sit around and be subservient as she was, like, maybe taught. She saw what Isabella did and what Isabella was like, so she’s, like, fighting back. She’s like, “How dare you treat me like this? I am literally a princess. Oh, you’re the worst.”
So, she was also effectively pregnant all the time. Juana gave birth to six children over 10 years. So, there’s a lot of, like, hormonal brain things happening here as well, where she’s pregnant all the time, her husband is being awful. So, her behaviour, at this point, if we’re just being like, is this insanity? I think like, uhhh, no. Rational behaviour. She had also gone through a lot of death in a very short period of time, which would also affect her emotions, on top of the whole, like, being pregnant for 10 years thing. So, between 1497 and 1500, the deaths of people in her family were… So, her older brother, Juan, died. Then his widow suffered a stillbirth. So, he was dead, he had left no heir. So, that meant that the heir to everything was now Juana’s older sister, Isabel. But then Isabel died in childbirth, and Isabel’s toddler-aged son also died. So, suddenly, her two older siblings were both dead, and their children were both dead. This meant that Juana was now, unexpectedly to everybody, the eldest surviving child of Isabella and Ferdinand and was now the heir to Castile, León and Aragon, which nobody had expected, including her.
So, in 1502, Juana and Philip traveled back to Toledo for her to be recognized as heir to the throne. So, the title for them in this time was called the Princess of Asturias; that was the title given to the person who was the heir to the throne of Castile. Later that same year, she went through something that sounds like perhaps a nervous breakdown. How did Philip support his constantly pregnant wife through her mental health issues? He abandoned her whenever she got upset. If she started freaking out, he would just leave and have an affair with somebody else anytime Juana’s behaviour got to be too much for him. So, it was just a toxic, toxic situation. And then he would also spread rumours about how his wife was like so crazy. He’d be like, “Oh my God, she’s always screaming at me. She’s throwing things. She’s clearly crazy. It’s not like I am awful, and her behaviour makes sense,” but he’s like, “I don’t know, women be crazy.” So, this is where her reputation for being Juana la Loca sort of kicks off.
So, how would she deal with this on-off desertion by her husband? And she was still, like, passionately in love with him, like, so completely devoted to him, which made his betrayals cause even more rage for her, obviously. So, she would deal with this in a time and place and in an environment where she’d been raised to be, you know, women should be docile and subservient, and, you know, if you’re upset, you should pray, turn to God. That’s just, like, not cutting it for her. So, she would do things like throwing herself against the walls to injure herself, crying herself to sleep. She had big feelings; she was a woman of great passion, and she just, like, what can you do? She was just doing the best that she could in an era before knowledge about things like postpartum issues or about how pregnancy messes with your hormones or, like, cognitive behavioural therapy or antidepressants. Anyway, so she’s just doing the best she can, and Philip is just running around like, “Oh my God, my wife is crazy!” So, it’s just sort of like a self-fulfilling thing where she is just like not doing great, and he’s just making it all worse.
In 1504, Juana’s mother, Isabella, fell ill, and she had been very religious/having some mental health stuff going on towards the end of her life as well where she, like, stopped eating for such a long time that that would make her mental health get even worse. As her health got worse, Juana, who adored her mother even though they used to fight all the time, she became so upset that her mother was sick that she herself stopped eating or sleeping. And anyone who stops eating and sleeping will probably wind up behaving in some unusual/erratic ways. And then, add to that the fact that Philip again left without even saying goodbye because he was tired of how Spain was so Catholic and how they wouldn’t let him have sex with people all the time. So, he just, like, peaced out back to Flanders. Juana was determined to follow him, to just, like, scream at him and plead with him to come back to her, et cetera, and her mother from her deathbed was just like, “Juana, no! Please don’t.” Juana was desperate to leave, but her mother had her restrained and kept in town. The reason why Isabella, even literally on her deathbed, having her own mental health issues, was so determined to not let Juana chase after her awful husband was because Juana was super pregnant at this time, because remember, she was constantly pregnant. Traveling would be dangerous for her because it’s the 15th century, and pregnancy was dangerous enough, basically.
So, she freaked out completely at being restrained and separated from Philip, so she continued to not eat or sleep which, like, on top of being pregnant and having already been pregnant lots and postpartum and everything, she started to wander around babbling incoherently, which, of course she did with all that going on physically, emotionally, in her body. Like, if you’re a young woman, and she’s still young at this point, she’s like in her early twenties, who had been consistently pregnant for at this point, eight years, whose mother was on her deathbed, whose mother had caused her own deathbed by, like, starving herself to death, who lived in a time when nobody understood psychology, whose husband was treating her worse than garbage, she had not been eating or sleeping for a while. Like, yeah, guess what? Wander around babbling incoherently, like, do whatever you need to do.
So, after she gave birth to this child, Juana pleaded with her parents to let her chase after Philip. They forbade her from leaving again, and then Juana ran away only half-dressed. I’m not sure what that means in this instance. Because when you say half-dressed, you’re like, “Oh my god, was she topless?” But I think it’s, like, people had, you know, the inside under chemise and then, you know, you have your like skirts and your skirts and your, like, lace up things. So, it’s like, when she ran away only half dressed, it could mean, like, some of her laces weren’t tightened all the way or whatever, but basically not the way that a royal person should be behaving according to customs. She threw herself against the front gates of the castle because her parents had told the guards to not let her leave. She screamed, throwing herself against the front gates, screaming until she exhausted herself, and eventually she was brought inside to rest after presumably passing out, I guess. It wasn’t until a year later, so after that baby was one year old, that she was finally granted permission to leave.
So, finally, she gets to go back to Flanders to, like… God, I don’t know, did she think it was going to work out? Like, oh my god, Juana! So, she went back. Guess what? Philip wasn’t just there, like excited to see her, but he was literally in the arms of one of his mistresses. So, with the rage-filled passion of someone who’s been travelling by boats and carriages in the 15th century, while dealing with nine years’ worth of postpartum issues, and she also was passing through, like to get there, she had to go through a war zone/people dying of the plague. So yeah, she had some pent-up anger at this point. So, she confronted her rival with scissors. Don’t worry. Well… okay, worry a bit. She confronted her rival with scissors and first cut off the rival’s hair, and then allegedly stabbed her rival in the face with the scissors. So, at this point, her actions are maybe a little beyond, like, “Oh, she’s a little stressed out.” But at the same time, Philip had been gaslighting and toying with her for years and years and years and years to the point that this sort of thing feels unavoidable. Also, like, everything I just said 30 seconds ago; she was desperate to be with him for, like, a year and a half, she finally gets there, and he’s literally in the arms of a mistress. Maybe, you know, there just shouldn’t have been scissors in the room.
So, stabbing the mistress, guess what? Didn’t make Philip love her anymore. So, she turned to local witches for love potions! Which is just, like, if you look at her mom, even her sister, Catherine of Aragon, her niece, Mary I, like they’re all like so Catholic and so religious and they, in their time of need, would turn to stuff like, you know, praying, fasting, wearing uncomfortable shirts made of rope or whatever. Like, they were not going to witches. Juana had her own point of view here. But then guess what? Philip found out that she had gone to a witch, and he was like, “Oh my God, you’ll never guess what my crazy wife did. My crazy wife went to a witch,” and kept spreading awful rumours about her because he is my mortal enemy.
So, in the midst of this marital crisis, Juana got the news that her mother had died. So, this meant not just a whole grief cycle of, like, “My mother is dead,” but also, it meant that on top of everything she’s dealing with right now, she inherited her mother’s roles as queen of Castile and León, because remember, her father kept being the king of Aragon because he was still alive. It’s only when both of her parents were dead that she would inherit the other bit, if you remember that confusing part. So, Juana inherited her mother’s titles as queen of Castile and León, but Philip was not into that because now his role was as her consort, and he was a horrible person and didn’t want to support her in her rise, but he wanted to keep her down because he’s awful.
Guess who else is a late entry into, like, people who are awful? Her father, Ferdinand, late in the game, revealing himself to be also the worst. So, Ferdinand and Philip started scheming ways to wrench this power away from Juana by proclaiming themselves her co-monarch. So, this is where we get into coin corner. Literally, every story this season has some sort of, like, coin-related hijinks. So, Ferdinand went to the mint and had coins produced that said “Ferdinand and Juana, king and queen of Castile, Leon and Aragon,” hoping that would make it official that he was co-ruler alongside his daughter, like, that she wasn’t in charge of anything in her own rights. Philip the Handsome was like, “Good idea,” and he minted more coins, his own coins that said Philip and Juana, king and queen of Castile, León and Archdukes of Austria, et cetera. So, they’re just like doing all this stuff, coin-related.
In the meantime, Juana was doing her best to just, like, wake up every day and live in the world when life is a walking nightmare because she is, guess what? Pregnant again, having more babies, and just getting worse and worse postpartum-related issues, I think, kind of clearly is what’s going on here. So, by 1505, Juana had given birth to five children. Her oldest son, Charles, would be next in line for all of the thrones that she currently stood to inherit. Charles was in Flanders being raised by some of the other Habsburg’s relatives of Philip’s, and Ferdinand was really upset about that because he wanted Charles to be raised by, like, Spanish people. So, Ferdinand took a new wife because he figured, like, maybe he and the new wife could have a new son and that son would become his heir instead of Juana and through her, Charles. But the thing is that Ferdinand’s new wife was French, and France was not very popular in Spain at the time. So, this just made the public opinion support Juana and Philip even more.
So, Juana and Philip, who had been in Flanders at this time, decided to return to Castile and deal with this whole Ferdinand situation of her father being awful. But then they were shipwrecked on the English coast. Like, on top of her whole life, now she needs to survive a shipwreck. So, luckily, England, her sister, Catherine of Aragon, was there having just recently married Prince Henry, AKA going to become Henry VIII later on. And there’s a whole episode of The Spanish Princess where you have the whole Juana blowing into town situation, but that is a thing that happened. And so, Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII were happy to host Juana and Philip at Windsor Castle. So, they had some family togetherness, and then, I mean, I hope she had a nice time. I hope she had a nice time sometimes. And then in January 1506, Juana and Philip left England.
So, upon their return, Castile was on the brink of civil war due to… It’s like the whole thing that happened when Isabella was taking over before with her useless half-brother et cetera where, like, some factions were supporting Ferdinand, and others were supporting Juana/Philip. But the nobles all deserted Ferdinand in order to support the younger couple. So, the two factions, but the cool young faction supported Juana and Philip. So, Ferdinand was like, “Okay, I see the writing is on the wall.” But also, he had a new scheme up his sleeve and so he invited Philip for a secret meeting to a man meeting. At this man meeting, Ferdinand agreed to turn control of the government of Castile over to his children and would himself return to Aragon. Because remember, the kingdoms aren’t joined; there’s just the two different things. But in the fine print of what this agreement said was, he and Philip agreed to a clause that said because of Juana’s “illness” which is her alleged insanity, she would be incapable to rule which meant that she would be excluded from all decision making and also would be kept confined in a castle without any chance of escape. So, Ferdinand went back to Aragon, leaving Philip the Handsome in charge of Castile and Juana a prisoner, just like her grandmother had been. Ferdinand… the worst. Augh! Ferdinand. Like, he was married to Isabella, so you’d think he’d be like, “Women can be in charge of stuff,” but not when it’s his daughter, apparently.
Anyway, so then one year later, Philip the Handsome suddenly died of typhoid fever, which was going around. Typhoid fever was going around, and that is his official cause of death, but everyone basically agreed that he’d probably been poisoned by Ferdinand, and we will never know the truth, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Ferdinand had poisoned him because that’s convenient timing. So, whatever the cause, Juana was now a widow, but guess what? Pregnant widow because she is constantly pregnant in this whole story, and when she found out that her husband, who she had been so passionate about this whole time, was dead, she apparently displayed more “mad behaviour.”
So, just to recap before getting into what she did that people recorded as being evidence of her madness. Juana had been consistently pregnant for, by now, nine years, she’d had six children. Her mother had just died of self-inflicted starvation. Two of her siblings had recently, like, not a lot of time has passed, died at very young ages, her brother and her sister. She suddenly, surprise-inherited these kingdoms. She’d just been imprisoned by her awful father, and her terrible husband/abuser/codependent partner had just unexpectedly died, potentially murdered by her father. So, there’s a lot of hormones and chemicals coursing through her body. Add to that the fact that Juana had always been a very emotional sort of person and what she did falls into a context that I don’t think is necessarily like “Oh my god, she’s gone mad,” but more just like “Yeah, of course she’s behaving like this.”
So, what she did is she refused to part with Philip’s coffin. Rumour had it that she was doing sort of like, a Psycho/Weekend at Bernie’s type scenario with Philip’s corpse: sleeping next to it, eating dinner with it at the table, talking to it like a person. That was the rumour, but that’s not what actually happened. She’s not at that level yet. What did happen is that she wanted to keep Philip’s coffin nearby, so she had the coffin with his body in it kept in a church near the palace where she lived so she could pay her respects daily. When she travelled, she had the coffin brought along with her, which is, like, not what everyone would do but not insane. So, during all of this, Ferdinand saw a way to steal his daughter’s powers from her. By continuing to allege she was insane and unfit to rule, he was able to appoint himself her guardian. So, now we’re into, like, a Britney Spears conservator-type scenario with a horrible father also. So, he was able to put himself in charge as an administrator of the country. Juana, at this point, had just given birth to her sixth and final child and was ready to get back in the game, but on top of literally everything else going on, guess what? The plague had just rolled into Castile, and people were dying all over the place, like literally, bubonic plague was back again.
So, Ferdinand… Just side note, I have these bonus episodes I’ve been putting out recently Pandemic Special episodes just telling, sort of like, weird and interesting stories about people and things that happened during past pandemics in world history. What I find interesting is that even in a time well, like, centuries before the whole thing about hand washing and germ theory was developed, people just kind of knew, like, if there was a place that had plague in it, you just knew to, like, stay away from it.
So, the plague was in Castile, that is where she was. Ferdinand was back in Aragon, and he was like, “Why don’t I just wait for like plague to just like do its thing, and then I can return when it’s safe again.” So, he just kind of sat around and waited for Castile to sort of implode so he could swoop in and take over. Juana, in the midst of this plague, kept trying to get enough powerful allies and money to regain the throne, but she couldn’t muster enough support. Her asshole father then swanned into town in 1507, coincidentally at the same time that the plague had sort of plateaued and stopped being quite so much of an issue. He just happened to come back in town when the plague was already better, and everyone conflated the two things to be like, “Oh my god, he came back, the plague went away. That must mean he is who the king is supposed to be.” So then, he used all his decades’ worth of slimy, gross, awful experience to metaphorically stomp all over Juana and steal the throne of Castile for himself. So, again, remember, he had always been the king of Aragon, but it was Isabella who had been the monarch of Castile.
Juana refused to sign the paperwork that removed her royal powers and issued his official statement saying basically “This is some bullshit,” but Ferdinand was way more powerful than her he had all these allies, and she became, again, a queen in name only. So, on top of making all the ruling decisions, Ferdinand also had all of Juana’s loyal servants fired, replacing them with a smaller staff of people loyal to just him and ordered her to be confined to the royal monastery/convent of Santa Clara and Tordesillas, Castile.
So, all of her children — she had six children, remember — were left in Flanders. So, she was off in this convent, her six children were left in Flanders to be raised by Philip’s sister Margaret of Austria, except for one, her youngest daughter, whose name was Catherine. Juana refused to be parted from baby Catherine, and so her young daughter remained to be raised in the convent, which is, like, a weird history repeating thing because that’s not unlike how Juana’s mother Isabella had been raised in a convent with her allegedly insane mother.
So, just [sighs]. Okay, so good news for Juana was that her father’s second marriage had failed to produce— Remember, he married the French person? So, his second marriage, where he had hoped to have a new son who could replace her, the second marriage had failed to produce a new heir who would supplant her in the line of succession. So, the position of heir to the throne of Castile and Aragon when Ferdinand died would be, because Juana was officially insane, would be her oldest son Charles who was back in Flanders. But while Charles was back in Flanders being raised to be her heir by the Habsburgs, Juana’s second son, whose name was Ferdinand, had been born and raised in Castile because he was the one who was born when she was trapped there and not allowed to leave. So, Ferdinand, her dad, preferred baby Ferdinand to be his heir because he was closer to him and he knew him better and also because he wasn’t off being raised by Habsburgs in Flanders. Ferdinand the king briefly even named baby Ferdinand as his heir in his will, but some clever courtier, somebody who is allied with Juana’s son, got him to switch it back to say Charles is the heir.
So, anyway, Ferdinand finally died, good goddamn riddance, and Charles was back in Flanders and not able to take over right away. So, again, Juana is just trapped in this monastery, completely powerless. So, who’s going to take over? Ferdinand is dead, Charles is back in Flanders and can’t get there. So, Ferdinand’s illegitimate son Alonso de Aragon was put in charge of Aragon while an archbishop was put in charge of Castile and León as regent in Juana’s place. So, just so we’re all keeping track, Juana was very much alive being kept trapped in a castle/monastery due to her alleged madness. She could have taken over ruling both kingdoms upon her father’s death, but she was not allowed to.
In 1517, her son Charles, who is now 17 years old, arrived in Asturias to take on his role as king. He and his sister Eleanor, so one of Juana’s other daughters, met with their mother for the first time in, I’m going to guess, 15 years, they acquired from her permission that Charles would be officially her co-ruler because she was allegedly insane, but she’s still technically the heir. She agreed that he could be the co-ruler with her of Castile, León, and Aragon. At this point, he could have released her and have her be his, like, true co-monarch, but he did not do that. But her daughter Eleanor, who I like the sounds of, arranged things in the castle/prison to make it more comfortable and homey for Juana’s comfort. So, good job, Eleanor. Daughters were good people, I think.
So, Charles was not a popular king in Spain because of his Habsburg roots and the fact that he had been raised in Flanders. There was a revolt in 1520 against him, during which rebel leaders turned to Juana for support to remove him from the throne. So, again it’s, like, they don’t like him, so it’s like, “Well, if we get rid of him, who can we support?” So, it’s not like they wanted her to be queen; it’s just they wanted him to not be king. So, since she was technically still the queen, if she gave them her written approval, the rebels would win, and Charles would be deposed. So, Charles and a delegation of his own supporters to his mom to try and get to her first to have her put in writing that she didn’t approve of the rebels, and Juana was like, “Mmm, not sure what I’m going to do. Mmm, looks like I have all of the power now.” And she, sort of, took so long to agree which side she’s going to support that the rebels were able to storm into town and officially request her support. Eventually, she decided against signing the document, so she supported her son’s reign in an attempt to bring peace to the land. So, she actually got to do something significant there.
Meanwhile, she was showing more signs of mental instability, which is, like, of course she did if this is the way that she’s been treated and what life has done to her so far. So, she grew paranoid that some of the nuns who were caring for her were trying to kill her, which, frankly, was entirely possible; people were being poisoned all over the place, and there’s probably lots of people wanted to kill her. Apparently, as her condition and her mental health deteriorated, she required assistance with most parts of her day, including eating, bathing, changing her clothes, and speaking and sleeping. Her son Charles instructed her caretakers not to let her see or speak to anyone. I don’t know if that’s because he didn’t want her to be scheming or if he didn’t want anyone to see what condition she was in or what. So, she was completely isolated, not able to talk to anyone.
Some historians suggested maybe she might have had bipolar disorder, she might have had a severe case of depression, she might have had schizophrenia, maybe comorbidity all of those things, all at the same time. Personally, I think all those things are entirely possible, but like her grandmother, I think a lot of this can be traced back to the hormone fluctuations of six pregnancies, combined with undiagnosed and untreated postpartum disorder, combined with just what her personality was like, where she just felt things so deeply, combined with her ongoing sort of issues with not eating and not sleeping, the effect of Phillips toxic, awful abuse on her, the way that her father kept gaslighting her that she was crazy. If that’s all happening to you and you start having symptoms, like, is it madness if she just sort of shuts down emotionally, psychologically and becomes sort of catatonic? And/or is it sort of like a self-fulfilling cycle of people claim she’s mad, and treat her like she’s mad, and eventually, she just, like, becomes mad, she just leans into it.
So, the story does not have a happy ending as one might, by this point, expect. So, Juana of Castile passed away age 75 on April 12, 1555, having spent 46 years in captivity, 46 years! Her tomb is in the royal chapel of Granada alongside her parents which sucks because they were awful to her, but she loved them, I guess? She’s also next to Philip, which is just like, augh! She loved him, I guess. And she’s also buried next to her older sister Isabel’s young son, Miguel. So, she herself is remembered as Juana la Loca, the mad queen, but her legacy, like, to history is through her six children. So, check it out. So, her son Charles became Charles V, king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Her son Ferdinand succeeded Charles as Holy Roman Emperor. Her daughter, Eleanor, served as Queen of Portugal and Queen of France. Her daughter Elizabeth was Queen of Denmark, her daughter Maria was Queen of Hungary, and her youngest daughter Catherine, who had lived for a decade with Juana in captivity, became Queen of Portugal. Through these six monarchs, the Habsburg dynasty would continue through to the, basically, beginning of the 19th century being super powerful all over Europe.
I want to just shout out my sources for this so there’s a really good book called Sister Queens by Julia Fox, which talks about Juana and also her sister Catherine of Aragon, and just sort of how the parallels in their stories, how their mother had been so successful, how they both had shitty husbands who treated them badly, et cetera. Super recommend that book. It’s technically called Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Catherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile. Another book that I consulted for research is called Juana I: Legitimacy and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Castile by Gillian B. Fleming. There’s also a movie that’s called Juana la Loca, or the English title of it is Mad Love, I think it’s available streaming somewhere. It’s a Spanish language movie that just kind of gets into the really the passionate relationship between her and her horrible husband and what that was all like.
And now, it is time to score this woman. So, we have four categories with which we measure the women who we talk about on this podcast. Not that any of them are better or worse than others, but just to kind of see where they fit on a scale measuring four very specific things. The first thing we’re measuring is Scandaliciousness. So, that’s kind of like… Well, Scandaliciousness just, like, how juicy and gossipy is her story? And frankly, even though Juana herself, she wasn’t like running around murdering people, she wasn’t having lots of affairs or anything, but just like, her and Philip’s relationship and, you know, running out, throwing herself against the door is half-dressed it’s like a telenovela. The Scandaliciousness it’s not like… I’m going to give her a 6 for Scandaliciousness because it’s just, like, it’s entirely based on her relationship with Philip. It’s just, I mean, the cutting off the hair, and the stabbing— Ohhh, I forgot the stabbing the face with the scissors. Let’s give her a 7. 7 for Scandaliciousness.
The next one is Scheminess, and I have to say her scheminess, maybe she was wonderful at scheminess, maybe she came up with good schemes but just everybody around her it was just a bad time and place for her. There’s a part where she’s trying to gain support to take over, but then her father came in he took over instead. Like, she was scheming, it just wasn’t effective. But I guess that means it wasn’t as good of Schemieness. I’m going to give her a 4 for Schemieness because she tried.
Significance… So, personally, her significance is less so than that of her children and her children and the whole, like, through her, the dynasty that they founded does become pretty… I’m going to give her an 8 for Significance because, through her children, her genealogy became very significant later on. There’s also that part where she stopped all of Spain from crumbling when she decided to support her son instead of siding with the rebels. So, that was… you know what? She deserves more points. I’m going to give her a 9 for Significance.
The Sexism Bonus is the last the fourth category where depending on how much did her gender affect the way that she was treated and how her life turned out. This is, like, a full-on 10. Like, if I could give her more than 10, I would. I want to give her, like, a 12, I want to give her, like, a 17 for Sexism because she was treated so horribly by so many people, by everyone. She was set aside. Even though, like every other woman who we’ve looked at this season who was a monarch and should have inherited something, like, she did not have supporters. If she was a man, like, she would just become the king, and that’s it. None of this would have happened. So, that’s a total 10.
So, let’s just add this up… Is that right? Wait. So, she gets 30, which makes me glad because, like, this is an artificially constructed scale, but I think with her, we really see the balance of the four things. Lots of Significance, the Sexism Bonus, her Scheminess is low, but she still bumps up there. So, like, she’s 30 points, she’s tied for second place. The top ever on the Scandalicious Scale is Agrippina the Younger has a 31, but Empress Matilda has a 30, Juana also has a 30, her mother just has a 27. So, even though her mother was more significant, potentially, she didn’t have the Scandaliciousness elements or the Sexism elements. Anyway, I think Juana’s story does sort of mirror that of Empress Matilda in some ways as well where it’s just, like, she was the woman who technically should have inherited and just, like, a lot of men worked for a lot of years to make it so that she would not inherit. So, that’s the story of Juana I of Castile, AKA Juana la Loca.
So, a bunch of different things to tell you, just like, reminders. This podcast was based on an essay I wrote a year or two ago about Juana where I was looking at her and also her sister Catherine of Aragon, her mother Isabella, and then her grandmother Isabel, and then Mary I as well, just kind of, like, seeing the commonalities and the stories of all these women from this Spanish royal family and how they all were so strong-willed and so stubborn and how they just were treated. I don’t know, how they all sort of ended, like, all of their lives ended with this sort of like “instability, insanity,” which is really just, like, I don’t know, there’s just a lot of commonalities between the different women. So, if you want to look at this essay and other ones I wrote about other women in history, you can find that at AnnFosterWriter.com.
I have a Patreon, which is Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, and that’s where you can learn about what I’m working on, what I’m researching, just depending on the level at which you support me. Also, there are some Patreon only mini episodes which I’m posting there so those are called So This Asshole and they’re episodes about some of the gross, awful men encountered in some of these stories. I feel like Philip the Handsome is very much due for me to do an episode about him, just putting him on blast. Anyway, so it’s Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter.
I’m also on Instagram @VulgarHistoryPod, on Twitter @VulgarHistory. I’ve got a little Teespring store as well if you want to support the show through the purchase of some of my hilarious feminist merchandise. There’s bags, and mugs, and T-shirts, and that’s all at Teespring.com/Stores/VulgarHistory. And then also, if you feel like sending me a message, you can at VulgarHistoryPod@gmail.com.
Lately, I’m very into Bookshop.org, which is an online bookshop that supports local bookstores near you. I have a list up there so, “Vulgar History Recommends.” I’m putting a list up there of the books that I’ve used for research for different podcast episodes other historical books that I really enjoy, that I find really interesting so for this one like The Sister Queens is up there if you want to read more about Juana and Katherine of Aragon and kind of their whole situation. Other books I have there, you know, just feminist history and other history books that I recommend, so you can find that, the link will be in the show notes, but also it’s at Bokshop.org/Lists/Vulgar-History-Recommends. Everything I just mentioned, they’re all linked to each other, so you can pretty easily if you find one thing you’ll find all the other things.
I mentioned midway through this podcast too that I’ve been recording these other mini episodes that are not Patreon-only, those are available for everybody the Pandemic Super Specials, so just talking about some interesting pandemic-related stories from different time periods so you can find those if you’re subscribed to this podcast, wherever you’re subscribed to this podcast. And I guess that’s everything. Next week, I think, is going to be the season finale for this season about Women Leaders in History and the Men Who Whined About Them, so stay tuned for that. Be well, stay safe, and I’ll talk to you all next time.
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So, I mentioned in the episode, and I think I did last week as well, so Isabella of Castile was the mother of Juana of Castile. Isabella of Castile also the mother of Catherine of Aragon, who was famously the first wife of Henry VIII, and I have yet to do an episode about Catherine of Aragon or about her daughter Mary I. But it is so interesting to me how their stories all follow sort of a similar trajectory of just, like, a really passionate, very intelligent, very well-educated woman who, just, people… It’s the Taylor Swift thing, right, like, “Every time you call me crazy, I get more crazy,” is the vibe of this whole lineage of women. I don’t know it’s it reminds me, as so many things do, of the Sweet Valley sagas the books from the nineties about the ancestors of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield the Sweet Valley High twins where it’s just, like, the same sort of events just keep recurring and we see that a lot in monarchies in dynasties and families where it’s just, like, the same patterns keep repeating. Anyway, I’m glad that I had the opportunity to reshare this episode. Our friends Katy and Nathan at Queens Podcast also did an episode about Juana of Castile, and I love that Katy semi-regularly posts a picture of Philip the Handsome and just being like, “Really? Really? What were the standards of this time? Really?” God, that fucking guy.
Anyway, I’m Ann Foster, this is the Vulgar History podcast and so I’ve recently done a couple of live events; I don’t know when or where the next one is going to be but if you want to hear, get the first information about where I’m going and when, sign up for my mailing list which you can sign up for by going to VulgarHistory.com/News. I always share my whereabouts— Well, not my whereabouts. Where am I? In my house, most of the time. But when I’m travelling, I share that news there and where the live events are going to be. As we’re getting closer to the publication next year of my book Rebel of the Regency, I’ll have more and more updates to share with you. So, that’s an email you get once per month, which is, like, the high-level highlights of what you need to know about me and what I’m doing. Vulgar History news, Ann Foster news. So yeah, you can sign up for those updates at VulgarHistory.com/News, and when you go to sign up, one of the questions I ask — and you don’t have to answer it, but I appreciate those people who do — is what is your nearest large city? Because that helps me kind of know where you are so I know, if I am going to plan some book events where are the Tits Out Brigade, you know, most focused what are the areas.
I’m also on Substack; you can subscribe to my essays there at VulgarHistory.Substack.com. I have posted there about Juana of Castile, or I’m about to. I know I’ve edited those essays, I just forget if I posted or not about Isabella and also Juana. Every other week, I post an essay there about a woman from history as well as some updates from Rebel of the Regency, my book.
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If you pledge five dollars a month you get all of that plus also bonus episodes so things like Vulgarpiece Theatre where you talk about costume dramas with Allison Epstein and Lana Wood Johnson; The Aftershow where sometimes a guest and I get to talking and oh we just take our off-topic conversation there; and also So This Asshole we’re talking about awful men from history. I’m pretty sure I’ve done one about Philip the Handsome if not I have talked about some of the other shitty people from this story that we listened to today which was full of so many shitty men. Also, if you join my Patreon at the five dollar or more a month level, you get access to our Discord which is just, like, honestly a big group chat where we just hang out and have a nice time and I’m there all the time and I love answering questions and seeing what you’re all up to and honestly, that’s where I see I get ideas for new episodes from there sometimes articles are shared there that I’ll then go share on the Patreon because people bring it to my attention. It’s just a nice time.
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I like to usually tell you what’s happening next week, but next week there’s a couple options, and I don’t know which one it’s going to be and I don’t want to lie to you, like in that past episode where I said we’d be talking about Eleanor of Aquitaine. It’s not going to be that, but it’s going to be something cool, probably with a cool guest. So, stay tuned next week. You know I’m always here every week. Until then keep your pants on and your tits out.
Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.
References:
Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile by Julia Fox
Juana I: Legitimacy and Conflict in Sixteenth-Century Castile by Gillian B. Fleming
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