00:01:50.760And then look at how everything turned out great.1.00
00:01:53.520But that's not how this works, because there's still lots of women leaders now.1.00
00:01:57.440There's still lots of men whining about them.1.00
00:01:59.100There's still way more opportunities for men to be leaders of basically any anything, any industries or whatever.
00:02:07.760And the women, even that being said, like the women who are looking at this this season are entirely women who were born into their leadership roles.
00:02:19.540But it wasn't just like people looked around to say like, hey, her, she's great.0.51
00:02:22.540let's make her be in charge of whatever. It's like, well, you know, there's not any dudes on
00:02:27.720the family tree. So I guess this woman has to take over. And then even someone who we're not1.00
00:02:32.080covering in the season, like Elizabeth I, she took over and did a very successful job of being
00:02:40.620queen for decades and decades, even Queen Victoria, like people like that. It's, they did, they were
00:02:46.200among some of england's most effective rulers but it's not what they did didn't make the patriarchal
00:02:53.860society necessarily think like oh well you know elizabeth i was a great great queen let's make0.70
00:02:58.760women be the heads of guilds let's like women be um judges or lawyers or whatever it's like no they0.90
00:03:05.520just kind of got in there because the family tree meant there was like literally no one else who
00:03:10.280could do it and they did a fine job but it didn't really it's not a story where it just keeps getting
00:03:17.640better and better i mean i think i think now recording this in 2020 there's more women in
00:03:26.500leadership positions than there have been ever before question mark but it's still way more men
00:03:34.200in charge of way more stuff so all of that being said this season isn't going to wrap up with some
00:03:38.180sort of like happy ending of like yay and then this woman was great and then it's great for women0.97
00:03:43.380ever since this is just kind of like oh this bullshit has been going on forever it continues0.84
00:03:47.580to go on the modernity modernity of some of these stories it's still sort of striking to me where0.93
00:03:54.500like the the things that people said who were criticizing the women leaders is really similar0.98
00:04:00.420to the rhetoric that's out there now criticizing women leaders and anyways just a lot of bullshit0.90
00:04:04.520but there's some stories here that I think are worth sharing and worth elevating. And today we0.93
00:04:10.360are looking at the daughter of last week's subject. So last week we looked at the very
00:04:15.220complex life and legacy of Isabella I. And this week we are looking at the woman who would become
00:04:22.640her heir, Juana I of Castile. So even within that, so it's like Isabella I was a very effective
00:04:33.940leader she was a very in terms of what her goals were she was successful she was respected people
00:04:40.160were okay with her being in charge she was really um the fact that she was a woman like after she
00:04:46.520took over one especially she had a husband with her who sort of made people less scared about1.00
00:04:51.240having a woman in charge but this is like case study of how she did well for herself as the queen1.00
00:04:57.880And then her daughter, Juana, did not. So it's kind of like Isabella broke through like with a little like little tiny hammer. It's like getting rid of like a little tiny piece of the glass ceiling, but it's still at 10 million percent still there.
00:05:14.120So just to orient everybody, us all, to remind us all of what world we're entering into here, the history of Spain. So Juana of Castile was the daughter of Isabella I. She's also the older sister of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, which makes Juana the aunt of Queen Mary I of England.
00:05:36.980So, and isn't it interesting how each of these women, and I'm going to include also Juana's
00:05:42.560grandmother, Isabel of Portugal, who was the woman who people said was insane. And then she went0.96
00:05:48.840insane. She lived in the ghost castle. So each of these women, Isabel, Isabella, Catherine, Juana,
00:05:54.740and Mary are all to varying extents, remembered for being very passionate and stubborn, as well
00:06:01.020as for being allegedly insane. They're also all women with a larger amount of power than usual0.86
00:06:06.480for the era, which meant that they were seen as threats and or pawns by the ambitious men who1.00
00:06:11.500surrounded them. So isn't it interesting that they were so often described as being hysterical
00:06:17.300and insane when that's just sort of the main argument men had to try and get them out of the
00:06:23.640way so they could do the man things they wanted to do. So Juana, so she's Juana of Castile,
00:06:31.020And she is known even in some books, in documents, as Juana La Loca or Juana the Mad.
00:06:41.420And it was a lot of sort of a smear campaign against her.
00:06:44.840And 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.
00:06:57.000this. So Juana was born November 6th, 1479. She was the third child and the second daughter
00:07:04.460of Isabella I and Ferdinand. So her older siblings were, the oldest sister was Isabel,
00:07:12.820and then she had a brother Juan. Anyway, Juana had pale skin, blue eyes, and strawberry blonde hair,
00:07:19.680like most of her family members did, even though because it takes place in Spain a lot of times
00:07:24.340for sort of a shortcut when portraying her and her family in films, dark haired, dark complexion
00:07:31.000people are often used. So Juana was a moody child who liked to spend time alone, especially reading
00:07:36.500books. Her mother, Isabella, who hadn't herself been super well educated for the first part of
00:07:42.060her life, because if you listen to last week's podcast, Isabella grew up in a ghost castle.
00:07:47.220So she provided much more extensive schooling for Juana and her sisters, Isabella, Catherine,
00:07:52.300and Maria than other women at that time would have received or that would have been typical for
00:07:56.520young girls in general. So we have a situation of four sisters and one brother. So we've got
00:08:04.380sort of like a little Kardashian-esque thing going on. Bunch of sisters, one brother. Like
00:08:09.960the Bronte sisters type thing as well. Like the Romanovs, Anastasia and her sisters and the one
00:08:15.880brother. I don't know. There's something very mythical to me about this setup of just like a0.96
00:08:19.840bunch of sisters and one brother. Anyway, Juan, the brother, was being groomed to take over the
00:08:23.900throne of Spain because boys always inherited things instead of girls. And that was his job.0.53
00:08:28.960So with Juan covering the role of heir to the throne, the four sisters grew up knowing they
00:08:32.680would be married off to princes or kings of other kingdoms to strengthen alliances, which was
00:08:37.580their job. They knew that they were all like cool with it. So point of clarity. So Queen Isabella,
00:08:44.460her mother ruled castile and leon and king ferdinand the father ruled aragon so these
00:08:50.320countries or these kingdoms never actually sort of amalgamated officially it's just that they all
00:08:56.700happen to be ruled by a married couple so whichever of them died first the parents their eldest child
00:09:02.680would inherit the kingdom that that parent had but not the kingdoms that the other parent had
00:09:07.440because it wasn't like a united thing if you see what i mean and even if you don't see what i mean
00:09:12.860which is fine. I didn't explain that to the best of my ability. All you need to know is that Juan
00:09:18.220was the heir to both kingdoms and then his children. So if for some reason he and all of
00:09:24.480his children all died, then the next heir to the throne would be the oldest, the oldest sister,
00:09:29.080Isabella, and then her children. So Juana being the third oldest was never expected to inherit
00:09:34.500anything, but sometimes life takes you by surprise. Juana was an excellent student and became fluent
00:09:41.180in numerous languages, including French, Latin, Castilian, and Catalan. She was also a skilled
00:09:46.820musician and was extremely knowledgeable about history, politics, and the arts, and was also
00:09:51.260skilled at hunting and riding because Isabella was making sure her children were like the most
00:09:55.580best accomplished people ever because it was a situation where the sort of Catholicism,
00:10:01.320Christianity that was going on then was sort of like, if you demonstrate that you're really good
00:10:05.540and proficient and smart and wonderful, then everyone around you assumes that's because God
00:10:10.200prefers you. So you kind of cultivate those traits. So people know that God prefers you,
00:10:15.580but also that like demonstrates that God does prefer you. So Juana was not known to be as
00:10:22.620extremely pious as her mother or her other sisters, especially Isabel. Her older sister
00:10:29.640was super, super, super pious and religious. But the four sisters were all exemplary models
00:10:36.140of the type of femininity that their mother advocated for. Well-read, talented, and just0.93
00:10:40.800about every conceivable way devoted to their faith and expected to be subservient to the men
00:10:45.500in their lives. So that was kind of, it was sort of like, this is what I'm telling you to do. But
00:10:51.460what they were witnessing was their mother being this one woman powerhouse who bulldozed her way1.00
00:10:56.280through life and was able to wield power on her own terms. So they were kind of seeing that also,
00:11:01.900even as they're being taught to be like subservient and quiet and whatever. So from what
00:11:05.520is left of Juana's writings. There are hints that she was also witty. And again, that she didn't
00:11:10.760take religion quite as seriously as the rest of her family. But really, who could? As we talked
00:11:16.780about last time, Queen Isabella had sort of a performative and violent way of proving her0.90
00:11:23.360religious devotion, e.g. the Spanish Inquisition, genocides, that sort of stuff. So there are some
00:11:32.360reports that are probably wrong but there are rumors that Isabella might have tortured Juana
00:11:36.840for not being religious enough but that's never been verified and I don't think she did. So by
00:11:42.3001496 Juana 17 years old and her family arranged her betrothal to the 18 year old guy named Philip
00:11:49.300of Flanders. Philip was known as Philip the Handsome but frankly if you google that I find
00:11:56.860that name debatable but i think the name like the translation of it could also mean philip the fair
00:12:03.060which means he had a light complexion and light eyes as well but either way he like his pedigree
00:12:10.720was just perfect for a marriage to juana his father was maximilian the first the holy roman
00:12:16.860emperor and he was from the habsburg family so the habsburgs are this dynasty of german princes
00:12:25.760who existed through many centuries of European history and I'm sure this will come up in the0.97
00:12:33.240podcast as well because this comes up in my research all the time just like goddamn Habsburgs
00:12:37.640pop up and like every person I ever researched they're always there oh they were around um
00:12:43.760last season Elizabeth Bathory they're the Habsburgs I think were her enemies there it's0.99
00:12:48.340just like they always pop up and they're always the enemies of whoever I'm researching it's just1.00
00:12:53.360like they, to the point that I feel like they are my personal nemeses. But anyway, and guess what?
00:12:59.220Philip the handsome is awful. So spoiler Habsburg villain yet again. So the connection of marrying
00:13:06.740Juana to Philip was this connection between these two wildly, like the preeminent, most powerful
00:13:13.640families in Western Europe. And coincidentally, both, both his family and Juana's families all
00:13:20.240hated the French. So this meant that the countries could kind of join up and go to war against
00:13:25.280the French. On the positive side of things, Philip wasn't like 5,000 years older than her.
00:13:35.120They were all like similarly aged. He was allegedly good looking. So okay. Juana left
00:13:42.940Castile in August 1496 to Flanders to go and be with Philip. Their wedding ceremony was held that
00:13:48.660October and the pair was apparently so physically attracted to each other upon their first meeting
00:13:54.060that Philip insisted they get married right away and not wait because he just wanted to
00:13:58.780seal the deal with her. She was really into him. She's a passionate person and she was passionate
00:14:05.120about her relationship with him. How did he feel? Spoiler, not the same. So from the beginning,
00:14:12.040the relationship was, so this passion, which at first was like that they just couldn't wait to0.83
00:14:17.540get married and have sex with each other. But that passion was not always positive or productive.
00:14:25.820Juana was completely and entirely in love with Philip. But Philip, because every man in every
00:14:31.220episode of this podcast is always the worst, was a philanderer, cheated on her basically
00:14:36.800constantly. Part of the quote unquote evidence of Juana's quote unquote madness is the way that she1.00
00:14:44.440would freak out when she found out about his infidelity. She would go into like she would0.99
00:14:48.420scream at him and like rage fits, which I don't consider madness. I consider this reasonable
00:14:53.900behavior of a really smart, really accomplished, really beautiful woman who is also really0.95
00:14:59.360sensitive, really passionate, and whose husband is treating her like garbage and who was raised0.68
00:15:03.740by Isabella the first. She wasn't going to sit around and be subservient as she was like maybe0.66
00:15:08.700taught, but she saw what Isabella did and what Isabella was like. So she's like fighting back.
00:15:12.700she's like how dare you treat me like this like i am literally a princess oh you're the worst so
00:15:17.780she was also effectively pregnant all the time juana gave birth to six children over 10 years0.57
00:15:26.760so there's a lot of like hormonal brain things happening here as well where she's pregnant all
00:15:32.060the time her husband is being awful so her behavior at this point if we're just being like
00:15:38.000is this insanity i think like uh no rational behavior she had also gone through a lot of
00:15:43.440death in a very short period of time which would also affect her emotions like on top of the whole
00:15:50.180like being pregnant for 10 years thing so between 1497 and 1500 the deaths of people in her family
00:15:57.520were so her older brother juan died um then his widow suffered a stillbirth so he was dead he had
00:16:05.580left no heir. So that meant that the heir to everything was now Juana's older sister, Isabel,
00:16:11.900but then Isabel died in childbirth and Isabel's toddler aged son also died. So suddenly her two
00:16:18.600older siblings were both dead. Their children were both dead. This meant that Juana was now
00:16:23.220unexpectedly to everybody, the eldest surviving child of Isabel and Ferdinand, and was now the
00:16:29.740heir to Castile, Leon, and Aragon, which nobody had expected, including her. So in 1502, Juana
00:16:37.980and Philip traveled back to Toledo for her to be recognized as heir to the throne. So the title
00:16:44.500for them in this time was called the Princess of Asturias. That was the title given to the person
00:16:49.600who is the heir to the throne of Castile. And later that same year, she went through something
00:16:54.520that sounds like perhaps a nervous breakdown. So how did Philip support his constantly pregnant
00:17:01.400wife through her mental health issues? He abandoned her whenever she got upset. If she started
00:17:08.320freaking out, he would just leave and have an affair with somebody else. Anytime Juana's1.00
00:17:14.180behavior got to be too much for him. So it's just like a toxic, toxic situation. And then he would
00:17:20.180also spread rumors about how his wife was like so crazy he'd be like oh my god she's always0.72
00:17:24.980screaming at me she's like throwing things like she's clearly crazy it's not like i'm awful and0.60
00:17:31.340her behavior makes sense but he's like i don't know women be crazy so this is where her reputation0.98
00:17:36.400for being juana la loca sort of kicks off so how would she deal with this on off desertion by her0.63
00:17:45.520husband and she was still like passionately in love with him like so like completely devoted to0.96
00:17:51.700him which is which made his betrayals cause even more rage for her obviously so she would deal with
00:17:58.860this um in a time and place where um in an environment where she'd been raised to be1.00
00:18:03.820you know women should be docile and subservient and you know if you're upset you should like pray1.00
00:18:10.300turned to god and that's just like not cutting it for her so she would do things like throwing1.00
00:18:16.120herself against the walls to injure herself crying herself to sleep she had big feelings she was a
00:18:22.060woman of like great passion and she just like what can you do like she was just doing the best that
00:18:27.020she could in an era before knowledge about things like postpartum issues or about how pregnancy
00:18:34.300messes with your hormones or like cognitive behavioral therapy or like antidepressants or
00:18:40.500anyway so she's just like doing the best she can and Philip is just running around like oh my god
00:18:45.440my wife is crazy so it's just sort of like a self-fulfilling thing where she is just like
00:18:51.160not doing great and he's just making it all worse in 1504 Juana's mother Isabella fell ill0.90
00:18:58.400and she had been very religious slash having some mental health stuff going on towards the end of
00:19:05.540her life as well where she like stopped eating for such a long time that that would make her0.97
00:19:09.380mental health get even worse as her health got worse Juana who like adored her mother even though1.00
00:19:16.420they used to fight all the time she became so upset that her mother was sick that she herself0.88
00:19:22.080stopped eating or sleeping and anyone who stops eating and sleeping will probably wind up behaving
00:19:27.300in some unusual slash erratic ways. And then add to that the fact that Philip again left without
00:19:34.400even saying goodbye because he was tired of how Spain was so Catholic and how they wouldn't let0.94
00:19:40.780him have sex with people all the time. So he just like peaced out back to Flanders. Juana was0.83
00:19:46.500determined to follow him, to just like scream at him and plead with him to come back to her,0.58
00:19:51.680etc and her mother from her deathbed was just like juana like no like please don't um juana
00:19:59.160was desperate to leave but her mother had her restrained and kept in town and the reason why0.90
00:20:05.000isabella even like literally on her deathbed like having her own mental health issues was so1.00
00:20:10.600determined to not let juana chase after her awful husband was because juana was super pregnant at1.00
00:20:16.820this time because remember she was constantly pregnant traveling would be dangerous for her1.00
00:20:20.140because it's like the 15th century and pregnancy was dangerous enough basically so she freaked out
00:20:27.620completely at being like restrained and separated from philip um so she continued to not eat or
00:20:33.960sleep which like on top of being pregnant and having already been pregnant lots and postpartum
00:20:39.800and everything uh she started to wander around babbling incoherently which of course she did
00:20:47.600with all that going on physically emotionally in her body like if you're a young woman and she's0.94
00:20:53.960still young at this point she's like in her early 20s who had been consistently pregnant for at this
00:20:57.860point eight years whose mother was on her deathbed like whose mother had like caused her own deathbed0.87
00:21:03.600by like starving herself to death who lived in a time when nobody understood psychology whose
00:21:08.180husband was treating her worse than garbage um she had not been eating or sleeping for a while0.89
00:21:12.860like yeah guess what like wander around babbling incoherently like do whatever you need to do so0.98
00:21:18.520after she gave birth to this child juana pleaded with her parents to let her chase after philip
00:21:25.260they forbade her from leaving again um and then juana ran away so only half dressed which i'm not0.79
00:21:31.280sure what that means in this instance because when you say half dressed you're like oh my god was she
00:21:35.280topless but i think it's like people had you know the inside under chemise and then like you know
00:21:41.760you have your like skirts and your skirts and your like lace up things so it's like when she ran away
00:21:46.580only half dressed it could mean like some of her laces weren't like tightened all the way or
00:21:49.680whatever but basically not the way that a royal person should be behaving according to customs
00:21:55.980she threw herself against the front gates of the castle because they like her parents had told the0.98
00:22:01.160guards to not let her leave she screamed um throwing herself against the front gates screaming
00:22:06.380until she exhausted herself and eventually she is brought inside to rest after presumably
00:22:10.300passing out i guess and it wasn't until a year later so like after that baby was one year old
00:22:17.300that she's finally granted permission to leave so finally she gets to go back to flanders to like
00:22:22.620god like i don't know did she think it was gonna work out like oh my god juana just like
00:22:28.320so she went back guess what philip wasn't just there like excited to see her but he was literally
00:22:34.580in the arms of one of his mistresses so with the rage-filled passion of someone who's been
00:22:39.760traveling by boats and carriages in the 15th century while dealing with like nine years worth
00:22:45.520of postpartum issues like and she also was passing through like to get there she had to go through a
00:22:51.220war zone slash people dying of the plague so yeah she had some some pent-up anger at this point so
00:23:00.160she confronted her rival with scissors don't worry well okay worry a bit she confronted rival
00:23:06.120with scissors and first cut off the rival's hair and then allegedly stabbed her rival in the face1.00
00:23:11.700with the scissors. And so at this point, her actions are maybe like a little beyond like,
00:23:16.640oh, she's a little stressed out. But at the same time, Philip had been gaslighting and toying with
00:23:21.540her for like years and years and years and years to the point that this sort of thing feels
00:23:25.240unavoidable. And also like everything I just said 30 seconds ago, like she was desperate to be with
00:23:32.060him for like a year and a half she finally gets there and he's like literally in the arms of a
00:23:36.120mistress there's like maybe you know there shouldn't have been scissors in the room so
00:23:40.620stabbing the mistress guess what didn't make philip love her anymore so she turned to local
00:23:45.560witches for love potions which is just like if you look at her mom even her sister catherine of
00:23:54.080aragon her niece mary the first like they're all like so catholic and so religious and they in
00:23:59.180their time of need would turn to stuff like I you know like praying fasting like wearing
00:24:04.340uncomfortable shirts made of rope or whatever like they were not they were not going to witches like
00:24:10.800Juana had her own point of view here but then guess what Philip found out that she had gone to1.00
00:24:15.600a witch and he was like oh my god you'll never guess what my crazy wife did my crazy wife went0.70
00:24:19.960to a witch and kept spreading awful rumors about her because he is my mortal enemy and now for a1.00
00:25:25.680Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust.
00:25:30.680Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.
00:25:38.600But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.
00:25:42.920This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.
00:25:46.100Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.
00:25:52.280This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.
00:25:59.840This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.
00:26:04.580Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on youtube.com slash the glass cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day.
00:26:15.160See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:26:55.280So in the midst of this marital crisis, Juana got the news that her mother had died.
00:27:01.260So this meant not just a whole grief cycle of like, my mother is dead.
00:27:05.440But also it meant that on top of everything she's dealing with right now,
00:27:10.080she inherited her mother's roles as Queen of Castile and León.
00:27:13.340because remember her father kept being the king of Aragon because he was still alive. It's only
00:27:18.220when both of her parents were dead that she would inherit the other bit, if you remember that
00:27:22.340confusing part. So Juana inherited her mother's titles as queen of Castile and Leon, but Philip
00:27:28.080was not into that because now his role was as her consort and he was a horrible person and didn't
00:27:33.940want to support her in her rise, but he wanted to keep her down because he's awful. And guess who0.57
00:27:39.740else is a late entry into like people who are awful is her father Ferdinand so late in the
00:27:45.260game revealing himself to be also the worst so Ferdinand and Philip started scheming ways to
00:27:50.780wrench this power away from Juana by proclaiming themselves her co-monarch so this is where we get
00:27:58.120into coin corner literally every story this season has some sort of like coin related hijinks so
00:28:03.560Ferdinand went to the mint and had coins produced that said Ferdinand and Joanna king and queen of
00:28:08.800Castile, Leon, and Aragon, hoping that would make it official that he was co-ruler alongside his
00:28:14.460daughter, like that she wasn't in charge of anything in her own rights. Philip the Handsome
00:28:19.320was like, good idea. And he minted more coins, his own coins that said, Philip and Joanna,
00:28:24.940King and Queen of Castile, Leon, and Archdukes of Austria, etc. So they're just like doing all
00:28:30.500this stuff coin related. In the meantime, Juana was doing her best to just like wake up every day1.00
00:28:37.860and like live in the world when her life is a walking nightmare. Because she is, guess what,0.96
00:28:43.360pregnant again, having more babies and just getting worse and worse. Postpartum related0.99
00:28:48.220issues, I think, kind of clearly is what's going on here. So by 1505, Juana had given birth to
00:28:53.740five children. Her oldest son, Charles, would be next in line for all of the thrones that she
00:28:59.460currently stood to inherit. Charles was in Flanders, being raised by some of the other
00:29:04.200Habsburg's relatives of Philip's. And Ferdinand was really upset about that because he wanted
00:29:09.000Charles to be raised by like Spanish people. So Ferdinand took a new wife because he figured like0.99
00:29:16.160maybe he and the new wife could have a new son and that son would become his heir instead of Juana
00:29:22.040and through her Charles. But the thing is that Ferdinand's new wife was French and France was
00:29:27.320not very popular in Spain at the time. So this just made the public, public opinion support
00:29:33.560Juana and Philip even more. And so Juana and Philip, who had been in Flanders at this time,
00:29:39.920decided to return to Castile and deal with this whole Ferdinand situation of her father being
00:29:44.140awful. But then they were shipwrecked on the English coast, like on top of her whole life.
00:29:51.000It's like now she needs to survive a shipwreck. So luckily, England, her sister Catherine of
00:29:58.860Aragon was there having just recently married Prince Henry, aka going to become Henry VIII
00:30:05.160later on. And this was, there was a whole episode of the Spanish princess where you have the whole
00:30:09.600Juana blowing into town situation, but that is a thing that happened. And so Catherine of Aragon
00:30:14.680and Henry VIII were happy to host Juana and Philip at Windsor Castle. So they had some family
00:30:20.020togetherness. And then, I mean, I hope she had a nice time. I hope, I hope she had a nice time
00:30:26.340sometimes um and then in january 1506 juana and philip left england so upon their return castile
00:30:34.180was on the brink of civil war due to it's like the whole thing that happened when isabel was
00:30:38.620taking over before with her useless half-brother etc where there's like some people like some
00:30:43.220factions were supporting ferdinand and others were supporting juana philip but the nobles all
00:30:49.640deserted ferdinand in order to support the younger couple so they're the two factions both
00:30:54.200a cool young faction, supported Juana and Philip. And so Ferdinand was like, OK, I see the writings
00:30:59.220on the wall. But also he had a new scheme up his sleeve. And so he invited Philip for a secret
00:31:03.840meeting to a man meeting. At this man meeting, Ferdinand agreed to turn control of the government
00:31:09.260of Castile over to his children and would himself return to Aragon. Because remember, the kingdoms
00:31:15.220aren't joined. There's just the two different things. But in the fine print of what this
00:31:20.740agreement set was he and Philip agreed to a clause that said because of Juana's quote-unquote
00:31:27.940illness, which is her alleged insanity, she would be incapable to rule, which meant that she would
00:31:35.400be excluded from all decision-making and also would be kept confined in a castle without any
00:31:39.880chance of escape. So Ferdinand went back to Aragon, leaving Philip the handsome in charge of
00:31:45.220Castile and Juana, a prisoner, just like her grandmother, had been Ferdinand the worst.
00:31:52.720Ugh, Ferdinand. Like, he was married to Isabella, so you'd think he'd be like,
00:31:57.220women can be in charge of stuff, but not when it's his daughter, apparently. Anyway, so then,
00:32:01.940one year later, Philip the Handsome suddenly died of typhoid fever, which was going around.
00:32:08.380That was, typhoid fever was going around, and that is his official cause of death, but everyone
00:32:13.800basically agreed that he'd probably been poisoned by Ferdinand and we will never know the truth but
00:32:19.360I wouldn't be surprised if Ferdinand had poisoned him because that's convenient timing so whatever0.65
00:32:24.460the cause Juana was now a widow but guess what pregnant widow because she is constantly pregnant1.00
00:32:30.420in this whole story and when she found out that her her husband who she had been so passionate0.79
00:32:36.920about her whole this whole time was dead um she apparently displayed more quote-unquote mad
00:32:43.760behavior so just to recap before getting into what she did that people recorded as being evidence of0.99
00:32:50.420her madness so Juana had been consistently pregnant for by now nine years she'd had six
00:32:57.820children her mother had just died of self-inflicted starvation two of her siblings had recently like
00:33:03.940not a lot of time has passed, died at very young ages, her brother and her sister.
00:33:08.160She suddenly, surprise, inherited these kingdoms. She'd just been imprisoned by her awful father
00:33:14.860and her terrible husband slash abuser slash codependent partner had just unexpectedly died,0.93
00:33:21.560potentially murdered by her father. So there's a lot of hormones and chemicals coursing through
00:33:26.620her body. Add to that the fact that Juana had always been a very emotional sort of person,0.89
00:33:31.940And 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. Rumor had it that she was, um, doing sort of like a psycho slash weekend at Brittany's type scenario with Philip's corpse, um, sleeping next to it, eating dinner with it at the table, talking to it like a person.
00:33:58.360that was the rumor but um that's not what actually happened so she's like she's not at that level yet
00:34:05.200what did happen is that she wanted to keep philip's coffin nearby so she had the coffin with
00:34:10.920his body and it kept in a church near the palace where she lived so she could pay her respects
00:34:14.500daily when she traveled she had the coffin brought along with her which is like not what everyone
00:34:20.340would do but not insane so during all of this ferdinand saw a way to steal his daughter's
00:34:27.340powers from her. By continuing to allege she was insane and unfit to rule, he was able to appoint
00:34:32.600himself her guardian. So now we're into like a Britney Spears conservator type scenario with a
00:34:39.420horrible father also. So he was able to put himself in charge as an administrator of the country.
00:34:45.880Juana, at this point, had just given birth to her sixth and final child and was ready to get
00:34:51.100back in the game but on top of literally everything else going on guess what the plague
00:34:57.560had just rolled into castile and people were dying all over the place like literally bubonic plague
00:35:03.120was back again um so ferdinand like just side note so i have these bonus episodes i've been
00:35:11.140putting out recently um pandemic special episodes just telling sort of like weird and interesting
00:35:15.740stories about people and things that happened during past pandemics in world history and what
00:35:21.940I find interesting is that even in a time well like centuries before the whole thing about like
00:35:28.700hand washing and like germ theory was developed like people just kind of knew like if there was
00:35:32.900a place that had plague in it you just knew to like stay away from it so the plague was in Castile
00:35:38.820that is where she was. Ferdinand was back in Aragon and he was like why don't I just wait for
00:35:43.480plague to just like do its thing and then it can return when it's safe again so he just kind of
00:35:49.860sat around and waited for castile to sort of implode so he could swoop in and take over juana
00:35:54.660in the midst of this plague kept trying to get enough powerful allies and money to regain the0.98
00:35:59.040throne but she couldn't muster enough support her asshole father then swanned into town in 15070.95
00:36:05.460coincidentally at the same time that the plague had sort of like plateaued and stopped being quite0.97
00:36:11.920so much of an issue and so he just happened to come back in town when the plague was already
00:36:16.040better and everyone conflated the two things to be like oh my god like he came back the plague
00:36:21.060went away that must mean he is who the king is supposed to be and so then he used all his decades
00:36:27.120worth of slimy gross awful experience to metaphorically stomp all over juana and steal the
00:36:32.980throne of castile for himself so again remember he had always been the king of aragon but it was
00:36:38.020Isabella, who had been the monarch of Castile. So Juana refused to sign the paperwork that
00:36:43.100removed her royal powers and issued an official statement saying, basically, this is some0.99
00:36:47.720bullshit. But Ferdinand was way more powerful than her. He had all these allies. And she0.99
00:36:54.460became, again, a queen in name only. So on top of making all the ruling decisions, Ferdinand
00:37:00.060also had all of Juana's loyal servants fired, replacing them with a smaller staff of people
00:37:05.420loyal to just him and ordered her to be confined to the Royal Monastery slash Convent of Santa
00:37:11.680Clara and Torsa Diaz Castile. So all of her children, she had six children, remember,
00:37:17.240were left in Flanders. So she was off in this convent. Her six children were left in Flanders
00:37:22.520to be raised by Philip's sister, Margaret of Austria, except for one. So her youngest daughter,
00:37:28.080whose name was Catherine, Juan refused to be parted from baby Catherine. And so her young
00:37:32.980daughter remained to be raised in the convent which is like a weird history repeating thing
00:37:37.440because that's not unlike how juana's mother isabella had been raised in a convent with her
00:37:41.580allegedly insane mother so just okay it's a good news for juana was that her father's second
00:37:48.860marriage had failed to produce remember he married the french person so his second marriage where he
00:37:53.400had hoped to have a new son who could replace her the second marriage had failed to produce a new
00:37:58.140heir who would supplant her in the line of succession. So the position of heir to the
00:38:03.300throne of Castile and Aragon when Ferdinand died would be, because Juana was officially insane,0.57
00:38:09.940would be her oldest son, Charles, who's back in Flanders. But so while Charles was back in
00:38:15.080Flanders being raised to be her heir by the Habsburgs, Juana's second son, whose name was
00:38:20.120Ferdinand, had been born and raised in Castile because he was the one who was born when she was
00:38:25.180like trapped there and not allowed to leave so Ferdinand her dad preferred baby Ferdinand to be
00:38:31.480his heir because they were he was closer to him and he knew him better and also because he wasn't
00:38:36.660being off raised by Habsburgs in Flanders Ferdinand the king briefly even named baby Ferdinand
00:38:43.580as his heir in his will but um some clever courtier somebody who is allied with Juana's son
00:38:51.100I've got him to switch it back to say Charles is the heir so anyway Ferdinand finally died0.60
00:38:56.820good goddamn riddance and Charles was back in Flanders and not able to take over right away0.79
00:39:03.340so again Juana is just trapped in this monastery she completely powerless so who's going to take0.98
00:39:10.040over Ferdinand is dead Charles is back in Flanders can't get there so Ferdinand's illegitimate son
00:39:14.720Alonso de Aragon was put in charge of Aragon while an archbishop was put in charge of Castile
00:39:20.280and Leon as regent in Juana's place. So just so we're all keeping track, Juana was very much
00:39:26.440alive, being kept trapped in a castle slash monastery due to her alleged madness. She could
00:39:33.500have taken overruling both kingdoms upon her father's death, but she was not allowed to. So
00:39:39.900in 1517, her son Charles, who is now 17 years old, arrived in Asturias to take on his role as king.
00:39:47.840He and his sister Eleanor, so Juana's one of her other daughters, met with their mother for the first time in, I'm going to guess, 15 years.
00:39:56.900They acquired from her permission that Charles would be officially her co-ruler because she was allegedly insane, but she's still technically there.
00:40:06.340But she agreed that he could be the co-ruler with her of Castile, Leon and Aragon.
00:40:10.140And at this point, he could have released her and have her be his true co-monarch, but he did not do that. But her daughter, Eleanor, who I like the sounds of, arranged things in the castle slash prison to make it more comfortable and homey for Juana's comfort. So good job, Eleanor. Daughters were good people, I think.
00:40:32.580so charles was not a popular king in spain because of his habsburg roots and the fact that he had
00:40:40.160been raised in flanders um there was a revolt in 1520 against him during which rebel leaders
00:40:47.040turned to juana for support to remove him from the throne they were saying so it's again it's
00:40:51.000like they don't like him so like well if we get rid of him like who can we support so it's not
00:40:54.860like they wanted her to be queen it's just they wanted him to not be king so since she was
00:40:59.260technically still the queen, if she gave them her written approval, the rebels would win and
00:41:03.040Charles would be deposed. So Charles and a delegation of his own supporters to his mom
00:41:08.020to try and get to her first to have her put in writing that she didn't approve of the rebels.
00:41:12.560And Juana was like, not sure what I'm going to do. Looks like I have all of the power now.
00:41:19.520And she sort of like took so long to agree which side she's going to support that the rebels were
00:41:25.880able to storm into town and officially request her support. Eventually, she decided against
00:41:31.120signing the document. So she supported her son's reign and in an attempt to bring peace to the
00:41:37.060land. So she actually got to do something significant there. Meanwhile, she was showing
00:41:44.560more signs of mental instability, which is like, of course she did, if this is like the way that
00:41:50.960she's been treated what life has done to her so far so she grew paranoid that some of the nuns
00:41:57.180who were caring for her were trying to kill her which frankly was entirely possible people were
00:42:01.760being poisoned all over the place and there's probably lots of people who wanted to kill her
00:42:05.640apparently as her condition like her mental health deteriorated she required um assistance with
00:42:13.220most parts of her day including eating bathing changing her clothes and speaking and sleeping
00:42:18.640Her son, Charles, instructed her caretakers not to let her see or speak to anyone.
00:42:23.660So I don't know if that's because he didn't want her to be scheming or if he didn't want
00:42:27.520anyone to see what condition she was in or what.
00:42:30.220But so she was completely isolated, not able to talk to anyone.
00:42:34.000Some historians, Rain, suggested maybe she might have had bipolar disorder.
00:42:39.500She might have had a severe case of depression.
00:42:41.760She might have had schizophrenia, maybe comorbidity, all of those things all at the same time.
00:42:46.620personally i think all those things are entirely possible but like her grandmother i think a lot
00:42:52.580of this can be traced back to the hormone fluctuations of six pregnancies combined with
00:42:56.600undiagnosed and untreated postpartum disorder combined with just what her personality was
00:43:01.520like where she just felt things so deeply combined with her like her ongoing sort of issues with
00:43:06.760eating not eating and not sleeping the effect of phillips toxic awful abuse on her the way that
00:43:13.520father kept gaslighting her that she was crazy if that's all happening to you and you start
00:43:18.740having symptoms like is it madness if she just sort of like shuts down emotionally psychologically
00:43:25.080and becomes sort of catatonic or is it and or is it sort of like a self-fulfilling cycle of like
00:43:31.680people claim she's mad and treat her like she's mad and eventually she just like becomes mad she
00:43:36.640just leans into it. So the story does not have a happy ending, as one might, by this point,
00:43:43.260expect. So Juan of Castile passed away age 75 on April 12th, 1555, having spent 46 years in
00:43:52.300captivity. 46 years. Her tomb is in the Royal Chapel of Granada alongside her parents, which
00:43:58.660sucks because they were awful to her, but she loved them, I guess. She's also next to Philip,
00:44:03.900which is just like, oh, she loved him, I guess. And she's also buried next to her older sister
00:44:10.400Isabel's young son, Miguel. So she herself is remembered as Juana La Loca, the Mad Queen,
00:44:17.400but her legacy, like to history, is through her six children. So check it out. So her son Charles
00:44:24.220became Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Her son Ferdinand succeeded Charles as
00:44:30.980Holy Roman Emperor. Her daughter Eleanor served as Queen of Portugal and Queen of France. Her
00:44:36.200daughter Elizabeth was Queen of Denmark. Her daughter Maria was Queen of Hungary. And her
00:44:41.300youngest daughter Catherine, who had lived for a decade with Juana in captivity, became Queen of
00:44:46.400Portugal. Through these six monarchs, the Habsburg dynasty would continue through to the basically
00:44:53.680beginning of the 19th century, being super powerful all over Europe. And I want to just
00:44:58.740shout out my sources for this. So there's a really good book called Sister Queens by Julia Fox,
00:45:05.740which talks about Juana and also her sister, Catherine of Aragon, and just sort of how
00:45:13.140the parallels in their stories, how their mother had been so successful, how they both had shitty0.73
00:45:19.820husbands who treated them badly, etc. Super recommend that book. So it's technically called0.89
00:45:26.160Sister Queens, The Noble Tragic Lives of Catherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile.
00:45:30.780Another book that I consulted for research is called Juana I, Legitimacy and Conflict in 16th
00:45:36.260Century Castile by Gillian B. Fleming. There's also a movie that's called Juana La Loca,
00:45:43.280or the English title of it is Mad Love. I think it's available streaming somewhere. It's a Spanish
00:45:48.960language movie that just kind of gets into really the passionate relationship between her and her
00:45:54.240horrible husband and what that was all like. And now it is time to score this woman. So we have
00:46:02.020four categories with which we measure the women who we talk about on this podcast. Not that any0.96
00:46:07.840of them are better or worse than others, but just to kind of see where they fit on a scale measuring
00:46:12.020four very specific things. The first thing we're measuring is scandalousness. So that's kind of
00:46:17.680like well scandaliciousness just like how juicy and gossipy is her story and frankly even though1.00
00:46:25.660Juana herself she wasn't like running around murdering people she wasn't having lots of
00:46:30.140affairs or anything but just like her and Philip's relationship and like you know running out0.99
00:46:35.280throwing herself against the doors half-dressed like it's it's it's like a telenovela like the0.60
00:46:40.580scandaliciousness it's not like I'm gonna give her a six for scandaliciousness because it's just
00:46:45.600like it's entirely based on her relationship with Philip it's just I mean the the cutting off the
00:46:51.820hair and the stabbing oh I forgot the stabbing the face with the scissors let's give her a seven0.89
00:46:55.400seven for scandalousness um the next one is scheminess and I have to say her scheminess1.00
00:47:02.020maybe she was wonderful at scheminess like maybe she came up with good schemes but just everybody1.00
00:47:06.080around her it was just a bad time and place for her there's a part where she's trying to gain
00:47:10.360support to take over but then her father came in he took over instead like she was scheming
00:47:14.940it just wasn't effective but i guess that means it wasn't as good of scheminess i'm going to give
00:47:20.080her four a four for scheminess because she tried her significance so personally her significance
00:47:27.760um is less so than that of her children and her children and the whole like through her the the0.62
00:47:35.300dynasty that they founded does become pretty i'm going to give her an eight for significance because
00:47:41.740through her children like she her genealogy became very significant later on and there's
00:47:48.160also that part where she stopped all of spain from crumbling when she decided to support her son
00:47:54.480instead of siding with the rebels so that was you know what she deserves more points i'm gonna give
00:47:58.580her a nine for significance the sexism bonus is the last the fourth category where depending on0.99
00:48:05.440how how much did her gender affect the way that she was treated and how her life turned out and0.91
00:48:10.220this is like a full-on 10 like if i could give her more than 10 i would i want to give her like
00:48:13.860a 12 i want to give her like a 17 for sexism because she was treated so horribly by so many
00:48:21.500people by everyone she was set aside like even though like some like every other woman who've1.00
00:48:26.320looked at this season who was uh a monarch and should have inherited something like she did not1.00
00:48:31.400have supporters um she if she was a man like she would just become the king and that's it none of0.99
00:48:35.840would have happened so that's a total 10 so let's just add this up so 17 is that right wait so she
00:48:41.720gets 30 which makes me glad because like this is just uh like it's an artificially contracted scale
00:48:48.780but i like i think with her we really see the balance of the four things like she's lots of
00:48:54.660significance the sexism bonus her scheminess is low but she still bumps up there so like1.00
00:48:59.360she's 30 points like she's tied for second place like the top ever um on the scandalous scale is1.00
00:49:06.720agrippina the younger has a 31 but empress matilda has a 30 juana also has a 30 her mother just is a1.00
00:49:13.82027 so even though her mother was more significant potentially um she didn't have the scandalousness
00:49:19.600elements or the sexism elements anyway and i think juana's story does sort of mirror that of empress
00:49:26.220Matilda in some ways as well, where it's just like you. She was the woman who technically should have
00:49:31.700inherited and just like a lot of men worked for a lot of years to make it so that she would not
00:49:37.000inherit. So that's the story of Juana I of Castile, aka Juana La Loca. So a bunch of different things
00:49:46.080to tell you, just like reminders. So this podcast was based on an essay I wrote a year or two ago
00:49:52.320about juana where i was looking at her and also her sister catherine aragon her mother isabella
00:49:58.880and then her grandmother isabel because and then mary the first as well just kind of like seeing
00:50:03.540the commonalities and the stories of all these women from the spanish royal family and how they
00:50:07.880all were so strong-willed and so stubborn and how they just were treated by i don't know how they
00:50:15.820all sort of ended like all of their lives ended with this sort of like quote-unquote instability
00:50:20.780insanity which is really just like i don't know they just a lot of commonalities between the
00:50:25.700different women so if you want to look at this essay and other ones i wrote about other women
00:50:28.720in history you can find that at ann foster writer.com um i have a patreon which is patreon.com
00:50:35.540slash ann foster writer and that's where you can learn about what i'm working on what i'm
00:50:41.420researching just depending on the level at which you support me um also there are some0.94
00:50:47.440patron only mini episodes which i'm posting there so those are called so this asshole
00:50:52.480and they're episodes about some of the gross awful men encountered in some of these stories i feel
00:50:57.280like philip the handsome is very much due for me to do an episode about him just putting him on
00:51:01.760blast anyway so it's patreon.com and foster writer so i'm also on instagram at vulgar history pod on
00:51:07.680twitter at vulgar history i've got a little tea spring store as well if you want to support the
00:51:12.400show through the purchase of some of my hilarious feminist merchandise there's bags and mugs and
00:51:18.020t-shirts and that's all at teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history and then also if you
00:51:27.340feel like sending me a message you can at vulgarhistorypod at gmail.com lately i'm very
00:51:35.620into bookshop.org, which is an online bookshop that supports local bookstores near you,
00:51:46.900I have a list up there. So Vulgar History Recommends. So I'm putting a list up there of
00:51:53.300the books that I've used for research for a different podcast episodes, other historical
00:51:57.080books that I really enjoy that I find really interesting. So for this one, like the Sister
00:52:01.540Queens is up there if you want to read more about Juana and Catherine of Aragon and kind of their
00:52:05.740whole situation. Other books I have there, you know, just feminist history and other history
00:52:10.840books that I recommend. So you can find that the link will be in the show notes, but also it's at
00:52:14.120bookshop.org slash lists slash vulgar history recommends. And there's dashes in between all
00:52:20.980of those things, but all those, everything I just mentioned, they're all linked to each other. So
00:52:25.060you can pretty easily, if you find one thing, you'll find all the other things. And I mentioned
00:52:30.520midway through this podcast too that i've been recording these other mini episodes that are not
00:52:35.860patreon only those are available for everybody the pandemic super specials so just talking about
00:52:40.640some interesting pandemic related stories from different time periods so you can find those
00:52:44.700if you're subscribed to this podcast wherever you're subscribed to this podcast and i guess
00:52:49.240that's everything um next week i think is going to be the season finale for the season about women
00:52:56.680leaders in history and the men who whined about it so stay tuned for that um be well stay safe
00:53:04.100and i'll talk to you all next time vulgar history is researched written and hosted by ann foster
00:53:10.100that's me the editor is christina lumagi theme music is by the severn duo the vulgar history
00:53:17.060show image is by deborah wong transcripts are written by avilene malik find transcripts of
00:53:26.680Before you knew what a stock was, you traded snacks, cards, turns.
00:53:34.720That instinct to trade didn't disappear.