00:00:00.000Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is
00:00:15.480Anne Foster, and today we're going to be revisiting a classic episode. March is Women's
00:00:20.940History Month. And I think it's, you know, I'm always here for women's rights, women's wrongs,1.00
00:00:25.680the go girl, yes stories, but also the stories that are kind of like, oh God, what? And today
00:00:31.420is kind of like an, oh God, what type saga, which, you know, when we're talking about women in
00:00:37.120history, sometimes we talk about like people who overcame great odds, people who succeeded despite
00:00:43.800so many things being stacked against them. But there are also stories in women's history when
00:00:48.300you look at it of people who could not overcome those odds, where the situation was just set up
00:00:53.600for them to fail and people like today's heroine juana of castile she fought so hard um but just
00:01:00.720so much was against her and i think it's important to remember that that you know it can be easy to
00:01:05.660when you're thinking about women's history think about like all these like the people who get you
00:01:10.300know like the fridge magnets or like the t-shirts about the like you know weird the witches they0.99
00:01:14.820couldn't kill or whatever it's like yeah but also a lot of women have had shitty experiences due to
00:01:20.880the patriarchy and all of the shitty things that are in the world still I don't want to be like
00:01:27.300oh today's episode's a bummer but it's like there's a lot of melodrama in this episode it's
00:01:31.960like telenovela like the way the high key way that people are living like last week we were
00:01:36.820talking about Isabella of Castile and there's a lot of murder there was a coup parade just a lot
00:01:43.560of high drama and this week we're talking about Isabella's one of her daughters Juana of Castile
00:01:48.640And this is just like truly soap opera level, just like, it's the sort of episode that like, just looking back on my notes about this again, I was just like, oh my God, like, oh my, like, it's a lot of like Harmon, my pills vibes, just every twist and turn in this.
00:02:04.200and Juana just she was in it she was like a passionate person and I respect that so much
00:02:09.320and you know what I don't know it's Women's History Month so like happy Women's History Month
00:02:14.560but also just like I don't know like it's Women's History Month and this is the sort of stuff that a
00:02:20.660lot of women in history have dealt with and are still dealing with and I think it's good to have
00:02:25.260like chat about it every now and then and just share our exasperation sometimes I do think that
00:02:32.260this is an episode. The twists and turns, I think, make it enjoyable, even as the story is
00:02:38.300unrelentingly not great for our heroine, but she never gave up. And so this is the saga
00:02:46.600of Juana of Castile. Hello, my name is Anne Foster, and this is the Vulgar History Podcast.
00:02:55.580This is a feminist women's history comedy podcast. And we're in season two right now,
00:03:00.940on the season two theme is and continues to be women leaders in history and the men who whined
00:03:06.240about it and in looking at which women to feature this season lots of considerations and i caught
00:03:15.340myself making the um optimistic and misguided effort of seeing this as some sort of thing where
00:03:24.380it's like you know things were kind of shitty like they weren't you know cleopatra agrippina
00:03:29.060like they face some blowback matilda didn't get to be queen and then look at how everything turned0.99
00:03:35.060out great but that's not how this works because there's still lots of women leaders now there's
00:03:39.580still lots of men whining about them there's still way more opportunities for men to be leaders of0.99
00:03:46.720basically any anything any industries or whatever and the women even that being said like the women
00:03:52.240who are looking at this this season are entirely women who were born into their leadership roles
00:03:58.300So it's like they did cool things, but it wasn't just like people looked around to say like, hey, her, she's great.0.94
00:04:04.620Let's make her be in charge of whatever.
00:04:06.140It's like, well, you know, there's not any dudes on the family tree.1.00
00:04:10.420So I guess this woman has to take over.0.99
00:04:12.480And then even someone who we're not covering in the season, like Elizabeth I, she took over and did a very successful job of being queen for decades and decades.
00:04:23.920Even Queen Victoria, like people like that, it's, they did, 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.0.99
00:04:46.700It's like, no, they just kind of got in there because the family tree meant there was like 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.
00:05:00.580I mean I think I think now recording this in 2020 there's more women in leadership positions than
00:05:09.700there have been ever before question mark but it's still way more men in charge of way more
00:05:16.920stuff so all of that being said this season isn't going to wrap up with some sort of like
00:05:20.740happy ending of like yay and then this woman was great and then it's great for women ever since0.95
00:05:26.060this is just kind of like oh this bullshit has been going on forever it continues to go on0.92
00:05:30.160The modernity, modernity of some of these stories, it's 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.0.99
00:05:44.800And it was just a lot of bullshit. But there's some stories here that I think are worth sharing and worth elevating. And today we are looking at the daughter of last week's subject.
00:05:55.620So last week we looked at the very complex life and legacy of Isabella the First.
00:06:01.480And this week we are looking at the woman who would become her heir, Juana the First of Castile.
00:06:08.280So even within that, so it's like Isabella the First was a very effective leader.
00:06:16.760She was a very, in terms of what her goals were, she was successful.
00:06:21.960People were okay with her being in charge.
00:06:24.220She was really, um, the fact that she was a woman, like after she took over,0.79
00:06:29.520well, and especially she had a husband with her who sort of made people less scared about having
00:06:33.500a woman in charge. But this is like case study of how she did well for herself as the queen.
00:06:40.120And then her daughter, Juana, did not. So it's kind of like Isabella broke through like with
00:06:47.140a little, like little tiny hammer. It's like getting rid of like a little tiny piece of,
00:06:52.440of the glass ceiling, but it's still at 10 million percent still there. So just to orient
00:06:57.240everybody, us all, to remind us all of what the world we're entering into here, the history of
00:07:03.460Spain. So Juana of Castile was the daughter of Isabella I. She's also the older sister of
00:07:10.140Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife, which makes Juana the aunt of Queen Mary I
00:07:17.100of England. So, and isn't it interesting how each of these women, and I'm going to include also
00:07:23.520Juana's grandmother, Isabel of Portugal, who was the woman who people said was insane. And then
00:07:30.580she went insane. She lived in the ghost castle. So each of these women, Isabel, Isabella, Catherine,
00:07:36.220Juana, and Mary are all to varying extents, remembered for being very passionate and
00:07:42.100stubborn as well as for being allegedly insane. And they're also all women with a larger amount0.95
00:07:47.580of power than usual for the era, which meant that they were seen as threats and or pawns by the1.00
00:07:52.700ambitious men who surrounded them. So isn't it interesting that they were so often described as
00:07:57.900being hysterical and insane when that's just sort of the main argument men had to try and
00:08:04.720get them out of the way so they could do the man things they wanted to do.
00:08:07.880So, Juana. So she is 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.0.73
00:08:26.860And I think when we look through what happened to her, the ways she behaved that some people
00:08:31.800felt demonstrate insanity, actually, to me, I think seem like reasonable reactions to
00:08:56.860Anyway, 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 complexion people are often used.
00:09:13.900So Juana was a moody child who liked to spend time alone, especially reading books.
00:09:19.420Her mother, Isabella, who hadn't herself been super well educated for the first part of her life,
00:09:24.500because if you listen to last week's podcast, Isabella grew up in a ghost castle. So she
00:09:29.640provided much more extensive schooling for Juana and her sisters, Isabella, Catherine,
00:09:34.480and Maria than other women at that time would have received or that would have been typical
00:09:38.260for young girls in general. So we have a situation of four sisters and one brother. So we've got
00:09:46.400sort of like a little Kardashian-esque thing going on. Bunch of sisters, one brother. Like
00:09:51.980the Bronte sisters type thing as well. Like the Romanovs, Anastasia and her sisters and the one
00:09:57.900brother. I don't know. There's something very mythical to me about this setup of just like a0.96
00:10:01.860bunch of sisters and one brother. Anyway, Juan, the brother, was being groomed to take over the
00:10:05.940throne of spain because boys always inherited things instead of girls and that was his job so
00:10:11.080with juan covering the role of heir to the throne the four sisters grew up knowing they would be
00:10:14.960married off to princes or kings of other kingdoms to strengthen alliances which was their job they
00:10:20.680knew that they were all like cool with it so point of clarity so queen isabella her mother ruled
00:10:27.660castile and leon and king ferdinand the father ruled aragon so these countries or these kingdoms
00:10:33.760never actually sort of amalgamated officially. It's just that they all happened to be ruled by
00:10:39.840a married couple. So whichever of them died first, the parents, their eldest child would inherit the
00:10:45.640kingdom that that parent had, but not the kingdoms that the other parent had, because it wasn't like
00:10:50.240a united thing, if you see what I mean. And even if you don't see what I mean, which is fine,
00:10:55.960I didn't explain that to the best of my ability. All you need to know is that Juan was the heir to
00:11:01.080both kingdoms and then his children so if for some reason he and all of his children all died
00:11:07.700then the next heir to the throne would be the oldest the oldest sister Isabella and then her
00:11:12.560children so Juana being the third oldest was never expected to inherit anything but sometimes life
00:11:18.140takes you by surprise Juana was an excellent student and became fluent in numerous languages
00:11:24.200including French, Latin, Castilian and Catalan she was also a skilled musician and was extremely
00:11:30.500knowledgeable about history, politics, and the arts, and was also skilled at hunting and riding
00:11:34.480because Isabella was making sure her children were like the most best accomplished people ever
00:11:39.060because it was a situation where the sort of Catholicism, Christianity that was going on then
00:11:44.860was sort of like, if you demonstrate that you're really good and proficient and smart and wonderful,
00:11:49.640then everyone around you assumes that's because God prefers you. So you kind of cultivate those
00:11:54.360traits. So people know that God prefers you, but also that like demonstrates that God does prefer
00:12:00.140you so juana was also was not known to be as extremely pious as her mother or her other
00:12:08.940sisters especially isabel her older sister was super super super pious and religious um but uh
00:12:15.960the four sisters were all exemplary models of the type of femininity that their mother advocated for
00:12:21.240well-read talented in just about every conceivable way devoted to their faith and expected to be
00:12:26.400subservient to the men in their lives. So that was kind of, it was sort of like, this is what
00:12:32.220I'm telling you to do. But what they were witnessing was their mother being this one
00:12:36.440woman powerhouse who bulldozed her way through life and was able to wield power on her own1.00
00:12:41.580terms. So they were kind of seeing that also, even as they're being taught to be like subservient
00:12:45.680and quiet and whatever. So from what is left of Juana's writings, there are hints that she was
00:12:50.500also witty. And again, that she didn't take religion quite as seriously as the rest of her
00:12:55.300family. But really, who could? As we talked about last time, Queen Isabella had sort of a
00:13:01.360performative and violent way of proving her religious devotion, e.g. the Spanish Inquisition,
00:13:10.020genocides, that sort of stuff. So there are some reports that are probably wrong,
00:13:16.400but there are rumors that Isabella might have tortured Juana for not being religious enough,
00:13:20.200But that's never been verified. And I don't think she did. So 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. But I think the name like the translation of it could also mean Philip the Fair, which means he had light complexion and light eyes as well.
00:13:50.200But either way, he, like his pedigree was just perfect for a marriage to Juana.
00:13:55.820His father was Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and he was from the Habsburg family.
00:14:01.680So the Habsburgs are this dynasty of German princes who existed through many centuries of European history.
00:14:13.520And I'm sure this will come up in the podcast as well, because this comes up in my research all the time.0.51
00:14:17.620just like goddamn Habsburgs pop up and like every person I ever researched they're always there oh0.94
00:14:24.680they were around um last season Elizabeth Bathory they're the Habsburgs I think were her enemies0.97
00:14:30.060there it's just like they always pop up and they're always the enemies of whoever I'm researching1.00
00:14:34.680it's just like they to the point that I feel like they are my personal nemeses but anyway and guess
00:14:41.100what, Philip the Handsome is awful. So spoiler Habsburg villain yet again. So the connection
00:14:47.620of marrying Juana to Philip was this connection between these two wildly, like the preeminent,
00:14:54.420most powerful families in Western Europe. And coincidentally, both his family and Juana's
00:15:01.580families all hated the French. So this meant that the countries could kind of join up and go to war
00:15:06.900against the French. Um, on the positive side of things, um, Philip wasn't like 5,000 years older
00:15:16.420than her. They were all like similarly aged. He was allegedly good looking. So, okay. Juana left
00:15:24.960Castile in August, 1496 to Flanders to go and be with Philip. Their wedding ceremony was held that
00:15:30.680October and the pair was apparently so physically attracted to each other upon their first meeting
00:15:36.080that Philip insisted they get married right away and not wait because he just wanted to
00:15:40.800seal the deal with her. She was really into him. She's a passionate person and she was passionate
00:15:47.140about her relationship with him. How did he feel? Spoiler, not the same. So from the beginning,
00:15:53.860the relationship was, so this passion, which at first was like that they just couldn't wait to0.83
00:15:59.560get married and have sex with each other. But that passion was not always positive or productive.
00:16:07.840Juana was completely and entirely in love with Philip. But Philip, because every man in every
00:16:13.240episode of this podcast is always the worst, was a philanderer, cheated on her basically
00:16:18.820constantly. Part of the quote unquote evidence of Juana's quote unquote madness is the way that she1.00
00:16:26.460would freak out when she found out about his infidelity. She would go into like she would0.99
00:16:30.440scream at him and like rage fits, which I don't consider madness. I consider this reasonable
00:16:35.920behavior of a really smart, really accomplished, really beautiful woman who is also really0.95
00:16:41.380sensitive, really passionate, and whose husband is treating her like garbage and who was raised0.68
00:16:45.760by Isabella the first. She wasn't going to sit around and be subservient as she was like maybe0.66
00:16:50.720taught, but she saw what Isabella did and what Isabella was like. So she's like fighting back.
00:16:54.720she's like how dare you treat me like this like I am literally a princess oh you're the worst so
00:16:59.800she was also effectively pregnant all the time Juana gave birth to six children over 10 years
00:17:08.720so there's a lot of like hormonal brain things happening here as well where she's pregnant all
00:17:14.080the time her husband is being awful so her behavior at this point if we're just being like
00:17:20.020is this insanity? I think like, no, rational behavior. She had also gone through a lot of
00:17:25.460death in a very short period of time, which would also affect her emotions, like on top of the whole
00:17:32.200like being pregnant for 10 years thing. So between 1497 and 1500, the deaths of people in her family
00:17:39.540were, so her older brother Juan died. Then his widow suffered a stillbirth. So he was dead.
00:17:47.240he had left no heir. So that meant that the heir to everything was now Juana's older sister,
00:17:53.120Isabel. But then Isabel died in childbirth. And Isabel's toddler aged son also died. So suddenly
00:17:59.960her two older siblings were both dead, their children were both dead. This meant that Juana0.90
00:18:04.480was now unexpectedly to everybody, the eldest surviving child of Isabel and Ferdinand, and was
00:18:11.160now the heir to Castile, Leon, and Aragon, which nobody had expected, including her. So in 1502,
00:18:19.760Juana and Philip traveled back to Toledo for her to be recognized as heir to the throne.
00:18:25.540So the title for them in this time was called the Princess of Asturias. That was the title given to
00:18:31.260the person who is the heir to the throne of Castile. And later that same year, she went
00:18:36.160through something that sounds like perhaps a nervous breakdown. So how did Philip support
00:18:42.140his constantly pregnant wife through her mental health issues? He abandoned her whenever she got
00:18:48.640upset. If she started freaking out, he would just leave and have an affair with somebody else.
00:18:55.340Anytime Juana's behavior got to be too much for him. So it's just like a toxic, toxic situation.
00:19:01.080and then he would also spread rumors about how his wife was like so crazy he'd be like oh my god
00:19:06.640she's always screaming at me she's like throwing things like she's clearly crazy it's not like i'm0.91
00:19:11.860awful and her behavior makes sense but he's like i don't know women be crazy so this is where her
00:19:18.000reputation for being juana la loca sort of kicks off so how would she deal with this on off0.94
00:19:26.380desertion by her husband and she was still like passionately in love with him like so like0.99
00:19:32.020completely devoted to him which is which made his betrayals cause even more rage for her
00:19:38.860obviously so she would deal with this um in a time and place where um in an environment where1.00
00:19:44.660she'd been raised to be you know women should be docile and subservient and you know if you're1.00
00:19:51.180upset, you should like pray, turn to God. And that's just like not cutting it for her. So she0.97
00:19:56.500would do things like throwing herself against the walls to injure herself, crying herself to sleep.
00:20:02.280She had big feelings. She was a woman of like great passion. And she just like, what can you
00:20:07.720do? Like she was just doing the best that she could in an era before knowledge about things
00:20:11.860like postpartum issues or about how pregnancy messes with your hormones or like cognitive
00:20:18.920of behavioral therapy or like antidepressants or anyway so she's just like doing the best she can
00:20:25.440and Philip is just running around like oh my god my wife is crazy so it's just sort of like a
00:20:30.940self-fulfilling thing where she is just like not doing great and he's just making it all worse
00:20:36.100in 1504 Juana's mother Isabella fell ill and she had been very religious slash having some mental
00:20:45.500health stuff going on towards the end of her life as well, where she stopped eating for such a long
00:20:50.060time that that would make her mental health get even worse as her health got worse. Juana, who1.00
00:20:56.280adored her mother, even though they used to fight all the time, she became so upset that her mother0.55
00:21:02.580was sick that she herself stopped eating or sleeping. And anyone who stops eating and sleeping
00:21:08.080will probably wind up behaving in some unusual slash erratic ways. And then add to that the fact
00:21:13.500that Philip again left without even saying goodbye because he was tired of how Spain was so0.94
00:21:21.360Catholic and how they wouldn't let him have sex with people all the time. So he just like peaced0.97
00:21:25.640out back to Flanders. Juana was determined to follow him, to just like scream at him and plead0.99
00:21:32.220with him to come back to her, et cetera. And her mother from her deathbed was just like, Juana,
00:21:37.300Like, no, like, please don't. Juana was desperate to leave, but her mother had her restrained and0.86
00:21:44.640kept in town. And the reason why Isabella, even like literally on her deathbed, like having her
00:21:50.340own mental health issues was so determined to not let Juana chase after her awful husband was0.91
00:21:56.600because Juana was super pregnant at this time, because remember, she was constantly pregnant.1.00
00:22:00.780traveling would be dangerous for her because it's like the 15th century and pregnancy was0.93
00:22:07.240dangerous enough basically so she freaked out completely at being like restrained and separated
00:22:13.220from philip um so she continued to not eat or sleep which like on top of being pregnant and
00:22:18.220having already been pregnant lots and postpartum and everything uh she started to wander around
00:22:25.940babbling incoherently which of course she did with all that going on physically emotionally0.83
00:22:32.420in her body like if you're a young woman and she's still young at this point she's like in
00:22:37.120her early 20s who had been consistently pregnant for at this point eight years whose mother was
00:22:41.800on her deathbed like whose mother had like caused her own deathbed by like starving herself to death0.99
00:22:47.240who lived in a time when nobody understood psychology whose husband was treating her
00:22:51.400worse than garbage um she had not been eating or sleeping for a while like yeah guess what0.91
00:22:55.840like wander around babbling incoherently like do whatever you need to do so after she gave birth to
00:23:02.700this child Juana pleaded with her parents to let her chase after Philip they forbade her from
00:23:08.300leaving again um and then Juana ran away so only half-dressed which I'm not sure what that means
00:23:13.900in this instance because when you say half-dressed you're like oh my god was she topless but I think
00:23:18.760it's like people had you know the inside under chemise and then like you know you have your like
00:23:24.620skirts and your skirts and your like lace up things so it's like when she ran away only half
00:23:28.980dressed it could mean like some of her laces weren't like tightened all the way or whatever
00:23:31.920but basically not the way that a royal person should be behaving according to customs she
00:23:38.700threw herself against the front gates of the castle because they like her parents had told0.88
00:23:43.060the guards to not let her leave she screamed i'm throwing herself against the front gates
00:23:47.660screaming until she exhausted herself and eventually she is brought inside to rest after
00:23:51.800presumably passing out i guess and it wasn't until a year later so like after that baby was
00:23:58.500one year old that she's finally granted permission to leave so finally she gets to go back to
00:24:03.620flanders to like god like i don't know did she think it was gonna work out like oh my god juana
00:24:09.480just like so she went back guess what philip wasn't just there like excited to see her but
00:24:15.620he was literally in the arms of one of his mistresses so with the rage-filled passion
00:24:20.900of someone who's been traveling by boats and carriages in the 15th century while dealing with
00:24:26.140like nine years worth of postpartum issues like and she also was passing through like to get there
00:24:32.440she had to go through a war zone slash people dying of the plague so yeah she had some some
00:24:40.560pent-up anger at this point so she confronted her rival with scissors don't worry well okay worry a
00:24:46.920it. She confronted rival with scissors and first cut off the rival's hair and then allegedly stabbed1.00
00:24:52.740her rival in the face with the scissors. And so at this point, her actions are maybe like a little
00:24:57.880beyond like, oh, she's a little stressed out. But at the same time, Philip had been gaslighting and
00:25:03.160toying with her for like years and years and years and years to the point that this sort of thing
00:25:06.860feels unavoidable. And also like everything I just said 30 seconds ago, like she was desperate to be
00:25:13.940with him for like a year and a half she finally gets there and he's like literally in the arms
00:25:17.860of a mistress there's like maybe you know there shouldn't have been scissors in the room so
00:25:22.640stabbing the mistress guess what didn't make philip love her anymore so she turned to local
00:25:27.580witches for love potions which is just like if you look at her mom even her sister catherine of
00:25:36.100aragon her niece mary the first like they were all like so catholic and so religious and they
00:25:41.040in their time of need would turn to stuff like I you know like praying fasting like wearing
00:25:46.360uncomfortable shirts made of rope or whatever like they were not they were not going to witches like
00:25:52.820Juana had her own point of view here but then guess what Philip found out that she had gone to a witch0.81
00:25:57.960and he was like oh my god you'll never guess what my crazy wife did my crazy wife went to a witch
00:26:02.600and kept spreading awful rumors about her because he is my mortal enemy and now for a quick1.00
00:26:09.880advertising break. The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders
00:26:18.540and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken
00:26:25.740world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness
00:26:31.880always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time
00:26:39.540and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.
00:26:43.320This is a brutal rules-light nightmare
00:34:01.680So 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.
00:34:14.980Like, 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.
00:34:20.840Anyway, so then, one year later, Philip the Handsome suddenly died of typhoid fever, which was going around.
00:34:28.900That was, typhoid fever was going around.
00:34:31.060And 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, Juano is now a widow. But guess what? Pregnant widow, because she is constantly pregnant in this whole story.
00:34:51.720and when she found out that her her husband who she had been so passionate about her whole this
00:34:58.560whole time was dead um she apparently displayed more quote-unquote mad behavior so just to recap
00:35:06.340before getting into what she did that people recorded as being evidence of her madness so0.98
00:35:12.680Juana had been consistently pregnant for by now nine years she'd had six children her mother had0.98
00:35:19.760just died of self-inflicted starvation. Two of her siblings had recently, like not a lot of time has
00:35:25.340passed, died at very young ages, her brother and her sister. She suddenly, surprise, inherited
00:35:31.120these kingdoms. She'd just been imprisoned by her awful father and her terrible husband slash0.95
00:35:37.160abuser slash codependent partner had just unexpectedly died, potentially murdered by her0.93
00:35:43.180father. So there's a lot of hormones and chemicals coursing through her body. Add to that the fact0.60
00:35:48.880that Juana had always been a very emotional sort of person. And what she did falls into a context
00:35:54.300that I don't think is necessarily like, oh my God, she's gone mad, but more just like,
00:36:00.080yeah, of course she's behaving like this. So what she did is she refused to part with Philip's
00:36:04.660coffin. Rumor had it that she was doing sort of like a psycho slash weekend at Brittany's type1.00
00:36:11.720scenario with Philip's corpse, sleeping next to it, eating dinner with it at the table,
00:36:17.200talking to it like a person that was the rumor but um that's not what actually happened so she's
00:36:24.400like she's not at that level yet what did happen is that she wanted to keep philip's coffin nearby
00:36:28.840so she had the coffin with his body and it kept in a church near the palace where she lived so
00:36:34.020she could pay her respects daily when she traveled she had the coffin brought along with her which is
00:36:38.720like not what everyone would do, but not insane. So during all of this, Ferdinand saw a way to
00:36:47.180steal his daughter's powers from her by continuing to allege she was insane and unfit to rule. He was
00:36:52.460able to appoint himself her guardian. So now we're into like a Britney Spears conservator
00:36:57.660type scenario with a horrible father also. So he was able to put himself in charge as
00:37:04.140administrator of the country. Juana, at this point, had just given birth to her sixth and final child
00:37:10.340and was ready to get back in the game. But on top of literally everything else going on,
00:37:15.820guess what? The plague had just rolled into Castile and people were dying all over the place.
00:37:22.120Like literally bubonic plague was back again. So Ferdinand, like just side note. So I have these
00:37:30.700bonus episodes i've been putting out recently um pandemic special episodes just telling sort of
00:37:34.920like weird and interesting stories about people and things that happened during past pandemics
00:37:40.140in world history and what i find interesting is that um even in a time well like centuries before
00:37:47.960the whole thing about like hand washing and like germ theory was developed like people just kind
00:37:52.760of knew like if there was a place that had plague in it you just knew to like stay away from it so
00:37:57.640the plague was in Castile. That is where she was. Ferdinand was back in Aragon and he was like,
00:38:03.120why don't I just wait for like plague to just like do its thing and then I can return when
00:38:07.660it's safe again. So he just kind of sat around and waited for Castile to sort of implode so he
00:38:13.080could swoop in and take over. Juana, in the midst of this plague, kept trying to get enough powerful
00:38:18.180allies and money to regain the throne, but she couldn't muster enough support. Her asshole1.00
00:38:23.100father then swanned into town in 1507 coincidentally at the same time that the plague had sort of like0.99
00:38:29.280plateaued and stopped being quite so much of an issue and so he just happened to come back in
00:38:35.300town when the plague was already better and everyone conflated the two things to be like
00:38:38.880oh my god like he came back the plague went away that must mean he is who the king is supposed to
00:38:45.040be and so then he used all his decades worth of slimy gross awful experience to metaphorically
00:38:51.280stomp all over Juana and steal the throne of Castile for himself. So again, remember, he had0.91
00:38:57.020always been the king of Aragon, but it was Isabella who had been the monarch of Castile.
00:39:01.720So Juana refused to sign the paperwork that removed her royal powers and issued an official0.99
00:39:05.920statement saying, basically, this is some bullshit. But Ferdinand was way more powerful than her. He0.98
00:39:12.360had all these allies. And she became, again, a queen in name only. So on top of making all the
00:39:19.320ruling decisions, Ferdinand also had all of Juana's loyal servants fired, replacing them with a smaller
00:39:25.180staff of people loyal to just him, and ordered her to be confined to the royal monastery slash
00:39:31.220convent of Santa Clara and Torsadias Castile. So all of her children, she had six children,
00:39:37.020remember, were left in Flanders. So she was off in this convent. Her six children were left in
00:39:42.680Flanders to be raised by Philip's sister, Margaret of Austria, except for one. So her youngest
00:39:48.160daughter, whose name was Catherine. Juana refused to be parted from baby Catherine. And so the0.76
00:39:53.100young daughter remained to be raised in the convent, which is like a weird history repeating
00:39:57.560thing, because that's not unlike how Juana's mother, Isabella, had been raised in a convent
00:40:01.540with her allegedly insane mother. So just, okay. So good news for Juana was that her father's
00:40:09.160second marriage had failed to produce, remember he married the French person? So his second0.83
00:40:13.440marriage where he had hoped to have a new son who could replace her. The second marriage had0.72
00:40:17.540fail to produce a new heir who would supplant her in the line of succession. So the position of
00:40:23.180heir to the throne of Castile and Aragon when Ferdinand died would be, because Juana was0.57
00:40:29.100officially insane, would be her oldest son, Charles, who's back in Flanders. But so while
00:40:34.840Charles was back in Flanders being raised to be her heir by the Habsburgs, Juana's second son,
00:40:40.220whose name was Ferdinand, had been born and raised in Castile because he was the one who was born
00:40:45.160when she was like trapped there and not allowed to leave so Ferdinand her dad preferred baby
00:40:50.880Ferdinand to be his heir because they were he was closer to him and he knew him better and also
00:40:56.540because he wasn't being off raised by Habsburgs in Flanders Ferdinand the king briefly even named
00:41:03.340baby Ferdinand as his heir in his will but um some clever courtier somebody who is allied with
00:41:10.660juana's son i've got him to switch it back to say charles is the heir so anyway ferdinand finally
00:41:16.940died good goddamn riddance and charles was back in flanders and not able to take over right away
00:41:23.860so again juana is just trapped in this monastery she completely powerless so who's going to take0.98
00:41:30.560over ferdinand is dead charles is back in flanders can't get there so ferdinand's illegitimate son
00:41:35.240Alonso de Aragon was put in charge of Aragon, while an archbishop was put in charge of Castile
00:41:40.820and Leon as regent in Juana's place. So just so we're all keeping track, Juana was very much
00:41:46.960alive, being kept trapped in a castle slash monastery due to her alleged madness. She could
00:41:54.020have taken overruling both kingdoms upon her father's death, but she was not allowed to. So
00:42:00.420So in 1517, her son Charles, who is now 17 years old, arrived in Asturias to take on his role as king.
00:42:08.460He 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.
00:42:17.420They acquired from her permission that Charles would be officially her co-ruler because she was allegedly insane, but she's still technically there.
00:42:26.360but she agreed that he could be the co-ruler with her of Castile, Leon and Aragon. And at this point
00:42:32.260he could have released her and have her be his like true co-monarch but he did not do that. But
00:42:39.340her daughter Eleanor who I like the sounds of arranged things in the castle slash prison to0.80
00:42:44.860make it more comfortable and homey for Juana's comfort. So good job Eleanor. Daughters were good
00:42:52.360people i think so charles was not a popular king in spain because of his habsburg roots and the
00:42:59.660fact that he had been raised in flanders um there was a revolt in 1520 against him during which
00:43:06.960rebel leaders turned to juana for support to remove him from the throne they were saying so
00:43:10.940it's again it's like they don't like him so like well if we get rid of him like who can we support
00:43:14.980so it's not like they wanted her to be queen it's just they wanted him to not be king so since she
00:43:19.620was technically still a queen if she gave them her written approval the rebels would win and
00:43:23.560charles would be deposed so charles and a delegation of his own supporters to his mom
00:43:28.540to try and get to her first to have her put in writing that she didn't approve of the rebels0.99
00:43:33.060and juana was like not sure what i'm gonna do looks like i have all of the power now and she
00:43:40.740sort of like took so long to agree which side she's going to support that the rebels were able
00:43:46.580to storm into town and officially request her support. Eventually, she decided against signing
00:43:51.920the document. So she supported her son's reign in an attempt to bring peace to the land. So
00:43:58.760she actually got to do something significant there. Meanwhile, she was showing more signs
00:44:05.560of mental instability, which is like, of course she did, if this is like the way that she's been
00:44:11.960treat and what life has done to her so far so she grew paranoid that some of the nuns who were
00:44:18.140caring for her were trying to kill her which frankly was entirely possible people were being
00:44:22.420poisoned all over the place and there's probably lots of people who wanted to kill her apparently
00:44:27.440as her condition like her mental health deteriorated she required um assistance with
00:44:33.740most parts of her day including eating bathing changing her clothes and speaking and sleeping
00:44:39.160Her son, Charles, instructed her caretakers not to let her see or speak to anyone.
00:44:44.180So I don't know if that's because he didn't want her to be scheming or if he didn't want
00:44:48.040anyone to see what condition she was in or what.
00:44:50.740But so she was completely isolated, not able to talk to anyone.
00:44:54.520Some historians, Rain, suggested maybe she might have had bipolar disorder.
00:45:00.020She might have had a severe case of depression.
00:45:02.300She might have had schizophrenia, maybe comorbidity, all of those things all at the same time.
00:45:07.140personally i think all those things are entirely possible but like her grandmother i think a lot
00:45:13.100of this can be traced back to the hormone fluctuations of six pregnancies combined with
00:45:17.120undiagnosed and untreated postpartum disorder combined with just what her personality was
00:45:22.040like where she just felt things so deeply combined with her like her ongoing sort of issues with
00:45:27.300eating not eating and not sleeping the effect of phillips toxic awful abuse on her the way that
00:45:34.040her father kept gaslighting her that she was crazy if that's all happening to you and you start
00:45:39.260having symptoms like is it madness if she just sort of like shuts down emotionally psychologically
00:45:45.600and becomes sort of catatonic or is it and or is it sort of like a self-fulfilling cycle of like
00:45:52.200people claim she's mad and treat her like she's mad and eventually she just like becomes mad she
00:45:57.160just leans into it. So the story does not have a happy ending, as one might, by this point,
00:46:03.780expect. So Juan of Castile passed away age 75 on April 12th, 1555, having spent 46 years in
00:46:12.820captivity. 46 years. Her tomb is in the Royal Chapel of Granada alongside her parents, which
00:46:19.180sucks because they were awful to her, but she loved them, I guess. She's also next to Philip,
00:46:24.420which is just like, oh, she loved him, I guess. And she's also buried next to her older sister
00:46:30.920Isabel's young son, Miguel. So she herself is remembered as Juana La Loca, the Mad Queen,
00:46:37.920but her legacy, like to history, is through her six children. So check it out. So her son Charles
00:46:44.740became Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Her son Ferdinand succeeded Charles as
00:46:51.500Holy Roman Emperor. Her daughter Eleanor served as Queen of Portugal and Queen of France. Her
00:46:56.720daughter Elizabeth was Queen of Denmark. Her daughter Maria was Queen of Hungary. And her
00:47:01.820youngest daughter Catherine, who had lived for a decade with Juana in captivity, became Queen of
00:47:06.920Portugal. Through these six monarchs, the Habsburg dynasty would continue through to the basically
00:47:14.200beginning of the 19th century, being super powerful all over Europe. And I want to just
00:47:19.260shout out my sources for this. So there's a really good book called Sister Queens by Julia Fox,
00:47:26.260which talks about Juana and also her sister, Catherine of Aragon, and just sort of how
00:47:33.660the parallels in their stories, how their mother had been so successful, how they both had shitty0.73
00:47:40.340husbands who treated them badly, etc. Super recommend that book. So it's technically called0.89
00:47:46.680Sister Queens, The Noble Tragic Lives of Catherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile.
00:47:51.300Another book that I consulted for research is called Juana I, Legitimacy and Conflict in 16th
00:47:56.780Century Castile by Gillian B. Fleming. There's also a movie that's called Juana La Loca,
00:48:03.800or the English title of it is Mad Love. I think it's available streaming somewhere. It's a Spanish
00:48:09.480language movie that just kind of gets into really the passionate relationship between her and her
00:48:14.760horrible husband and what that was all like. And now it is time to score this woman. So we have
00:48:22.540four categories with which we measure the women who we talk about on this podcast. Not that any0.96
00:48:28.360of them are better or worse than others, but just to kind of see where they fit on a scale measuring
00:48:32.540four very specific things. The first thing we're measuring is scandalousness. So that's kind of
00:48:38.200like well scandaliciousness just like how juicy and gossipy is her story and frankly even though1.00
00:48:46.180Juana herself she wasn't like running around murdering people she wasn't having lots of
00:48:50.660affairs or anything but just like her and Philip's relationship and like you know running out0.99
00:48:55.800throwing herself against the doors half-dressed like it's it's it's like a telenovela like the0.60
00:49:01.100scandaliciousness it's not like I'm gonna give her a six for scandaliciousness because it's just
00:49:06.120like it's entirely based on her relationship with Philip it's just I mean the the cutting off the
00:49:12.340hair and the stabbing oh I forgot the stabbing the face with the scissors let's give her a seven0.99
00:49:15.920seven for scandaliciousness um the next one is scheminess and I have to say her scheminess1.00
00:49:22.540maybe she was wonderful at scheminess like maybe she came up with good schemes but just everybody1.00
00:49:26.600around her it was just a bad time and place for her there's a part where she's trying to gain
00:49:30.880support to take over but then her father came in he took over instead like she was scheming
00:49:35.460It just wasn't effective. But I guess that means it wasn't as good of scheminess. I'm going to give her a four, a four for scheminess because she tried. Her 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.
00:49:58.320I'm going to give her an eight for significance because through her children, her genealogy became very significant later on.
00:50:08.460And 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.
00:50:16.800So that was, you know what, she deserves more points.
00:50:18.820I'm going to give her a nine for significance.1.00
00:50:20.560the sexism bonus is the last the fourth category where depending on how how much did her gender0.56
00:50:28.280affect the way that she was treated and how her life turned out and this is like a full-on 101.00
00:50:32.080like if i could give her more than 10 i would i want to give her like a 12 i want to give her0.92
00:50:35.600like a 17 for sexism because she was treated so horribly by so many people by everyone she was0.92
00:50:43.420set aside like even though like some like every other woman who've looked at this season who was1.00
00:50:48.060a monarch and should have inherited something like she did not have supporters um she if she0.97
00:50:53.720was a man like she would just become the king and that's it none of this would have happened so
00:50:57.200that's a total 10 so let's just add this up so 17 is that right wait so she gets 30 which makes me
00:51:04.100glad because like this is just uh like it's an artificially contracted scale but i like i think0.95
00:51:11.320with her we really see the balance of the four things like she's lots of significance the sexism0.99
00:51:16.460bonus her scheminess is low but she still bumps up there so like she's 30 points like she's tied1.00
00:51:22.500for second place like the top ever um on the scandalous scale is agrippina the younger has1.00
00:51:28.540a 31 but empress matilda has a 30 juana also has a 30 her mother just is a 27 so even though her1.00
00:51:35.620mother was more significant potentially um she didn't have the scandalousness elements or the
00:51:41.080sexism elements anyway and i think juana's story does sort of mirror that of empress matilda in
00:51:47.560some ways as well where it's just like you she was the woman who technically should have inherited
00:51:52.600and just like a lot of men worked for a lot of years to make it so that she would not inherit
00:51:58.340so that's that's the story of juana the first of castile aka juana la loca so a bunch of different
00:52:06.280things to tell you just like reminders so this podcast was based on an essay I wrote a year or
00:52:12.360two ago about Juana where I was looking at her and also her sister Catherine Aragon her mother
00:52:18.760Isabella and then her grandmother Isabel because and then Mary the first as well just kind of like
00:52:23.660seeing the commonalities and the stories about all these women from the Spanish royal family and how
00:52:28.260they all were so strong-willed and so stubborn and how they just were treated by I don't know
00:52:35.820how they all sort of ended like all of their lives ended with this sort of like quote unquote
00:52:40.160instability insanity which is really just like I don't know they just a lot of commonalities
00:52:45.880between the different women so if you want to look at this essay and other ones I wrote about
00:52:48.820other women in history you can find that at annfosterwriter.com I have a patreon which is
00:52:55.320patreon.com slash annfosterwriter and that's where you can learn about what I'm working on
00:53:01.580what I'm researching, just depending on the level at which you support me. Also, there are some
00:53:07.980Patreon-only mini-episodes, which I'm posting there. So those are called Sew This Asshole,
00:53:13.400and they're episodes about some of the gross, awful men encountered in some of these stories.0.97
00:53:17.600I feel like Philip the Handsome is very much due for me to do an episode about him just putting
00:53:22.020him on blast. Anyway, so that's patreon.com and FosterWriter. So I'm also on Instagram at
00:53:26.800vulgar history pod on twitter at vulgar history i've got a little teespring store as well if you
00:53:32.220want to support the show through the purchase of some of my hilarious feminist merchandise there's1.00
00:53:37.380bags and mugs and t-shirts and that's all at teespring.com slash stores slash vulgar history
00:53:44.480and then also if you feel like sending me a message you can at vulgar history pod at gmail.com
00:53:53.720lately i'm very into bookshop.org which is uh an online bookshop that um supports local bookstores
00:54:06.540near you i have a list up there so vulgar history recommends so i'm putting a list up there of the
00:54:13.920books that i've used for research for a different podcast episodes other historical books that i
00:54:18.240really enjoy that i find really interesting so for this one like the sister queens is up there
00:54:23.120if you want to read more about Juana and Catherine of Aragon and kind of their whole situation.
00:54:27.580Other books I have there, you know, just feminist history and other history books that I recommend.
00:54:32.040So you can find that. The link will be in the show notes, but also it's at bookshop.org
00:54:35.380slash lists slash vulgar history recommends. And there's dashes in between all of those things.
00:54:42.120But all those, everything I just mentioned, they're all linked to each other. So you can
00:54:45.780pretty easily, if you find one thing, you'll find all the other things. And I mentioned midway through
00:54:51.900this podcast too that i've been recording these other mini episodes that are not patreon only
00:54:56.920those are available for everybody the pandemic super specials so just talking about some
00:55:01.340interesting pandemic related stories from different time periods so you can find those
00:55:05.220if you're subscribed to this podcast wherever you're subscribed to this podcast and i guess
00:55:09.760that's everything um next week i think is going to be the season finale for the season about women
00:55:17.200leaders in history and the men who whined about it. So stay tuned for that. Be well,
00:55:23.780stay safe, and I'll talk to you all next time.
00:55:32.100So I mentioned in the episode, and I think I did last week as well, so Isabel of Castile was the
00:55:36.520mother of Juana of Castile. Isabel of Castile, also the mother of Catherine of Aragon, who
00:55:41.100was famously the first wife of Henry VIII. And I have yet to do an episode about Catherine of
00:55:46.320Aragon or about her daughter, Mary I. But it is so interesting to me how their stories all
00:55:54.300follow sort of a similar trajectory of just like a really passionate, very intelligent,
00:55:59.660very well-educated woman who just people. It's the Taylor Swift thing, right? Like every time
00:56:05.020you call me crazy, I get more crazy is the vibe of this whole lineage of women. I don't know.0.98
00:56:12.200It reminds me, as so many things do, of the Sweet Valley Sagas, the books from the 90s 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.