00:00:00.000hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast
00:00:19.120my name is ann foster and this season we are looking at women trapped in towers and the0.93
00:00:23.900assholes who sent them there and here's the thing about this season which is like
00:00:28.800It's numerous stories that I'm excited to share with you because I just want to share them with somebody and you're who there is to share with.0.89
00:00:40.780And last week, didn't I say specifically that just because someone's story might end in murder or tragedy that doesn't retroactively mean their whole life is tragic.
00:00:50.440but here's the thing when you read enough stories about women whose lives
00:00:54.140end with like multi-year trapped in towers helpless scenarios it it does get a little sad
00:01:02.100so i'm going to try and focus on interesting and cool things as well as the inevitable trapped in
00:01:08.140towers parts and i don't know let's just be a cautionary lesson to me to try and not choose
00:01:14.180a theme that ends with like every story ending in the same frustratingly tragic way anyway
00:01:21.820I also wanted to mention that you may not know this I didn't know this when I first started
00:01:30.160studying history in my undergrad is that social history is what this podcast is about and that's
00:01:37.420what I'm almost exclusively interested in and that's the history of like people and their real
00:01:43.020lives and their lived experiences rather than there's other people who study other people who
00:01:47.880study military history or like the history of, you know, sea battles or whatever. So I'm really
00:01:54.980looking at people and what their, their feelings were and what their lives were like, like day to
00:01:59.340day, which I bring up just because in the past two episodes and in this episode and in future
00:02:05.240episodes there's a lot of um land battles going on i don't want to come across like that stuff
00:02:13.400didn't matter because that sort of spells out what happens to so many people because there's
00:02:18.420so many people fighting over so much land and territory but that's just not what we're looking
00:02:23.020at today what we're doing is just like coloring it you know if like you've got your coloring page
00:02:27.100of history like the the shapes or maybe it's more like a connect the dots situation but like
00:02:33.600what the kings were doing what the wars what wars were happening what like religious genocides are
00:02:41.320happening like those are those are kind of the main things that are shaping what happens today
00:02:48.320in the world that we've inherited from all these people who had all these wars back then
00:02:53.540and what this podcast is doing and the sort of social history that I like to study and write
00:02:58.020about is what we're shading that in you know maybe bringing in like pencil crayons or you
00:03:05.020might call them colored pencils to just like bring it all a bit more to life to sort of understand
00:03:11.540better where it's not just names and dates but it's like people and what they were feeling and
00:03:15.060I just wanted to bring that up because I'm gonna be glossing over a lot of war stuff
00:03:20.860in this episode and please know that that stuff is important and there's lots of other people
00:03:25.980who've written extensively about that but i'm talking about a woman who has not been extensively
00:03:31.060written about to the point that when you google her or at least when i did maybe this is just like
00:03:36.340the internet knowing who i am or whatever but like the first search result was my own essay i wrote
00:03:41.580which is like kind of startling because um there's come on more people need to write about this stuff
00:03:49.460who we're looking at today is isabel of portugal the queen of castile and leon
00:03:55.760and so my sources for this were wikipedia i'm also a piece on encyclopedia.com
00:04:03.840an essay from the venerable vixens.wordpress.com who is a blog who writes about cool women in
00:04:10.860history and then also like apparently the one and only biography ever written of this woman
00:04:15.240isabel the queen life and times by peggy k liss and just to situate this all in a time and place
00:04:22.680because you know we've been doing sort of england based things for a while but we're hopping across
00:04:27.860over into portugal slash spain but this is a sort of time period where it wasn't like one
00:04:36.040giant unified country that we would call spain it's like all little kingdoms so it's that sort
00:04:40.640of time when what we would call france now was like all little kingdoms and england kind of was
00:04:45.160two okay so just to place this in like the overall family tree of like european royal people who are
00:04:52.000all married to each other and all the same names so we've got isabelle of portugal who we're looking
00:04:57.540at today her daughter one of her daughters was isabella the first of castile who we talked
00:05:05.960about in season two that was isabelle who married ferdinand she's one whose story was kind of like
00:05:10.560wow look at this woman who's like living this horrible situation and then oh wow now she's
00:05:15.400queen and they're like oh no now she's doing genocide it was that was her story um in season
00:05:20.740two and so Isabelle we're talking about today is the mother of her Isabella from Ferdinand and
00:05:27.940Isabella is herself the mother of Catherine of Aragon the first wife of Henry VIII Catherine
00:05:34.660of Aragon being the mother of Queen Mary the first um and then just backtracking Isabella
00:05:42.040from Ferdinand Isabella her other daughter one of her other daughters was Juana of Castile aka0.80
00:05:47.500Juana La Loca the famous the famous quote-unquote mad queen so the thing that all these women have
00:05:56.380in common Isabella Portugal Isabella the first of Castile Catherine of Aragon Mary the first
00:06:02.040juana of castile is they were all seen at various times and various levels as insane women so it's
00:06:09.740like are they is this a genetic thing like is is this like an inbreeding situation like why are
00:06:16.600they all quote-unquote mad and it's like no it's just they were all in situations that
00:06:22.220would affect a lot of people psychologically they also were very strong-willed they were raised like
00:06:28.840each of them had a mother who was very strong-willed who raised them to be strong-willed
00:06:32.080and the men around them were just like whoa what's this woman with an opinion she must be crazy
00:06:36.140so this is why I started looking at like backtracking back to who we're actually talking
00:06:41.380about Isabel of Portugal was because I was reading about Juana of Castile and it said like did she
00:06:47.960inherit the madness quote-unquote from her grandmother and I'm like oh who's her grandmother
00:06:52.320and then I started reading about Isabel and I'm just like oh my god it's just like it's all the
00:06:56.500same things we keep seeing but it's in a different way she's her own person there's some very
00:07:01.700interesting stuff going on in this so we're going back to 15th century portugal where isabel was born
00:07:10.940in 1428 into the powerful aviz family of portugal so her mother was named isabella of braganza
00:07:21.300everyone in this family just called Isabelle Isabella and her father Joao was the uncle of
00:07:27.460the Portuguese king so her father is the uncle of the king I'm not I can't quite tell you what
00:07:36.200that makes Isabelle's relationship to him but the Portuguese king is Afonso V so whatever her
00:07:43.680specific relation to him was it basically meant that as soon as she was born it was like she's
00:07:48.040one of those girls where it's like who are we going to marry her to we're going to make some
00:07:51.380great alliances like here we go so her family decided to marry her off to king juan the second
00:07:58.600of castile and this is where all of her problems began because he was really awful um because like
00:08:08.800every husband is in every podcast i do so the thing about king juan the second of castile
00:08:14.980isabel's betrothed is it's a very henry the sixth margaret of anjou situation where juan was he was
00:08:24.740he was not a great king in that sort of like useless way where like maybe he would have been
00:08:30.280great in some other career path but he just did not have the disposition to be a very effective
00:08:35.340king in like warring medieval europe in a very similar to henry the sixth actually he was although
00:08:44.0006 was more kind of like monk guy like pacifist juan i think was just sort of like useless
00:08:49.020so he was sort of an early adopter of the renaissance prince idea of like the guy who
00:08:56.340um just hangs out reading poetry discussing philosophy and like tapping his beard going
00:09:01.980hmm interesting point like which is a great way to be but not when you're the king of castile
00:09:07.260and everybody is invading everywhere because it's the late medieval period in western europe
00:09:12.100so you might think well why didn't someone seize power from him if he was so useful
00:09:17.060and the thing is the people did not seize power from him because like henry the sixth he had a
00:09:22.080very powerful and influential and scary right-hand man and in this case juan's right-hand man was
00:09:28.220named alvaro de luna and he literally murdered everyone who got in the king's way so if you're
00:09:37.280so it's kind of like juan was like the face of being the king but de luna was sort of like
00:09:43.780actually the one doing everything for instance juan's first wife was a woman named maria of
00:09:50.500aragon they had four children together but only one survived because of the regular like
00:09:55.640rate of child death etc and the only child that survived was like luckily for them because it's
00:10:02.660you know, sons are important for like inheriting reasons in this time and place was a son named
00:10:08.260Prince Enrique. And the thing is that he was awful. He was, he was bad in a more malevolent
00:10:17.060way. Juan was just kind of useless, but Enrique was just, we'll find out. So Enrique grew up and0.91
00:10:25.580became a man and got married to a woman named Bianca Blanca, the second of Navarre. I know
00:10:32.200i'm just like jumping around person to person but bear in mind eventually we're gonna so juan
00:10:37.500is gonna become isabel's husband but prior to this to him being engaged to this young child
00:10:43.200he had a wife and four children and his one surviving child from this first marriage
00:10:46.940to blanca was a boy named enrique enrique grew up like juan is like a lot older than isabel
00:10:55.000like enrique like juan's son is a lot older than isabel like it's a much younger bride situation
00:11:02.020Enrique married Blanca years went by they didn't have any children like this is anyway a lot of
00:11:11.340this really reminds me of a lot of the aspects of the Margaret of Anjou situation but here so
00:11:17.260Enrique was the heir to the throne of 15th century Castile having some sons was pretty
00:11:23.360non-negotiable for like what he was supposed to do in his life everyone was just like why aren't
00:11:29.220enrique and blanca having any kids where the bigger question was like wait have these two
00:11:34.660even consummated their marriage that they've been married in for numerous years and the answer was
00:11:41.100that much like oh god who is a catherine de manici's husband again and potentially the six0.95
00:11:49.300enrique had an unusually shaped penis i can't believe this is the second episode0.99
00:11:53.640will there be more where everything hinges on someone's unusually shaped penis he couldn't1.00
00:12:00.200impregnate a woman because of the shape of his penis whatever that looked like um so he had like0.98
00:12:08.440this sort of unusual shaped penis which meant that he could not impregnate a woman but that's0.98
00:12:15.820sort of like a bit too um detailed for medieval gossipy people so everyone just started calling0.95
00:12:21.720him el importante like the impotent so like we're gonna get back to isabel very soon but you really
00:12:29.900need to understand about enrique and juan and this whole situation so juan the useless king
00:12:37.120was just like reading poetry while his evil advisor de luna was just like you look juan
00:12:43.580your son enrique is clearly never gonna have any children and your wife maria is past her
00:12:48.280childbearing years so you should get a new younger wife and start having some more sons so we can
00:12:52.320have like a line of succession going on here but as a catholic king in a catholic country Juan
00:12:58.740couldn't divorce Maria his wife so he was like well I don't know what what do you suggest we do
00:13:03.880DeLuna and DeLuna was like well what I suggest and what I'm going to do is to poison Maria
00:13:09.280to death and he did murder was just kind of his thing and this is why Juan 43 years old was
00:13:18.200on the market for a new wife and it was at this point de luna went out to try and find a suitable
00:13:22.360match you know someone young tangentially royal and fertile and it was de luna who noticed 19
00:13:30.080year old isabel and thought oh she seems both fertile and compliant and began writing up papers
00:13:35.560for this new marriage so isabel the main point the heroine of today we don't know a lot about
00:13:44.620her as a person but what we do know is that she had dark eyes she was beautiful and like all of
00:13:51.000her female descendants she felt things very strongly she had strongly held opinions about
00:13:57.600things and felt things very strongly so the ideal at this point in this place in time 15th century
00:14:04.160Portugal was for young women to be beautiful but also submissive and just you know godly
00:14:10.520and whatever but isabelle was a passionate sort of person whose personality would not be restrained
00:14:15.300by societal conventions like we don't know much about many other women who were living in late
00:14:20.660medieval portugal apart from how pretty they were but isabelle's personality was so interesting and
00:14:26.760unconventional that people wrote about it like so it had to be quite interesting frankly because
00:14:32.580no one was in the habit of writing about personalities of teenagers teenage girls
00:14:37.680so before they got officially married Juan came down to meet Isabel just to make sure this was
00:14:43.480like you know that there was chemistry there he was immediately smitten with her because she was
00:14:49.040super interesting passionate maybe unlike other women he had met she was also 19 and fertile0.67
00:14:55.460so but what did she think of her 43 year old husband um and again she was not known for having
00:15:04.800a poker face or trying to hide her thoughts and she was not enthusiastic about it but she had no
00:15:10.020say in the matter and they got married. Isabel is not just beautiful and passionate and opinionated
00:15:17.960she's also very smart very clever very observant so she instantaneously realized the toxic power
00:15:24.900relationship going on between her new husband Juan and his murderous advisor De Luna. She was like
00:15:31.100why does Juan my husband just lie around reciting poetry when he's the king and he should be doing
00:15:35.560king things like why is De Luna in charge of literally everything including how often and
00:15:39.980for how long the two of them have sex because yeah De Luna was so meddling and obsessed with
00:15:46.560power that he literally scheduled when Juan and Isabel could have sex and then he otherwise just
00:15:51.680sort of lurked around murderously so in sort of like a Jane Eyre slash Crimson Peak slash Rebecca
00:16:02.380sort of way like I feel like Isabel might have started to suspect that maybe her predecessor
00:16:08.420Juan's first wife Maria might not have died of natural causes and that she started to suspect
00:16:13.600that Delina might be trying to poison her as well which is like kind of his thing so this is a
00:16:19.680situation where paranoia is like and we've talked about other ones in this podcast but it's like
00:16:24.300is it paranoid when literally there's someone who actively is poisoning you like no that's just being
00:16:30.080smart and having good instincts so isabel decided it was time to get rid of de luna juan was like
00:16:40.400henry the sixth juan was so useless he couldn't be without someone telling him what to do all the
00:16:44.780time so isabel decided that okay he needs someone like telling him what to do all the time like
00:16:49.720that would be me his wife his 19 year old wife i will be his new advisor so sort of like in the
00:16:57.620movie the favorite but more murdery isabel and de luna began well they just entered into a rivalry
00:17:05.680to see which of them would end up being the ultimate survivor as his advisor so similar to
00:17:11.220margaret of anjou and what's his face from the first episode right um isabel like margaret had1.00
00:17:20.600one tactic that de luna couldn't match her on and that was sexy times so she would whisper
00:17:26.120suggestions to juan when they were in bed together you know like i don't know it was a time when they0.97
00:17:32.120could be together de luna wasn't around and she could sort of like be like wouldn't it be cool
00:17:37.580if you got rid of de luna and juan was like i do the last thing someone told me to and the next
00:17:42.740morning de luna would come and talk to him and be like can we murder your wife and juan was like
00:17:46.520okay i'll do what the last person talked to me to says like he's just not even a person um
00:17:53.940isabel became pregnant and at which point she gained even more influence over juan because
00:17:59.260having a child made her more important because she was like the parent of potentially
00:18:02.920like Enrique was still the heir to the throne but she was going to be kind of like
00:18:06.940the spare the mother of the spare to the throne because Enrique didn't have children because0.94
00:18:11.440weird-shaped penis and Enrique again was her stepson who was older than her
00:18:16.280um the pregnancy itself was bad news for Isabel because this was medieval times and obstetrics0.99
00:18:23.600were not especially helpful at the time she had a very rough pregnancy and childbirth was sucks
00:18:29.620no matter who you are and where you're living um but i feel like 1400s portugal especially not a
00:18:37.000great place to have a tough pregnancy and childbirth but both she and the baby both survived
00:18:43.540and this was her daughter isabel or isabella who would later become isabella the first the catholic
00:18:50.300queen isabel and ferdinand um and i also really love this thing like remember isabel's mother was
00:18:56.460Isabella then she calls her daughter Isabella you know I really love I think we could bring back
00:19:01.600women naming their daughters after themselves I think that's cool um anyway she survived the0.85
00:19:10.780baby survived great news um but then due to hormonal shifts and sleep deprivation and
00:19:17.340potentially just like the overall PTSD of this horrible birth situation in medieval Portugal
00:19:23.740um isabel experienced some really awful postpartum symptoms and instead of people being like
00:19:30.840postpartum is a real thing let's support her with talk therapy medication and like really take care
00:19:35.860of her the doctors at the time were like oh my god she's gone mad and basically abandoned her
00:19:41.640into her like depression so isabel did the best she could um survival wise having you know health
00:19:50.700issues and mental health issues so she apparently alternated between sitting around being mostly0.52
00:19:57.260borderline catatonic um and having screaming rage fits those are her two moods and both of which are
00:20:05.720understandable given the situation she's in she shut herself into a room by herself and would
00:20:10.660only speak to juan which considering de luna is still on the scene and she didn't know who she
00:20:16.280could trust and she he was possibly still trying to kill her all the time this makes sense to me
00:20:21.300that you'd only talk to him but also um a side effect of this like she would only talk to juan
00:20:28.900and that made juan even more devoted and loyal to her because he liked that he was the only person
00:20:33.600she talked to so maybe this is partially a ploy to her like amid her like postpartum issues she
00:20:41.160was also able to like find a way to be more persuasive to him so juan finally came on board
00:20:46.680with operation get rid of de luna um so it's sort of like so she's scheming even in the midst of like
00:20:56.060horrific medieval postpartum situation which we'll remember when we're scoring her later on
00:21:00.700but whilst all this was going on de luna still creeping around trying to figure out a way to
00:21:09.520murder isabel and or to regain his influence over the king but isabel bedridden postpartum in a
00:21:17.520medieval castle was three steps ahead of him even still and she brought in a third co-conspirator
00:21:23.320to help out her side because she could use the help her new helper was a man named alonzo perez
00:21:31.480de vivero but then alonzo so he was sort of like double dealing he was like pretending to not be
00:21:37.800working with her but he really was working with her but then that was de luna found out that
00:21:42.580alonso was helping isabel and so de luna murdered alonso by throwing him out of a window in front0.99
00:21:49.320of witnesses hashtag defenestration isabel was like oh well since you did that in front of
00:21:57.880witnesses can we now arrest de luna for murder so he won't be the king's advisor anymore and next
00:22:04.120thing you know de luna was arrested for murder so did isabel use alonso as a pawn to get de luna
00:22:11.200arrested like did she mastermind him throwing him out a window in front of witnesses or was that
00:22:16.720she's like either he'll help me alonso or he'll be murdered but both are good for me isabel i don't0.96
00:22:24.020know but i like to give her some credit here she was a scheming mastermind even in the midst of
00:22:30.300ongoing um mental health concerns so de luna was put on trial um and while the trial was like
00:22:41.100underway isabel was pregnant again and she was spending her time trying to not die in childbirth
00:22:47.440for the second time the trial ended with de luna found guilty and he was executed um which actually
00:22:54.140upset juan a lot because they had this toxic codependent relationship five months after
00:23:00.880deluna's execution isabel gave birth to a son who she named alfonso but and this is great like
00:23:08.480there's a son like hooray this is the whole point of why he married her etc but even this didn't
00:23:14.500cheer up juan whose health was now suffering from his extreme grief i just feel like henry
00:23:19.280the six all over again frankly juan became so ill from grief at losing de luna i guess um he was not
00:23:28.800eating well and also just like that leaves you susceptible your immune system overall germs of
00:23:34.700like living in medieval times with no one washing their hands so his son enrique aka el importante
00:23:41.420was called to royal court because he might need to take over as king because juan was so sickly
00:23:47.700so this is a great time to check up on like well what has enrique aka el impotente been up to
00:23:54.440throughout these these last few soap opera telenovela years so unsurprisingly um for0.96
00:24:02.720assholes throughout history enrique blamed his wife blanca for their childlessness0.91
00:24:07.880and divorced her like okay original henry the eighth and a trial just like when henry the eighth0.96
00:24:14.600and all his marriage to Anne of Cleves or when what's his face tried to stop Francis Howard from
00:24:18.760divorcing him Enrique was like I can have sex with any woman in the world other than Blanca0.99
00:24:23.960it's her fault not me my penis totally works fine it's just her I can't have sex with her I don't1.00
00:24:30.540know why and Blanca was like are you kidding me and Enrique was like Blanca also was a witch1.00
00:24:36.660she has ensorcelled she's a sorceress she put cast a spell on my penis which is totally functional1.00
00:24:43.500by the way and then blanca had to do like francis howard style medieval courtroom pap smear scenario1.00
00:24:50.780where people went to look up inside of her vagina to see if she was still a virgin or not and guess1.00
00:24:57.960what she was because enrique had an oddly shaped penis that could not go inside of vaginas so0.99
00:25:04.620the marriage i don't think it was divorce it must have been annul because they were catholic0.99
00:25:10.160one way or another blanca was still alive and enrique got to marry again so he got married
00:25:17.900to a woman named juana of portugal and what it's shocking to know that these two did not conceive
00:25:25.220any children and she also still had an intact hymen because guess what it is enrique is the
00:25:32.560reason they weren't having children but he kept blaming his wives so life just keeps going Juan
00:25:41.380eventually died of grief and also probably you know like tuberculosis or something old-timey
00:25:48.780dysentery whatever and Enrique became the new king of Castile because that's his son Enrique
00:25:56.860wasn't much of a fan of his stepmother who was younger than him our heroine Isabelle he also
00:26:02.260did not like isabelle's two children alfonso and isabella who are his half siblings but it's
00:26:08.820a thing where like he's an adult and half siblings are toddlers so enrique sent isabelle and her two
00:26:14.200children off to live in the castle of arevalo which was spooky and i put in my notes crimson
00:26:21.240peak like he provided isabelle with much less money than she was accustomed to like at all in
00:26:28.500her life so which meant that she her two children and her continuing postpartum mental health
00:26:34.600concerns um i'm thinking of like britney spears who had the two children right in a row and also1.00
00:26:39.900had all these mental health issues that were not being helped by her terrible family so isabel two0.98
00:26:46.340children mental issues um she's living now this frugal lifestyle no one was allowed to visit them
00:26:54.200and would you be shocked to know that she continued to be depressed and got more depressed
00:26:59.700like oh my god quote-unquote madness right meanwhile Enrique and his new wife Juana0.98
00:27:07.280guess what still don't have any kids guess what weird-shaped penis so the next king like they0.92
00:27:13.780didn't have an heir he just like needed an heir and so the heir was basically going to need to be0.95
00:27:20.260isabel's son alfonso which enrique did not like because he didn't like alfonso he didn't like
00:27:24.740isabel and he wanted to like father his own children and he did not understand basic anatomy
00:27:28.660but then suddenly out of nowhere after seven years of marriage his wife enrique's wife juana
00:27:34.440was pregnant she also coincidentally at around that same time allegedly had taken a lover named
00:27:41.920beltran de la cueva juana had a baby daughter who she named after herself because that's just what
00:27:48.440you do in those days in that place her baby is called juana and everybody was like okay we all
00:27:55.940secretly they're all just like okay we all kind of like are in agreement that enrique is clearly
00:28:01.020not the father of this baby right everyone just sort of accepted that and so that baby became
00:28:06.980known as juana la beltraneja so remember juana seniors alleged lover was beltran so her daughter
00:28:15.460was called Juana la Beltroneja meaning like the daughter of Beltran like everyone just called her
00:28:22.200that that was I'm sure Enrique freaked out about that a lot so now she was kind of the heir but
00:28:29.560like let's see what happens so at around the same time Isabelle's children Isabella and Alfonso were
00:28:37.260finally freed from living with their mother at the castle of Arevalo and they got to came up hang
00:28:42.020out at royal court with their half-brother their much older half-brother Enrique aka El Impotente
00:28:47.820this was great news for them because they were children and it's great to see the sun and
00:28:53.200socialize and not be trapped in a spooky ghost castle with your mother who is in the midst of
00:28:57.860a years-long mental health crisis this was bad news for Isabel because without her children0.70
00:29:04.040she lost what was left of her grip on reality allegedly Isabella Isabelle wound up not
00:29:11.780recognizing anyone not even family members and spent her days and nights wandering the empty
00:29:16.160castle corridors screaming at ghosts and I mean at this point can we all agree like who can blame
00:29:22.100her after what has happened to her apparently one of the ghosts who she saw who she screamed at was0.99
00:29:27.480that of her old nemesis De Luna and if he was haunting her even in death just like fuck that0.96
00:29:32.460guy honestly leave her alone during this time period also her son alfonso died suddenly at age0.98
00:29:38.98014 of oldie time disease reasons but there were rumors that maybe he was poisoned which given
00:29:46.200everyone who's around here you know as much a possibility as anything else so this means there
00:29:52.460was no male heirs because we had enrique's daughter juana la beltraneja we have isabella's
00:30:01.900daughter Isabella there's just no boy heirs anywhere you look and then we talked about this
00:30:09.640a bit in Isabella episode so when Isabella's daughter Isabella was a bit older she pretended
00:30:14.800to be going to visit her mother at the castle of Arevalo when in fact she was running off to get
00:30:19.100secretly married to Ferdinand and you can listen to that in season two but I will note that when
00:30:27.880Isabella became an adult Isabella she phases off against Enrique and various other people and then
00:30:35.460she with her husband Ferdinand like takes over and becomes the queen and she also in her adulthood0.81
00:30:41.540oversaw care of her mother Isabelle so in 1496 word reached Isabella that her mother was on her0.91
00:30:48.720deathbed and Isabella returned to the castle of Arevalo for real to be with her mother in her
00:30:54.160final days in her final in this the final years isabel had forgotten her own identity apparently0.99
00:31:02.620and just wandered around being sort of randomly aggressive shortly after this mother-daughter
00:31:08.000reunion isabel of portugal passed away aged 68 she was interred at next to her husband juan and
00:31:18.180her son alfonso i mean it just i guess pretty next to juan because he was the king and stuff
00:31:24.280but like not a good husband to her her legacy of this is where i started looking about her is just
00:31:32.820like she had such a strong vivacious personality and there's just undone by like the world just0.91
00:31:38.380like beating it out of her possibly literally but absolutely metaphorically but then this sort of1.00
00:31:45.740like super strong opinionated powerful smart woman thing like you see those traits in her1.00
00:31:52.140daughter Isabella who became one of the most consequential monarchs in European history1.00
00:31:58.500Catherine of Aragon her granddaughter who never backed down even after Henry VIII tried to dump
00:32:04.300her Juana of Castile who also was surrounded by horrible people who said she was mad and
00:32:10.980was also a very spirited person and then her great-granddaughter mary the first
00:32:16.000was the first woman named officially queen of england and she also was seen as being sort of
00:32:22.160quote-unquote hysterical and maybe a little bit mad so it all just kind of i don't know these
00:32:27.840family traits just sort of like repeating and repeating themselves so this is i guess this is
00:32:33.160a bit of a shorter episode than other ones because there's just not that much known about her there's
00:32:37.500like one biography ever written about her i think she had a really interesting life i think this
00:32:44.680would make a fabulous movie um and it's also got so many echoes of the other stories we were looking
00:32:53.300at for sure so we're going to give her her score isabel of portugal scandalousness this season
00:33:02.380it's interesting so far because we're looking at women who were sent to towers and or castles
00:33:08.440hidden away but none of them really so far have done scandalicious things really i mean we've
00:33:18.140talked in other episodes and other seasons about women who were sent to jail who were very
00:33:21.760scandalicious like francis howard but we've already talked about them they're not in this
00:33:25.260season so isabel portugal i feel like her skin like her personal she was surrounded by
00:33:30.740scandalousness but she personally behaved very unscandaliciously she married her husband there's
00:33:38.060no rumors of having affairs or anything she just like tried to do what she okay okay you know what
00:33:44.960I forgot there's just the Alfonso and then pushing or Alonzo having him push out the window
00:33:53.040but that's scheminess that's not scandalousness I'm gonna give her a two for scandalousness just0.57
00:33:58.860because she was surrounded by so much like a little bit wore off on her her scheminess i think1.00
00:34:04.500is great her scheminess score is high because she did a number of things like all of the trying to
00:34:10.080get like every day she'd have to like get her the king her husband to do what she said instead of
00:34:15.940what de luna was saying and then she'd have to do that constantly and then also like having to go
00:34:20.120head to head against de luna and then she won even though she was in the midst of like serious0.96
00:34:24.420medieval postpartum situations like 10 for scheminess for her her significance um personally
00:34:35.640like in a family tree type way like her descendants became consequential in the history of both
00:34:47.060england and also spain she herself though like she didn't have a chance to really do anything
00:34:56.060of significance other than scheme and get rid of de luna which was good for the world but then1.00
00:35:00.480enrique got rid of her i think i'm just a five for significance she gets a goddamn 10 for the1.00
00:35:06.840sexism bonus because she was treated horrifically by like every man around her but then she the1.00
00:35:15.720scheminess to sort of like keep fighting against it until one day just you know she couldn't fight1.00
00:35:20.800anymore and then she just wandered the castle screaming at ghosts and like I have days like
00:35:26.060that like totally not to disrespect people with mental health issues but I just want to put into
00:35:31.560perspective the fact that she's seen as this quote-unquote mad queen who just like oh my god
00:35:37.760she's going crazy where it's like no like here's a series of things that happened to her and like
00:35:42.260of course like not having anyone you could trust like being at that heightened level of paranoia
00:35:48.000like being maybe poisoned for years and then having like traumatic birth experiences and then being
00:35:54.280shut up in a castle and you can't visit anyone it's like yeah i think a lot of people would end
00:35:59.180up screaming at ghosts having gone through all of that so that gives her a total score of 27 which
00:36:06.100i think is very on par very on par with the season so far margaret pole also had a 27 margaret of
00:41:43.360Kingdoms were reduced to cinders, and armies scattered like bones in the dust.
00:41:48.980Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight.
00:41:56.460But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins.
00:42:00.740This is old school adventuring at its most cruel.
00:42:04.240Your torch ticks down in real time, and when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job.
00:42:10.060This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make.
00:42:17.720This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.
00:42:22.360Join 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.
00:42:33.160See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.
00:42:40.760You've watched them from the outside your whole life, on TV, on stage, on the cover.
00:42:46.420The success that always looks like it happened to someone on a different planet.
00:42:59.660The distance between you and them, it's a lot shorter than anyone's letting on.
00:43:04.400On my podcast, Reppin', I sit down with the people you've been watching,
00:43:08.060And I asked them who they actually are, not the brand, the person, where they started, what it costs them, what almost broke them, their grit, their courage, their resilience, and the lessons they've learned.