Noble Blood - Juana La Loca

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

Depending on which stories you read, Juana of Castile is either a woman who went mad after the death of her husband, or a maligned figure who was manipulated by the men in her life so they could rule Spain in her place. Her life is a perfect example of the stories we like to tell about women who go mad. [Support Noble Blood via our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/noblebloodtales. Noble Blood merch is available here: https://store.dftba.com/collections/noble-blood] Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. Culturally, we are obsessed with the idea of women going mad. It's a theme that's pervaded literature for high. hundreds of years. It's a woman, sometimes young, usually beautiful, who becomes a tragic figure hold away in a gothic decrepit mansion. The woman loses her mind, and then, usually, her life. There are too many examples to name, the Lady of Shalot, Kathy from Wuthering Heights, Bertha in Janeir, Miss Havisham, and, of course, perhaps most iconically, Ophelia.

Feminist literary critic and Princeton professor Elaine Schoelter wrote, Ophelia became the prototype, not only of the deranged woman in Victorian literature and art, but also of the young female asylum patient. In fiction, the madwoman usually comes from a society of rigid gender roles. Take Ophelia again. Ophelia's madness is the thing that allows her to break free of the limitations and restrictions on women in her society. In the play, her hair that was once neatly covered and pulled back is, after she goes mad, let down, wavy and untamed at its full lengths. And as Elaine Showalter points out, Ophelia also breaks free of her sexual propriety.

Ophelia becomes provocative, singing body songs. and giving away flowers in a not-so-suttle allusion to her deflowering herself. That brings up another aspect of the pop culture portrayal of the woman gone mad. That madness is the inverse of proper female decorum when it comes to sexuality. A mad woman is one who wants, one who has explicit female desires. In a 1995 essay on Ophelia, Emmy Hamana writes about the idea of mad women as erotomaniacs. She writes,

this is based on masculine assumptions that women are more inclined to go mad since they are closer to the irrational by nature, and that young women's madness is, more often than not, caused by sexual frustration of unrequited love. There it is, the woman who goes,

crazy because she wants a man she cannot have. Perhaps it's even the origin of a particularly sexist modern trend of dudes telling their friends that all of their clingy exes are, quote, crazy. The link between sexual frustration or desire and madness or hysteria in women might also help to explain the Victorian invention of the vibrator used to induce what's doctors called paroxysms in women in order to restore their sanity. But the stories, when it comes to our fictional heroines, don't usually end well. Mad women get a brief chance to break free from social conventions, to scream in a society that forced them to whisper. But then these women's

are disposed of. They die by beautiful suicide in flowy white gowns. in water if they're beautiful, like Ophelia or the Lady of Shalot, or by fire, if they're not as beautiful, like Miss Havisham or Bertha in Jane Eyre. Or, more sinisterly, they're disposed of, deposited in asylums, or the attic, like the heroine of the Charlotte Perkins-Gilman story, The Yellow Wallpaper. If you've never read the Yellow Wallpaper, you absolutely should. It was written in 1892, and the story is framed as the diary of a young woman who suffers from what might be in modern parlance called postnatal depression. And so after this woman gives birth, her husband decides that the best treatment for her is isolating her in an attic room.

Over the course of the story, the narrator begins to hallucinate, to become as mad as her either sinister. or misguided, husband believed her to be. Was the narrator mad all along, or did the prolonged period of boredom and isolation drive her crazy? That brings us to the unlucky subject of today's podcast, Juana of Castile, or, as she's known more colloquially, Juana La Loco. Though Juana was technically queen of Castile for over 50 years, and of Argonne for 30 of those, her title was in name only. For the vast majority of her reign,

she was imprisoned in a castle in Tordesias, declared insane by the men in her life who wanted to rule in her place. First her husband, and then her father, and then her son. As a literary figure, Hwana is irresistible. Her supposed madness was brought on by her obsessive love for her husband, After his death, they say that Juanah refused to let them bury the body so that she could continually open the casket and kiss his cold face. There maybe couldn't be a better example of an Ophelia archetype in real life, love-sick over a man to the point that it destroyed her sanity.

But it's impossible to know to what extent those stories are true, or whether they were just convenient propaganda for her father to use. and his claim to her kingdom. There are versions of Juana's story that try to paint her as a maligned feminist of history, a woman who was perfectly in her right mind, wrongfully accused of madness on purpose by men who knew that they could have that power.

But some of Juana's behavior was genuinely strange, and as an heir of the deeply inbred Habsburg family, mental illness was an occupational hazard for European monarch. By the end of Hwana's imprisonment, after decades in isolation, it's irrefutable that her mental condition had collapsed. But plenty of kings ruled freely, even as they behaved in ways that were charitably called eccentric. Being a woman made it easy for Hwana's rivals to dispose of her, and to turn her life into easy, appealing fiction. She's the type of story about a mad woman that we can't help but want to tell over and over again.

I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. Even if you've never heard of Juana before, you've probably heard of her parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Argonne and Castile, respectively. But their union meant that the pair of them ruled a dynastically united Spain. The two of them are famous for funding Christopher Colle, Columbus's exploration of what was then called the new world, and for being the Catholic monarchs that began the Spanish Inquisition and forced the conversion of all of the Jews and Muslims in Spain. You've probably also heard of Juana's younger sister, Catherine of Erdogam, who became Henry

the 8th's first wife. Juanah was never supposed to be a queen. She had an older brother and an older sister in line before her. But still, when she was young, she was incredibly well-educated, so that one day she would be ready for an advantageous marriage. That means that she was taught all of the languages of the Iberian Peninsula, Castilian, Catalan, and Gallico-Portuguese, as well as French and Latin. To her religious parents' dismay, as she was educated, Juana became something of a religious skeptic. But none of that mattered, really, when she turned 16, and it was finally time for her to fulfill her real purpose, marriage.

Juana was betrothed to Philip of Flanders, Duke of Burgundy, also known as Philip the Handsome. This is where I will say, if you are near your phone or a computer, you should absolutely Google a photo of Philip the Handsome just to get an idea of what passed for good looks in the 15th century. Baby bangs on men were clearly a look that worked back then. But by all accounts, Philip was quite the charmer, and the pair were married, first by double proxy, and then in person in 1496, when Hwana arrived in Flanders with a fleet of over 100 ships.

Their marriage was supposed to be on October 20th, but the story goes that Hwana arrived and met Philip in person on the 19th, and was so immediately overcome with love or lust, that the pair of them begged to be married that very day so that they could consummate their relationship that night. Philip's handsomeness clearly worked on Juana, and the two of them had three children while they lived in Flanders. It was during this period that something unexpected was happening to the line of succession back in Spain.

A year after Wana married Philip, her brother, Juan, the heir to the throne, died. But to the great relief of everyone, Juan's wife, Margaret of Austria, was seven months pregnant at the time, and the hope was that she would have a son and a new heir who could take his or her father's place in the line of succession. But at December, Margaret gave birth to a stillborn girl. With that line ended, next in line was Juan's older sister,

Isabella the Queen of Portugal, wife of Manuel of Portugal. People in Spain were a little reticent about a female queen, but the good news for everyone was that Isabella was also pregnant, and if she had a son, that would assuage all of those concerns. And lo and behold, a son was born, Miguel, in August of 1498. But Isabella of Portugal had had a difficult pregnancy during which, which, and she was born. And, lo and behold, a son was born, Miguel, Miguel, in August of 1498. But, but Isabella of Portugal, but Isabella of Portugal had had a difficult pregnancy during which she had traveled extensively, and that might partly explain why hours after childbirth, Isabella died. The kingdom had Little Miguel, but not for long. The infant prince of Portugal and the Spanish kingdoms,

the boy who would have united all of the Iberian kingdoms, died when he was just two years old in his grandmother Isabella's arms. So in just three years, Juana became next in line to be queen, and she was officially recognized by the legislative bodies, the Cortezes. But during her time away in Flanders, rumors had already begun to spread about her mental state. Juana, who had been madly in love with her husband, Philip the handsome, since the moment she saw him,

was also wildly jealous when it came to her husband's infidelities. For what it was worth, her jealousy was merited. He was a philanderer. Once, Juana caught her husband in the throes of passion with one of her ladies in waiting, a woman who was known in court for her luscious, shiny, long hair. Wana sheared the woman's hair off herself and then left the locks on Phillips' pillows, a Tom Hagen horsehead maneuver centuries before the godfather. Juana desperately wanted her husband to love her, to stop his wandering eye.

She tried love potions and tonics, literal snake oil, all to no effect. Wana and Philip had wild fights. Sometimes those fights would end in Philip literally confining and locking Juana in her rooms, where she would refuse food and sleep as a tactic for control. That was a frequent strategy. when Juana tantrumed. In 1504, her mother, Isabella, was sick with a fever, and Hwana went to visit her in Castile.

It's unclear exactly what happened, but there was some sort of altercation there, either between Hwana and her mother, or between Hwana and her husband back home in Flanders, that meant that Hwana wanted to go back home immediately, through France. The problem was Castile was at war with France, and it would be incredibly dangerous for her to transport herself on land.

Castile might be at war with France, Juana declared, but I'm not. She was completely irrational in her determination, so much so that her traveling companion, Bishop Foneska, had to physically take her horses back to the stables himself to prevent Wana from leaving. When Hwana reached the lock stables, she screamed and shook the bars and stayed at, up all night, refusing the basic comforts of food or blankets. So that was Juana's reputation

when later that year, her mother Isabella, died. Argonne and Castile being separate kingdoms meant that upon her mother's death, Juana became the queen of Castile. Although Isabella had stipulated that if Juana was unfit or unwilling to rule, Juana's dad, Ferdinand would be allowed to govern until Juana's eldest son turned 20. But Ferdinand had been ruling a united Argonne and Castile alongside his now-deceased wife, and he was not willing to let that go. With Juana and her husband still in Flanders,

Ferdinand printed coins that said, Fernand and Joanna, king and queen of Castile, and tried to persuade the Cortes that Hwana was so ill that she would not be able to govern, which led to the court. appointing him, Ferdinand, as the kingdom's administrator and governor, and as Juana's guardian. But Philip the handsome, Juana's husband, wasn't going to take that sitting down. He wanted to rule Castile, and so he also printed coins with his and his wife's names.

For her part, Juana attempted to dispel rumors about her insanity. She wrote a letter from Brussels to a Signor de'Eye. Devere, that I haven't been able to find translated into English, but the general idea is that she acknowledges the stories about her jealous passions, but that jealousy is a trait that she inherited from her wonderful mother, whom they all acknowledge, was just one of the most excellent women in the world. But Ferdinand had already gotten the Cortes to appoint him as Juana's guardian. Antoine and Phil the Handsome were still in Flanders, so Ferdinandin moved in to try to assert his power. He was also looking to edge Juana out of succession entirely by getting married

again with the intention of producing an heir. Ferdinand's second wife was Germain de Foix, the niece of Louis XVI the 12th of France, and in classic Habsburg fashion, Ferdinand's own grandniece. The two never produced an heir, and the move actually backfired on Ferdinand, whose pro-French policies only bolstered support for the husband and wife pair of Juana and Philip. With the nobles on their side, Juana and Philip made their way to Castile to try to cement their power. Although Ferdinand and Philip were rivals here, they did put their differences aside for the mutually beneficial arrangement, where they met secretly to declare Hwana unfit to rule because of her, quote, infirmities and sufferings. Ferdinand did briefly attempt to challenge Philip for Castile, but knowing a losing battle when he saw one, pretty quickly, Ferdinand retreated back to Argonne.

So Philip the handsome was King of Castile, with all of the power that he took from his supposedly infirm wife. But he wouldn't have the power for long. Philip got sick, and though the official cause of death was typhoid, many people thought that he was poisoned, possibly on the orders of full. Ferdinand. Mad with love or just mad, Juana was bereft. Philip the handsome was just 28 when he died. Juana was pregnant with their sixth child. It's at this point that, if you believe the stories,

Juana had a breakdown. She refused to be parted from her husband's dead body. For months, they say, she didn't leave the side of the embalmed corpse. and she frequently requested that the casket be opened over and over again so that she could gaze upon her dead husband's handsome face once more and kiss his cold and waxy lips. At least dead in his coffin, Philip the handsome couldn't incite his wife's jealousy, or so you might think.

One accompanied the casket to its final resting place in Granada, and she insisted that the procession only travel at night, night so that other women wouldn't see Philip the handsome's body and be tempted by the corpse. It was during these travels that Hwana gave birth to a daughter named Catherine for her sister. After she finally let them put Philip's body in the ground for good, Hwana returned to a Castile plagued by disaster, with a literal plague, first of all, but also famine. Juana was out of her depth. On one hand, some of those. problems would have been impossible for a monarch to solve. But Hwana also probably did suffer from

some mental illness that was wildly exacerbated by the death of her husband. It was a loss that she would never be able to get over. For whatever reason, Hanna was incapable of ruling her kingdom effectively. Against her will, the Cortez set up a regency council for Hwana in 1507, and Hwana just didn't have the resources or the tactical ability to raise the support she would need in order to protect her right to the throne. Just as the plague and famine were finally letting up the next year, her father, Ferdinand, swooped in. He was promptly placed as regent. In 1509, Ferdinand confined his daughter to the royal palace at Tordesius on the basis of her supposed insanity. There are rumors about her paranoia, suicidal urges, and her necrophilia with the dead body of her husband,

but it's tricky to parse out exactly what's true and what isn't. It's always challenging to retroactively diagnose illness in historical figures, mental or otherwise, but it's especially tricky here because it was in Ferdinand and Phillips' interest for the general public to think that Juana was so insane that they could rule in her stead. And we know for a fact that both had forged letters and documents from her at different points to suit their purposes. Ferdinand, Juanita's father, was never able to have a new heir, and so, though he didn't like it, Juana's eldest son, Charles, was the heir to the thrones of Argonne and Castile. Ferdinand especially hated Charles because he was raised in Flanders, and Ferdinand saw his grandson as a foreigner.

Ferdinand tried to instead put another one of Juana's sons, a younger son who was raised in Castile, next in line for the throne. But it didn't ultimately work. Charles and poor Hwana were left the kingdoms jointly when Ferdinand died. Although for a brief period after his death, Argonne was ruled by Ferdinand's illegitimate son Alonso. They say that for the rest of his life,

Ferdinand only visited his daughter Hwana twice. while she was in prison. Young Charles inherited the kingdom and also custody of his mad mother in Tortillas, where she was kept for the rest of her life. Charles V in Spain would go on to become

the Holy Roman Emperor as Charles I. For 45 years, Juana remained imprisoned. There was one year where she was briefly freed by rebels against Charles, but he swiftly put an end to that and put Hwana back in Tortoise. Charles instituted a policy of isolation for his mother. Quote,

it seems to me that the best and most suitable thing for you to do, he wrote to her attendance, is to make sure that no person speaks with her majesty, for no good could come of it. The longer Hwana was confined, the worse her condition became. Although it's hard to pretend that being locked up and more or less ignored for a few decades,

wouldn't make someone, well, lose their mind. By the end of her life, she was paranoid that the nuns wanted to kill her. Juana refused to eat or sleep or bathe or change her clothes. She died at age 75 on Good Friday in 1555. They buried Juana in the Royal Chapel beside her parents and her husband. And even though her life ended there, alone and all but forgotten, all six of Juana's children would go on to become monarchs in their own right. France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, Hungary, and Portugal.

Whatever mental illness they might have inherited from their mother, they also inherited her royal blood. That's the story of Juana La Loco, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit more about one of her most macabre relatives. I think you're going to like this one. And I'm Egovod. My next guest,

you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.

He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be.

Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Yeah. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans,

a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help. help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The part of Juana's story that tends to get the most attention, perhaps justifiably,

is the exhumation of her husband's corpse and her rumored necrophilia. But there's another story about a dead body in the nobility of the Eberian Peninsula that I think is worth our attention. Peter I, the first, king of Portugal, was a direct ancestor of Juana, albeit one almost 200 years before she was born. He was in love with a woman. named Inez De Castro, and they were forbidden to marry, and though the story of their lives are fascinating and maybe even a story for another future podcast, it's the story of Inez's death,

or rather her life after death, that I think seems appropriate to talk about at the moment. Ines had only been Peter's mistress in her lifetime, and when she died, he wanted to find a way to legitimize their children in the line of succession. He claimed that he had secretly married Ines before she died, but there was no proof of that, and the Pope refused to recognize that secret marriage or the legitimacy of the children that they had. So in an attempt to force the court to recognize her as the legitimate queen

and as a show of his love for her and his power, rumor has it that Peter exhumed Inez's body from her grave, dressed the body in all of the regalia of a massive coronation, dress, jewels, robe, fur, and crown, and held a coronation for his queen, even though she was just a dead body. Peter then forced every single noble in his court to kiss the hem of his dead love's robes

and then to kiss her cold, waxy hands. For what it's worth, one ever called him Peter El Loco. But for Hwana, maybe it ran in the family. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Noblebloodtales.com.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everyone, I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't

feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.