As Juana’s ship sailed ever closer to Spanish shores, Katherine settled back into her normal routine. And her normal routine involved worrying about if and when her marriage to Prince Henry would take place and how to manage her finances in the meantime.
No matter how many hours she spent in prayer, or how determined she felt about fulfilling her destiny by marrying Arthur’s brother, Katherine was in a state of limbo. Henry VII would neither commit himself to the marriage nor officially end it and send her back to Spain. According to the 1503 treaty, the marriage should have taken place once the prince “completed the fourteenth year of his age,” which was the minimum legal requirement for a male under church law unless an additional papal dispensation was obtained. Since Henry had turned fifteen on June 28, 1505, Katherine should have become a bride again shortly after that. Indeed, when she met Juana at Windsor, she should have been Prince Henry’s wife. She was not.
On the day before the crucial birthday, the prince had issued a protestation against the match, as church law entitled him to do, declaring that because it had been arranged “during his minority,” it was “null and void.” Clearly this was a ruse organized by the king to keep his options open: just because the original betrothal was “null and void” did not mean that the entire affair was off, just that it was no longer so definite. A wedding could still take place, with the boy’s consent, sometime in the future. Katherine, taught to see England as the country her parents, and indeed God, had chosen for her, was in despair. She wanted the marriage, she believed in it, she would do everything she could to bring it about, but persuading the king to finally agree and set a firm date was another matter entirely. He was in no hurry, for he had it all ways: his son was not bound, because the betrothal had not been binding on his side, whereas Katherine remained affianced because she had been well above the minimum age of consent for a woman when the treaty was signed. She found herself trapped in an impossible situation.
And money was a terrible problem too. The question of whether Henry or her parents should pay for her keep had surfaced quite soon after Arthur’s death. Sometimes Henry gave her money; mostly he did not. Her parents had been of little use. She should “accept whatever she can get” from Henry, she was told firmly. Since Henry was on almost first-name terms with every coin in his treasury, that was expecting much. So she had borrowed. When her parents remonstrated that for a princess of Spain to borrow was “a thing unheard of,” she retorted that she had not “contracted debts for luxuries” but because “otherwise she would have had nothing to eat.” Histrionics apart—and they were an area in which she quickly became as adept as Juana—the daily struggle to make ends meet sometimes overwhelmed her.
What she was really dreading was that she might be compelled to sell, or pawn, some of the plate and jewels that she had brought with her from Spain. That, she knew, was the road to disaster, for these items were to form about one-third of the final amount outstanding on her dowry. If she let any of her “treasures” go, she would end up with a massive shortfall, and she knew Henry well enough to fear his reaction to that. Even finding the second installment of her dowry was such a problem for Ferdinand, particularly after Isabella’s death left him short of funds himself, that he was constantly begging Henry for postponements. So even assuming that Henry finally consented to the wedding, the nuptials could be jeopardized because her dowry was not fully paid. It was a nightmare.
Yet, with Juana and Philip in control of Castile, and of Castilian finances, perhaps things might improve. If Katherine really did hope for that—and certainly Ferdinand encouraged her to believe that Philip might take on the dowry debts—she was to be disappointed. Too keen to get his hands on Castilian funds for himself and his rapacious councillors, many of whom had flocked to Spain with him, Philip was unlikely to lose sleep over Katherine’s dowry. He could hardly have cared less about her troubles. His focus was on preventing Juana’s trying to assert herself once she was on home soil.
If the Venetian ambassador, Vincenzo Quirini, is to be believed, Philip’s disquiet was well founded. “It is evident,” Quirini reported back to the Doge, “that on reaching Spain, the Queen [Juana] will choose to govern and be mistress.” She and Philip reached Spain on April 26, 1506, when their ship docked at Coruna.
However, if Juana really did intend to seize control, she would need allies and information. She had neither. In fact, she was even more marginalized than her sister. Katherine, aiming for the more lowly role of consort, albeit one of influence, was not isolated. She went to court; she talked with King Henry; she wrote and received letters; while not always convinced that every one of her ladies was faithful to her, she had some, like Maria de Salinas, to whom she was devoted; even if she never liked him, the Spanish ambassador, de Puebla, brought her news, letters, and advice. Still a novice on the stage of international politics, Katherine was beginning to learn how the world worked; she could not have done that without knowing at least a little of what was happening outside the walls of her palace.
Juana, although now a queen regnant, had few such channels of information. The women around her—she had at last conceded that there should be some—were chosen by Philip, her household officials were bribed by her husband, she had few visitors, and she was fed misinformation whenever it suited him. And he was particularly eager to sow distrust between Juana and her father. The Spanish ambassador reported a conversation he had had with her in a meeting grudgingly allowed by Philip after keeping him waiting for “many days.” She asked the ambassador “very tenderly” about her father, “six months having elapsed since she had received news of him.” She inquired fearfully “whether he [Ferdinand] wished her as much harm as she was told he did.” The ambassador was in no doubt over why she had been led to believe that, reporting that he knew
for certain that Philip’s councillors had given the Queen to understand that her father bears her ill will, and would fain not see her in Spain, in order that on going thither with this impression, she might, at their first meeting, treat him unbecomingly; whilst King Ferdinand, being informed in like manner, that his daughter loved him not, and was such as they described her, would the more readily consent to deprive her of the government.
However, while keen to disabuse her of this notion and perfectly well aware of how the land lay, the ambassador was careful not to foster dissension between husband and wife. “Her father loved her and her husband as his very dear children, and had no greater wish in the world than to see them,” he assured her.
Pinning her hopes on her father and trusting that he really did love her as much as the ambassador affirmed, she was anxious not to do or say anything to upset him. Thus she refused to confirm the local privileges previously enjoyed by the people of Coruna, simply because she wanted to make sure that her father thought this the correct way to proceed. She would commit herself to nothing. Again, Quirini noticed what was happening:
Queen Juana continues to lead the same life of seclusion as in Flanders, nor has she received the visits of any of the envoys, and it is said, persists in not allowing herself to be spoken to, until she sees her father; nor is she visible to any man, save a few servants.
Unfortunately, her policy of waiting for her father suited Philip only too well. The less she did on her own initiative, the more time he had to consolidate his own hold on power, and if he wanted to portray her as unstable, it was better that she saw as few people as possible, because she behaved so normally in public that his lies would quickly be exposed. For Juana, as Bergenroth in the nineteenth century and historians such as Chrimes and Loades in the twentieth century have realized, was not the hopelessly deranged woman of legend.
Philip continued to try to control her in the best way he knew how: there were “those nights when he sleeps with her,” or so Quirini informs us. Juana had adored Philip when they were first married, reveling in the physical side of their relationship as much as he did. Clearly, she still cared about him despite his infidelities and his bullying or she would not have been so jealous of other women. But if Quirini is right, and she wanted to govern and rule as a sovereign queen, which is quite likely to have been the case, she knew she could face confrontation with her husband. Then anything could happen: an agreement with him might be possible; he might return to Burgundy and leave her to govern Castile; he might change and become a support rather than a hindrance; more probably, he would try to bully and dominate her just as he always had done. In any case, she knew that she was as yet in no position to stand up to him. Thus, while making love to Philip might seem proof that Juana remained his puppet, it is also possible that, like her sister, she was learning the value of dissimulation.
Yet she could do nothing to drive a wedge between her father and her husband. True, they viewed each other with hearty dislike and mistrust, but both saw that their best chance of power was to ignore her. And this they did. Knowing that he had insufficient resources to defeat Philip in battle, Ferdinand chose to continue the accommodation he had already made with his son-in-law rather than treat with his daughter and risk war with her husband. Indeed, to her distress, he did not even meet her.
Instead, on June 27, 1506, he met Philip at Villafafila to iron out an agreement. Neither thought to complicate matters by inviting Juana. From now on, Philip and Ferdinand concurred, “the most intimate friendship and alliance” would prevail between them, Ferdinand leaving the government of Castile in the capable hands of Philip, who was, Ferdinand hypocritically announced, his “very dear and much beloved son.” With expressions of loving regret, the pair excluded Juana. “For the sake of honesty and out of respect,” they said, they could not explain their reasons. While paying lip service to “honesty and respect,” they used the alliance to destroy Juana’s credibility. Unfortunately, said Philip and Ferdinand, lying through their teeth, she was “not inclined, on any condition, to occupy herself in the despatch of any business concerning the royal prerogatives and government.” If she did want to interfere, father and husband continued, “it would be to the total destruction and perdition of these kingdoms.” Much better, then, to leave it all to the men.
It got worse. Wary that she might somehow evade their efforts and drum up support, they tried to counter that danger too:
Considering her infirmities and sufferings, which for the sake of her honour are not expressed … and being desirous to remedy and prevent the evils and inconveniences which would be the consequences thereof, it has been concerted and concluded between us [Ferdinand] and the most serene King, our son, that in case the … most serene Queen, either from her own choice or from being persuaded by other persons … should attempt, or that they should attempt, to meddle in the government, or to confound and oppose the said treaty; neither we, nor the said most serene King, our son, shall suffer it, but on the contrary shall be unanimous in preventing it.
Juana’s hands appeared effectively tied, her betrayal complete.
But that was to reckon without Ferdinand’s talent for duplicity. On the very same day that he had given everything to his “much beloved son,” he denounced the whole treaty as being obtained under duress. He had gone to meet Philip, Ferdinand said, “with that good faith which ought to subsist between a father and son,” only to find that Philip had such a “powerful and strong army” that Ferdinand’s “royal person” was “in notorious and manifest danger.” If he was in peril, he felt, so were his kingdoms, “considering what is going on in these times.” Thus he had consented to all that was demanded purely to save his own life.
Philip, maintained Ferdinand, was “determined to usurp … the administration of these kingdoms” that in fact belonged “by right” to Ferdinand himself. Not content with that, Philip had sunk to “depriving the most Serene Queen, Doña Juana, his wife and my daughter, of her liberty and all that belongs to her as heiress and proprietress of these kingdoms.” Had he had been “at full liberty,” Ferdinand protested, he would never have agreed to “such enormous injustice.” As soon as he was in a position to do so, he promised, he would restore Juana’s freedom and her throne, in the process recovering “the government again which for many reasons belongs to me.”
Reluctant to make too public a denunciation in case it led to “dangers, fear and apprehension”—or so he said—Ferdinand swore all of this before the public notary, who happened to be his secretary, and some of the members of his council. At a single stroke, Ferdinand effectively muddied the waters and gave himself every chance to interfere in Castilian affairs from then onward. Philip was on the receiving end of a political master class.
The real loser was Juana. However, deciding that Ferdinand, of whom she had spoken “very tenderly,” cared for her more than her husband did and could provide refuge and succor, she determined to talk to him. This meant taking independent action for the first time since she had arrived back in Castile. She used the pretense of a gentle ride in the park of the castle of Benavente, where she had been staying with her husband, to spur her horse and ride furiously to meet her father. She failed miserably. Pursued by Philip’s soldiers, she was cornered in a humble bakery. She did not escape again.
Unaware of her daring bid for freedom, or possibly preferring not to know of it, Ferdinand made no attempt to visit her himself. All he did was to justify his actions to Henry VII, stating piously that he desired only peace and tranquillity in his lands and with his children, so that he could think about going on a crusade to North Africa to fight the Moors. Thus, he told the English king, he had come to an additional agreement with Philip that he himself would rule Castile should Philip and Juana be absent. Then, after advising Philip to “cultivate a better understanding with the Queen, his wife,” whose health depended “upon gentle measures being used,” but still without setting eyes on her, Ferdinand left Castile and left Spain, not, in fact, for his much-heralded crusade, but to deal with more prosaic concerns in Italy. He did make it clear to Philip that he would not stand for Juana’s being incarcerated in a “strong fortress,” but that was as far as he went in condemning the way his daughter was being treated.
Perhaps because her pleading letters had touched him after all, or more probably because he was eager not to lose the prized English alliance, Ferdinand did remember Katherine. Close to his departure, Ferdinand reminded Philip that money was still owed on Katherine’s dowry. This had become Philip’s responsibility; the debt was Castile’s, not Ferdinand’s. Katherine would be “well married” if the money was sent to England, “lost” if it was not, so Philip should send it as quickly as possible. And knowing Henry, Ferdinand advised Philip to make sure he got a receipt.
Ferdinand may have made a token effort on Katherine’s behalf, but he had left Juana on her own. Philip seemed to have won. Contemptuous of his father-in-law’s admonitions on how Juana should be treated, he did his utmost to propagate notions of her insanity, but he found himself thwarted in his efforts to imprison her by members of the Cortes, who insisted on seeing her for themselves before countenancing such a plan. When they did see her, she behaved so normally that they refused to sanction Philip’s request. Yet their support was limited: they also accepted Philip as their king. Juana’s position remained dire.
She was saved by a completely unexpected event. In September 1506, the couple traveled to the city of Burgos, where, within days, Philip became violently ill, allegedly because he overindulged in various banquets and festivities. Inevitably, because everything happened so swiftly, rumors of poison surfaced. In fact, his high temperature and fever give little clue as to what was wrong with him; in the days before antibiotics, the slightest infection could become life-threatening in a matter of hours. And sickness was rampant in Castile that autumn.
Juana’s feelings for Philip were always in turmoil. Cruel and heartless though he often was, he was her husband and the father of her children. As the daughter of Isabella the Catholic, Juana had had the concept of marriage as a sacrament well instilled. So, faced with his dreadful illness and vulnerability, she found it within herself to become the exemplar of the devoted and dutiful wife again, if only for one last time. Showing no signs of instability and brushing aside concern for her own health—she was five months pregnant at the time—she nursed him selflessly, never leaving his side, doing all she possibly could to save him, and always believing that he would recover. It was to no avail. Six days later, on September 25, 1506, Philip died. He was just twenty-eight years old.
Juana was now at a crossroads. With Philip a lifeless corpse and Ferdinand safely in Italy, her chance to take charge as Castile’s “proprietary ruler” had arrived. This was the moment for her to show what she was made of. And she tried to do just that.
Still, the odds were stacked against her. In the eyes of her mother’s former confessor, the strict, austere, and pitiless Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo, a staunch upholder of the Inquisition, she had become a deadly enemy. Perhaps alarmed by the tactics she had once employed to force her mother to allow her to return to Burgundy, perhaps harboring doubts about her religious probity, perhaps viewing government as a male preserve, he convinced himself that Juana was incapable of ruling. And he stepped in swiftly. On the day before Philip’s death, he set himself up as the leader of a Regency Council and requested Ferdinand to return to Castile. Juana and her lands, he proclaimed, needed her father. That, though, was not what Juana had in mind. To work with Ferdinand to curb Philip’s excess ambition and assert her own, and her children’s, entitlements was quite a different matter from asking her father to rule in her place. And with Philip dead, the situation had changed.
For the newly widowed queen to overcome such a powerful and determined adversary as Cisneros, she needed supporters, a healthy treasury, and luck. Instead, she faced depleted finances, a divided Cortes, and a people ravaged by hunger, drought, poor harvests, and disease. And two opposing factions (one led by the archbishop, and the other consisting of Philip’s erstwhile adherents, led by Doña Elvira’s scheming brother, Juan Manuel) competed to influence her. She had loyal supporters in her secretary, Juan Lopez, a man who had once served her mother and earned the trust of both Catholic Monarchs, and in her treasurer, Ochoa de Landa, but they wielded little power compared to the forces ranged against their mistress.
In those early days after Philip’s death, Juana was exhausted and emotionally drained. Yet, like her mother and her sister, she had courage, determination, and inner strength. It was fortunate that she did, for she knew what she wanted to do: she wanted to rule, and, in particular, she wanted to safeguard her eldest son’s inheritance. When she and Philip had sailed to Spain to claim Castile, Juana had been forced to leave Charles and his sisters with Margaret, her former sister-in-law. Margaret was lovingly caring for the boy, who was now six years old, but he was being brought up in Burgundian, not Spanish, traditions, with French, not Spanish, as his native language. And to Charles, his mother was a distant figure who had spent so many years in Spain after his birth that he barely knew her. Yet Juana’s sense of family and dynasty was inbred: she would fight her own crusade to ensure that one day her eldest son would gain everything that she and Philip had possessed. Provided Ferdinand did not have a male heir with his new wife, Queen Germaine, Charles would gain Aragon as well. Combined with a chance of becoming Holy Roman Emperor when his grandfather, Maximilian, died, his legacy would indeed be huge. And in his mother he had a noble champion, one whose faith in him never wavered.
However, in the aftermath of Philip’s death, she did nothing. She would sign nothing, she would see no one. It was bound to take her some weeks to recover from the shock and to adjust to her own dramatically altered circumstances, but she also needed time to think and to plan. Only if she was at the mercy of others did she rush into tantrums and exhibitionist behavior; in her current situation, with her own and her children’s futures at stake, she needed a cool head. Then, when she did decide to act, she did so decisively. On December 18, she canceled all the grants and offices with which Philip had shamelessly rewarded his followers, all of which, she said, had been handed out without her permission and to the detriment of both herself and of the state. Now she was ready to sign whatever documents were necessary for the government of her realms. Next, she tried to gather men around her to re-form a council similar to that of her mother, a council that reported to her and acted only upon her authority. If these measures worked, she would be well on the way to achieving her goal: time would tell.
Then, just before Christmas and in the depths of a bitterly cold winter, she made what proved to be a fateful move, one that would fuel a myth that has lasted to the present day. She ordered that Philip’s coffin should be escorted in a slow and solemn procession from the Monastery of Miraflores, just outside of Burgos, where it then was, to Granada so that he could rest close to Queen Isabella. Philip had wanted that, and Juana wanted it for him. But she wanted it for herself and for Charles too. A symbol of the triumph of Christian Spain against the infidel, Granada had iconic status. If Philip lay close to the great Catholic herself, his place within Spanish history was assured. It was politic for Juana, the sorrowful widow, to accede him the honors due to a great king, a rightful king—and a king with a strong, if young, male heir. Already Juana strove to enhance Charles’s position. No matter what the provocation, and there would be much, she would never do anything to the boy’s detriment. Then again, as she well understood, the journey to Granada was in her own interests too, for the grandees of Andalusia, hoping for a more malleable monarch than Ferdinand, could form her power base. And Philip’s Burgundians were more likely to drift back home than ride to an area where even they could see they would be unwelcome.
Thus it was that, accompanied by the prayers of monks, Philip’s candlelit cortège left the confines of the monastery for its last journey. Juana, now eight months pregnant, was at her husband’s side, but she could not go far. Within three days, she had to stop or risk losing her baby. In January 1507, in the town of Torquemada, Juana went into labor. The birth was difficult, but the child lived. Juana named her Catalina, presumably after her own sister, whom Juana had so recently seen in England. Although debilitated and weak, Juana was then itching to resume her interrupted journey.
With hindsight, her insistence that Philip be buried only in Granada was the pivotal moment of her entire life, the one decision upon which she has been judged ever since. She played directly into her enemies’ hands. The legend started, and the legend spread, that she was a woman driven mad by grief, so distraught that she could not bear to be parted from Philip even by death and therefore would not allow his body to be laid into the pitiless earth at all but wanted it with her forever. It was said that she opened the coffin, that she kissed Philip’s decaying feet, that she allowed no woman except herself anywhere near the corpse. The stories grew and grew. She was a woman who was “crazy from love.” She was “Juana the Mad,” an epithet by which she is known in Spain to this day.
The tales were certainly music to Ferdinand’s ears, and his supporters were assiduous in repeating them; but are they true? To those with an open mind, Juana’s actions speak for themselves, indicating sanity, not madness. To bury Philip in her mother’s chosen city was shrewd politicking; to act against his avaricious advisers shows decisive statesmanship; to try to glean support wherever she could reveals the sort of common sense that Isabella herself possessed. And, as a recent biographer of Juana points out, Pedro Mártir, the chronicler who was with Juana on her gruesome journey with Philip’s remains and was not a known supporter of the queen, made no mention of the alleged coffin-opening at all. In the highly unlikely event that Juana had opened the coffin, a possible cause might have been to be certain that the corpse was indeed Philip’s. He had wanted his heart taken back to Burgundy. Knowing his followers as she did, Juana might have steeled herself to check that they had not taken the entire cadaver. As for the exclusion of women from the immediate vicinity of Philip’s casket, that was in accordance with the monks’ rules; the only women allowed on monastic premises were royal. The nineteenth-century Italian composer Guiseppe Verdi was familiar with such a proviso: in the second act of his opera Don Carlo, one of the Queen of Spain’s ladies tells the audience that they are waiting outside a monastery for their mistress since, as commoners, they cannot enter.
It seems prudent, then, to remain skeptical of the various horror stories about Juana’s alleged obsession with her husband’s body. Those who knew her best tended to view her as rational and reasonable. Frequently in her presence, and thus able to observe her on a day-to-day basis, her faithful secretary, Juan Lopez, never doubted her, maintaining to the last that she was “more sane than her mother” no matter what others might say.
Yet with so much and so many ranged against her, Juana could not win. Even the elements conspired against her, as if set on proving that God was not with her. Plague ravaged Castilian cities, starvation was rife, lawlessness abounded, Juana’s council did not obey her, her revocations of Philip’s wasteful grants went unheeded. Never could she overcome the traditional stereotype of gender: a woman, even a queen such as Isabella, needed male help, or so it was believed. With Philip gone, that left only her father. How fortuitous, then, that Ferdinand was at hand, ready to sacrifice himself to help his beleaguered daughter.
Respect for truth never had been one of Ferdinand’s traits. Ostensibly responding to the pleas of his “beloved daughter” and those of her councillors, he prepared to leave Italy to save Castile from the tumult flourishing in the region. Writing to Katherine, he vowed:
I am determined, with the help of God, to go to Castile during this spring, because the Queen, my daughter and your sister, continually sends and begs me very pressingly to do so, and all write to me that, after God, there is no other means to preserve those kingdoms from ruin and destruction except my return to them.… As they beg me very earnestly to go, and as the happiness of the most serene Queen, my daughter and your sister, and of those kingdoms greatly depend upon it, I have decided to give up my own comfort and to undergo all the labour of assisting her and her kingdoms.
He lied. Juana, while happy to see her father, had not urged him to take up the reins of her government at all.
No matter. She was a woman in a man’s world. Ferdinand’s machinations had worked. He had Castile in his grasp once more, and Juana would shortly exchange one jailer for another.