Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina Choko reporting. And in a recent episode we talked about the famous Wanna La Loca or Joanna the mad Um, a frequent listener request, very frequent request, and, as I admitted in the last show, a subject I originally considered covering during Halloween. But I don't even really want to call her Wanna Lia Loca anymore. Once you research her story, it starts to sound kind of mean. For a lot of reasons. Wanna of Castile was a queen in her own right, and one who seemed to be um pretty badly treated by some of the most important people in her life, her father Ferdinand as in Ferdinand and Isabella, her husband Philip of Burgundy, and her son Charles Um. It's a disturbing story, partly because it still is so unclear how bad off was Laanna really and why did she make the decisions that she made, And we may speculate about that a little bit in this part too. But where we left off last time, Juanna had come into a very unlikely inheritance She was the third child of her parents, Fernand and Isabella of Spain, but through a series of unfortunate deaths, she became their heir. I Wanna return to Spain after receiving that news, along with her husband Philip. For some years, Philip and Juanna had had a pretty explosive relationship, one where Philip was certainly mentally abusive towards Wanna, perhaps physically abusive, and her parents were disturbed, not just because of the personal relationship her daughter had with her husband, but also because of Philip's own politics. He wasn't unabashedly pro Spanish. They were concerned that eventually their kingdoms, Ferdinand's Arragon and Isabella's Castille, would come under foreign control, and they weren't exactly happy with that. So they tried to get Wanna to stay in Spain when Philip went back to Burgundy, but for some reason which we can't quite surmise, she decided to go back to him anyway, and in fact, even through a series of tantrums in order to be able to go back to him. So that's sort of where we're picking up now. She's gone back to him, and those tantrums that are really key part of the story too, because they were public. They were disturbing Wanna, you know it, first tried to reason with her mother about returning to Philip. You know, my children are there, it's my husband, it's my duty, um. But Isabella was not interested in hearing that, you know. She wanted to keep Wanna with her, raise her up to to be an independent monarch um. So yeah, Wanna. Wanna reacted by not eating and not sleeping and not talk walking and standing out in the rain and all of it. Finally did result, like you just said, in her being allowed to return to her husband. But it also upset Isabella, and it gave the public, uh the barest hint that maybe Wanna was unstable, and this was kind of a perfect setup for Philip. Wanna was back in Burgundy by May fifteen o four, and if she thought her public demonstration of loyalty to Philip was going to be met with love or respect from him, she was dead wrong. Rumors about the couple went from bad to worse. She physically attacked a woman that she believed Philip was sleeping with. He as a result, had her locked up in her rooms, and he sent away her ladies and her favorite servant. He may have hit her, and he circulated rumors that she was mad, unhinged, and unfit to rule, though anyone who saw in public I thought that this was pretty much entirely untrue. Seemed like a perfectly competent, respectable lady and m According to the Women in World History Encyclopedia, it's likely that Juanna had manic depression, and that would partly explain the ups and downs and the entirely rational behavior that she exhibited when she was in public or with guests. And uh that entry actually suggested that this never would have been reason enough to disqualify a male ruler, but in Juanna it could be considered deabilitating madness, something that meant Philip or perhaps Ferdinand, her father, should rule in her stead. Just months after Juanna's return, though, this really became an issue because until now it wasn't. Isabella was still ruling Castile, Ferdinand was still ruling Aragon. But in November fifteen o four, Isabella suddenly died. Isabella was a woman who was certainly interested in looking after the future of her kingdom then, especially this fragile unity between her kingdom and her husband's and she was concerned with what she had seen of Juanna's rages and concerned by Philip's influence over her. We just mentioned that as as a foreigner, she was afraid he wouldn't be entirely in Spain's own best interests, since he didn't act interested at all. No, he didn't act interested. That's a that's another good point. Um. Isabel also accounted for the possibility that her daughter might not be fit to rule, and try to make sure that, however that went down, it would be Ferdinand and not Philip who stood up in Juanna's place as regent. So in her will, Isabella said that Wanna, her quote beloved daughter, was her heiress, but in case quote she might not like or might be unable to reign or govern, the government should be somehow carried on her nominee until little Charles came of age. Was Ferdinand, of course, who had quote great experience of the government of the said kingdoms. And a lot has been made of that wording, especially the first part you read to Plina that she might not like or might be unable to reign or govern. And well, it's clear that Wanna was eventually betrayed by her husband, by her father and by her son Charles. Her mother's role in that is a little bit less clear, right. Was Isabella opening up an official path for Wanna to be declared insane or was she honestly concerned by Wanna's actions? Was she just worried that Wanna was under Philip's thumb and quote might not like to reign because it would cause marital strife. I mean, the possibilities are kind of endless there, they really are. But even if Juanna and Philip did rule, Isabella had a little catch in in her orders here that made sure Ferdinand was still in the loops somehow. She wrote that they should obey him quote as good and obedient children. Um. So it was pretty important for Ferdinand to get this official nod from his dying wife since he had no personal claim to Castile. And we described this a more length than the last podcast, but he was just the king of Aragon, and that partnership between the two kingdoms than Castile was the more powerful of the two and the larger of the two really relied on both of them being alive. So at first he played humble, you know, he put on a show like he accepted this publicly acknowledged his daughter as the new Queen of Castile renounced any claims he had there. But there was a delay of fifteen months before Juanna and Philip again returned to Spain, and that gave both Ferdinand and Philip time to make their own plans against Wanna. So Philip, for his part, proclaimed himself king, and so did Ferdinand. He announced this at the Council of Toro, said that his daughter was unfit to rule, so sort of like thanks for that convenient insanity story to look up that story. He also made a French alliance, marrying Germaine de Foix, the niece of Louis the twelfth, and so if they had a son, at least Aragon would slip out of Juana's inheritance and Philip's control. But Castilian nobles were not fans of Ferdinand at all, and this new French marriage only made things worse, and so when Philip and Juana arrived in April fifteen o six, they offered up their support to Philip and Juanna, and finally Ferdinand, who was seeing how the situation really was, finally decided that it might be better to work with Philip than risk war alienating him, and so in June of fifteen o six, the two men signed a treaty. Just Juanna was not included in this at all, unsurprisingly, and they acknowledged that she was unfit to rule. Almost immediately though, fernand backed out of the treaty. He said it interfered with his daughter's rights. And it's around this point too that Juanna, who had been using her best political tactic of delay the entire time she was in Spain, you know, not signing anything saying that she wanted to meet with her father first, she wanted counsel first, most of at this point, finally decided that Philip was not working in her own interests and attempted an escaped from him on horseback, you know, she claimed she was going out for a light horseback ride, made a dash for it, trying to reach her father, who had by this point left Castile for Aragon. She was quickly caught by philips soldiers. So this gave Philip a pretty clear sign that Wanna was a threat to him or to his claims. And he also had the approval of the Castilian Cortes in his favor, so he had legitimacy for his regency on behalf of her. So he was ready to imprison her, to lock her up. I mean, we talked about how he had done that before back home um and he thought that his stories he had been circulating for so long now that she is mentally unbalanced, had enough traction that the public would accept it, that they would accept him. But just like the last episode where there were repeated unexpected illnesses and sudden death, unexpected illness struck again and Philip became desperately ill with a fever. Wanna, who was five months pregnant at this point, nursed him for six days before he died September in fifteen o six at only age. So what happened next is kind of the core of the Wuannala Loca legend. For a period of several months, wanted just froze while the country fell into complete disorder. She needed to make a plan to find a way to claim her throne without arden supporters or any money. So by December eighteenth she finally swung into action. She canceled Phillip's appointments and concessions and trying to set up a counsel, and in a fateful decision, she ordered Philip's body to be removed to Granada, where her mother was buried. It made sense from a dynastic perspective. While Philip may have been abusive and manipulative in life, it would have made a statement about him in death that he was this powerful ruler from a powerful family that deserved to be buried near Queen Isabella. So this was important for Wanna's son's future in a way, she thought as a good pr move almost but it turned out to be a bad decision, especially when the elaborate funeral procession had to stop just a few days after starting for wanted to give birth to her daughter, Catalina. Her insistence that the procession begin again gave her enemies the opportunity to categorize her as this deranged widow, someone who would open the coffin to look at her husband. But it's interesting to add here that Julia Fox, the author of Sister Queen's notes that there really is no mention of coffin opening from the chronicler who was on the trip, and even if it was opened, it was probably just so Wanna could I d Philip. Meanwhile, though, with this maccabre procession going on and rumors building around it. The country was suffering from famine, and civil war seemed imminent, and fernand came swooping back into Castile too to handle everything. He took over Juanna's money, took over her household, took away Prince Ferdinand that was the son who had been born when when she and Philip first returned to Spain. Her elder children were being raised off in Burgundy still, but Wanna didn't and wouldn't actually relinquish her rights to her father. She wouldn't sign the papers that renounced her claim as queen. I think this is one of the most fascinating parts of the story. Um her insistence on this point. I mean, clearly being queen was important to her, regardless of anything else that happens. That didn't matter though to Ferdinand. He could forge the documents, and by the spring of fifteen o nine, Juanna's father had her and baby Catalina and Philip spot He all sent off to Tortosa Castle. The body was put into the care of the nuns of St. Clair, which was nearby. Wanna was twenty nine years old, and she spent the next forty six years in Tortoise. If it was of course important for Ferdinand during this time to keep Juanna alive because without her, little Charles would become king, and since he was often Burgundy being raised by his aunt Margaret, it was likely that Ferdinand would have to deal with plenty of interference from the boy's paternal grandfather, Maximilian, who was the Holy Roman Emperor, a worthy opponent to Ferdinand exactly. But aside from that, there were a few considerations made for one at all. Tortoise Us was a favorite old retreat of queens, but it was extremely isolated, so Wanna had luxurious possessions like tapestries and fine clothes, but she only had two rooms to live in. She had a large religious library and was sometimes allowed out to the convent, and she educated to Catalina herself. That was really her her main purpose in life, it seemed, educating her daughter Um because nobody else was around. Really. Ferdinand, who only visited her twice in seven years, would pass on information to her from time to time, but he didn't allow her to write, and there are no records of her having written anything again from when she goes into Torti see Us at age nine. Um. Sometimes she did show unhinged behavior. You know, she would refuse to eat her sleep, she attacked her women guards. But it was also clear by the care that was taken to keep her out of the public eye, that she was not insane. She was not the woman um rumors had her being. If anyone really saw her, Ferdinand was afraid that they would know she was being imprisoned unjustly. When Ferdinand died in January January fifteen sixteen, having failed to have a surviving son with his second wife, it left Wanna, technically a queen of Castile and Aragon want a son. Charles, though, maintained the same policy that his grandfather had, and he quickly claimed throne for himself. And Charles wasn't popular. He had been raised abroad, and the Castilians really resented his immediate assumption that he would just bypass his mother and take the throne. So Charles had an uphill battle to gain control over Castile and Aragon. But he had a more immediate problem as well. The people of tortoise Us rebelled against wanna treatment. They had long heard the rumors that want his caretaker, Mossain Ferrer, was abusing the queen, and upon Ferdman's death, they decided to chase Ferrer out of town. And so after this, Charles sent a cardinal Sinairos to stop the riots and to investigate these claims. And the cardinal was actually disturbed enough to order Ferrer never to be let near the Queen again. And in fact, letters from Ferrer do suggest that he was willing to put her on the rack and stop her self harm protests like starvation, though Fox says it's more likely that she was beaten. I mean, still not good. No, And this is I think probably a good point to to mention that while a lot has been speculated about Juanna's mental state, certainly situations like this would not have helped it over the years. And what more than forty years of imprisonment would eventually do to somebody, especially under circumstances like this, where you're possibly threatened or beaten um because of protesting and the only way you can it's not gonna help matters. But Charles may not have wanted his mother beaten. You know, he he removed this guy, but he didn't exactly swoop in to save the day either, you know, to remove her, to to return her to court or certainly to allow her to to rule, and in fact, he played off Ferdinand as the bad guy. He visited his mother in fifteen seventeen for the first time since he was a child. I don't think they had seen each other since she left Burgundy to go to Spain. But he didn't tell her that Ferdinand was dead. You know. It was just around the castle. Thought I'd swing by for a visit, um, And in reality he just kept her thinking Ferdinand was alive. He was the guy behind her imprisonment, and this decision to not tell her about Fernand kind of exposes the full duplicity of of Charles's story. You know, he proclaimed that Juanna had given him her blessing. He was trying to get that approval, you know, not looking like he was just completely bypassing, bypassing or skipping over his mother. Um said she had given him her blessing, But how could she have done that, of course, if she didn't even know that Ferdinand was dead. Um. Charles did some housekeeping too while he was there. He replaced her temporary guard with a guard of his choice. The Marquis of Dania and his wife, and the Danny is really cracked down on Juanna's already pretty limited life. Yeah, they no longer even allowed her to visit the convent, and she protested this by not hearing mass at all. They stopped her also from meeting any of the nobles who tried to see her. They even stole from her. They wrote to Charles saying, quote, the torture might help her condition. There's no record that he approved this though. They even tried to avoid doctors coming in in case word got out that Wanna was saying. At one point, Wanna even had a ten day fever and they wouldn't let a doctor come in to help her get well. And you know, the same goes for Catalina too, who is growing up here. She was sick at one point and wasn't allowed to see a doctor for quite some time. Daniel was really obsessive to very paranoid. He was obsessed with gossiping ladies, maids and servants, and he even wrote to Charles at one point, quote it cannot be permitted that she speak with anybody because she would convince anyone. So that's that's pretty damning, I'd say. But Charles is a bit of an enigma because of the way he's treating his his mother, but also the close frigard he had for a lot of other family members, and of course the most famous of those was Catherine of Aragon, his aunt, who was in her terrible situation with Henry the Eighth, eventually trying to unload her to marry Anne Boleyn. He was a staunch supporter of hers, but also with his younger sister Catalina, who had grown up in Tortos see Us with her mother. She was eleven years old at the time Charles inherited, and when he tried to remove her, he thought she should be socialized a little bit. Want To just spiral deeper and deeper into depression. And so Charles at least knew enough to keep his mother alive and and to keep her happy enough by returning Catalina to her want to. From then on tried to keep her daughter in sight and told Dania that she'd kill herself if they took Catalina away again. And when the time family came for a teenage Catalina to leave, and Mary Wanna stood at the last point that she saw Catalina for twenty four hours. So just another note here Catalina's complaining letters to Charles made it clear that he knew all about how the Daniels were treating his mother, the stealing and all of that, and he still didn't do anything about it. Plus, if he thought that his mother was truly insane, why would he allow his sister to say, and I find Catalina the really fascinating part of the story. It's like somebody should write a historical novel about her experiences growing up in the castle and the um, let's do it to Palina Um. It's easy, though, to wonder why Charles didn't free his mother, especially if he knew she was not insane, but just like his father, like his grandfather before him. He did know that his power relied on Juanna being alive but out of commission um and as an unpopular foreigner, especially when eating the Inquisition, one who had brought his own click with him from Burgundy um thrown out Spanish guys. He was especially concerned that Castilians might choose his mother over him, even if they didn't necessarily allow her to rule in her own right. I mean, it was made clear after years of this that Wanna could be successfully used as a figurehead while somebody else actually did the work of the government, and this became especially worrisome for Charles in fifteen nineteen, it was just two years after he had arrived in Spain when his paternal grandfather Maximilian died, And we mentioned in the last episode that the position of Holy Roman Emperor was not inherited, but you had to have good connections, and Charles certainly had them. He was a likely candidate up against guys like Henry the eighth Francis the first of France Um. But to to increase the likelihood he would get to become Holy Roman Emperor, it meant he had to leave Spain in for a little bit right at the shaky, nerve racking sort of time. And as a side note here, Fox writes how again Wanna wasn't told Maximilian's death, just that he had abdicated. So when Daniel suggested she write a note of thanks to Maximilian for the quote favor he had shown her son, Wanna was like, maybe you should do it, because I haven't written to him since I've been in prison this whole time. Well, and Fox notes too that that's kind of a might have been Daniel hoping to get even more ammunition against the Wanna is crazy, especially when it comes to dead people. If she's this lady who followed her husband around and kissed his dead body's feet, maybe it wouldn't be too surprising that she was writing letters off to her dead father in law. But Castille did in fact take this opportunity to rise up against Charles when he was out of the country and a group of rebels started what was called the Communero revolt. On August, a group of Communero officials finally got as Dania in order to plead before the queen. They offered her castile. They begged her to help her people and asked her to sign her approval. For about one hundred days. Wanna met with the rebels and listen to their offers. She took up her favorite political tactic again, though here she started to delay. She wouldn't sign anything until she could call a council of her own. Finally, though miraculously almost, she chose her family again, even all after all that had happened to her, saying, if Charles quote all that belonged to her was his and he would take good care of it. Super sad, I don't know, it's yeah, it's more unexpected than miraculous, at least from Juanna's perspective, because as soon as the rebellion was put down, you know, Charles didn't come in saying, oh, it's really glad to hear what you what you said. Instead, he rewarded her loyalty with an even stricter regime at Tortoise if she was cut down to one room. Eventually, of course, Elena was taken away, um, and she was stuck with the hated Daniels too. She would complain about them bitterly. Apparently just the sound of their voices became agonizing for her to hear, and they were the only ones she heard a people there. Um, And so just kind of I don't know, we can't go into too much more detail about that, just similar days, day in day out, for decade after decade, forty six years. Um. The strangest part of this story though, is that there are these little bright spots in it. You think this woman would be a hundred percent shunned by her family if they were willing to do this to her, But that wasn't the case. Her family did visit her sometime. They would bring the kids, bring the grandkids um. They certainly weren't considering her a deranged woman who might be dangerous to the hopes of their kingdoms. But they also didn't exactly let her back into the family circle. No, no, certainly, not even as Charles position became more secure to I think this surprised me, and this is just um, um, it's just hard to imagine why you would keep your family member in prison for so long, but why they didn't let her back in as some sort of dowager queen type role, especially if she grew older. According to Fox, Though, there were sixteen family visits between fifteen thirty five. Yeah, recorded visits, um. And like I said, bringing the grandkids, bringing the kids, her grandfon Philip, stopping before he married a cousin, and then stopping before he married another cousin that time married Tudor. Very but I don't know, just so part I can't really understand of this story. She did have them on one point, though, and that was religion. It was sort of the one thing that she could really control. So after her confessor was dismissed in fifty three, she just stopped making a full in fashion. And this was something that really immensely disturbed. Charles and his son Philip as well and her granddaughters. Everyone just couldn't handle this for some reason. No, they were. They were deeply concerned about Nah's soul, the state of her soul, what would happen should she die? Um. By age seventy five, those fears became pretty major, four of them. She was getting very frail. She did die April eleven or twelfth, and fifteen fifty five. Before her death, she was willing to make a partial confession because her family was desperate at this point trying to get her to do it, but she held out on the full deal, kind of feisty to the end here and once she was dead too. This is again where the story changes. She's not somebody to be hidden away anymore. She's somebody for the family to celebrate. She was entombed in Granada with her husband Philip. He ended up there just where she wanted him to be. Ultimately, Um, Ferdinand and Isabella, little Prince Miguel, Um, all of them end up where Wanna was expecting them to. So she, finally, I guess, wasn't accepted part of the family after all those years of being shunned. After she died. So it's a sad ending to a story that was really entirely unexpected. It is. I certainly went into it expecting and knowing that there was a lot of controversy over whether she was really Wanta a Loca Joanna the mad um and um. You know how much the power play among her family members had to do with her long imprisonment. But it's one crazy thing. I mean, not to make a bad pun, there is if you go around reading stories about Wanna uh difference versus still treat her condition as insanity, you know, like she was in prison because she was insane. Um, rather than getting into the full story behind it. You know how her mental state is is troubled clearly, but certainly not to the level that her family claimed it was, although it degraded to over time, well as it would when you're imprisoned for that long and unable to to talk to to leave, or to do anything that you want to do, to even to write. But I think in a sense it's probably almost easier just to say, well, choose crazy, because even if you know the full story, you can speculate forever about why the decisions, why she made the decisions that she made and why her family made the decisions they made too, I mean power aside um why some of the things that happened happened. But certainly a fascinating story. I'm glad that we finally covered this one. I hope all those listeners who suggested it enjoyed it. Uh And you know, sorry, it's not a super Macob kiss in the Dead Body Foot episode, but it's just not how it turned out. So to Bolina, we have a really fascinating listener mail today. Yeah, you were saying it comes from Facebook. Not all listener mail comes from email. That was very true. And it's from listener Ellen, who was writing about our episode on the real Tokyo Rose Eva to Guri Uh, an episode both of us really enjoyed learning about, and one I think is kind of stuck with us too, just as another tragic sort of story. Um. But Ellen wrote in to say that she knew Eva growing up. In fact, her mother was Eva's best friend. After after the imprisonment and all of that, remember from the episode, she moved to Chicago, where her father ran a very successful store and lived in Chicago, so that's where Ellen's mother um met Eva. But it's it's a great message, and I'm just going to read part of it. But the part that I found really touching were Ellen's memories of Eva and how she really kept a lot of humor in her life, something that was incredibly surprising to us considering all she had been through. But just to read a little bit of that she wrote, Eva was a little fireball into her old age. She was full of energy and humor, very quick to make you laugh and share hilarious stories. She had that voice that was so amazing that I can still hear it today. Listening to the old radio broadcast on the podcast brought back many happy memories. Eva never let her hard life show on her face or in her personality. No one really knew who she was when they came into the store and was checking out their stuff the register. She liked to remain anonymous to the outside world because she always considered herself an American and was deeply proud of that. She didn't want to stir up attention to her past for herself and for her father's business. So this was a really touching email, and and she she went on to say too that um, she didn't really realize who she was or how famous she was. Ellen didn't rather until she was older. UM, just because Eva always focused on on others. Really, but that's kind of an example of some of the cool personal connections we sometimes fear about between listeners and the podcast. That is pretty amazing. Thank you for sharing and that story, Like you said, I think it it really touched both of us a lot. And the quote that we mentioned about the tiger changing its stripes. When when we were reading that quote, I was reading that quote during the episode, I got really choked up. And the funny thing is I got choked up when I read it the first time, and when I read it again, and when I read it on the podcast, and then later I was repeating it to my husband and I was retelling the story, and I got choked up then too. It's just something about it. It's just and and this is the story I've offen. I retold it to my fiance, I retold it to a woman we work with. UM not something I usually. I'm not sure if listeners imagine we're just always telling these podcasts to our friends. I try to avoid that. I usually think, you know, if people want to hear it, they can listen. UM. But yeah, I just felt like I had to tell other people this story, and um I was happy to to hear that Eva's later life did seem fulfilling to that certainly added something to my understanding of the subject. So thank you so much Ellen for writing in too to share such a touching story. If you guys want to share any personal connections to subjects, I don't know how many folks are going to have Wanna li loca connections unless you're European royalty than or probably the right to us definitely, or just suggestions, you know, the drill, whatever, whatever you guys, I want to say. We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed in History, and we're on Facebook, and again we mentioned it a few times during the podcast, but Julia Fox's book on Wanna is really interesting. It's actually a dual biography called Sister Queens, covering Juanna's life and her sister Catherine of Aragon, who, as people always say, would make another fabulous subject. So true. And if you want to learn a little bit more about Captain of Aragon's famous husband, Henry the Eighth, we have an article about that. It's ten heads that roll roll during Henry the Eighth's reign, and you can look up that one by visiting our homepage at www dot how staff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com

Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Fair Dowdy and I'm Deblina Choko reporting. And in a recent episode we talked about the famous Wanna La Loca or Joanna the mad Um, a frequent listener request, very frequent request, and, as I admitted in the last show, a subject I originally considered covering during Halloween. But I don't even really want to call her Wanna Lia Loca anymore. Once you research her story, it starts to sound kind of mean. For a lot of reasons. Wanna of Castile was a queen in her own right, and one who seemed to be um pretty badly treated by some of the most important people in her life, her father Ferdinand as in Ferdinand and Isabella, her husband Philip of Burgundy, and her son Charles Um. It's a disturbing story, partly because it still is so unclear how bad off was Laanna really and why did she make the decisions that she made, And we may speculate about that a little bit in this part too. But where we left off last time, Juanna had come into a very unlikely inheritance She was the third child of her parents, Fernand and Isabella of Spain, but through a series of unfortunate deaths, she became their heir. I Wanna return to Spain after receiving that news, along with her husband Philip. For some years, Philip and Juanna had had a pretty explosive relationship, one where Philip was certainly mentally abusive towards Wanna, perhaps physically abusive, and her parents were disturbed, not just because of the personal relationship her daughter had with her husband, but also because of Philip's own politics. He wasn't unabashedly pro Spanish. They were concerned that eventually their kingdoms, Ferdinand's Arragon and Isabella's Castille, would come under foreign control, and they weren't exactly happy with that. So they tried to get Wanna to stay in Spain when Philip went back to Burgundy, but for some reason which we can't quite surmise, she decided to go back to him anyway, and in fact, even through a series of tantrums in order to be able to go back to him. So that's sort of where we're picking up now. She's gone back to him, and those tantrums that are really key part of the story too, because they were public. They were disturbing Wanna, you know it, first tried to reason with her mother about returning to Philip. You know, my children are there, it's my husband, it's my duty, um. But Isabella was not interested in hearing that, you know. She wanted to keep Wanna with her, raise her up to to be an independent monarch um. So yeah, Wanna. Wanna reacted by not eating and not sleeping and not talk walking and standing out in the rain and all of it. Finally did result, like you just said, in her being allowed to return to her husband. But it also upset Isabella, and it gave the public, uh the barest hint that maybe Wanna was unstable, and this was kind of a perfect setup for Philip. Wanna was back in Burgundy by May fifteen o four, and if she thought her public demonstration of loyalty to Philip was going to be met with love or respect from him, she was dead wrong. Rumors about the couple went from bad to worse. She physically attacked a woman that she believed Philip was sleeping with. He as a result, had her locked up in her rooms, and he sent away her ladies and her favorite servant. He may have hit her, and he circulated rumors that she was mad, unhinged, and unfit to rule, though anyone who saw in public I thought that this was pretty much entirely untrue. Seemed like a perfectly competent, respectable lady and m According to the Women in World History Encyclopedia, it's likely that Juanna had manic depression, and that would partly explain the ups and downs and the entirely rational behavior that she exhibited when she was in public or with guests. And uh that entry actually suggested that this never would have been reason enough to disqualify a male ruler, but in Juanna it could be considered deabilitating madness, something that meant Philip or perhaps Ferdinand, her father, should rule in her stead. Just months after Juanna's return, though, this really became an issue because until now it wasn't. Isabella was still ruling Castile, Ferdinand was still ruling Aragon. But in November fifteen o four, Isabella suddenly died. Isabella was a woman who was certainly interested in looking after the future of her kingdom then, especially this fragile unity between her kingdom and her husband's and she was concerned with what she had seen of Juanna's rages and concerned by Philip's influence over her. We just mentioned that as as a foreigner, she was afraid he wouldn't be entirely in Spain's own best interests, since he didn't act interested at all. No, he didn't act interested. That's a that's another good point. Um. Isabel also accounted for the possibility that her daughter might not be fit to rule, and try to make sure that, however that went down, it would be Ferdinand and not Philip who stood up in Juanna's place as regent. So in her will, Isabella said that Wanna, her quote beloved daughter, was her heiress, but in case quote she might not like or might be unable to reign or govern, the government should be somehow carried on her nominee until little Charles came of age. Was Ferdinand, of course, who had quote great experience of the government of the said kingdoms. And a lot has been made of that wording, especially the first part you read to Plina that she might not like or might be unable to reign or govern. And well, it's clear that Wanna was eventually betrayed by her husband, by her father and by her son Charles. Her mother's role in that is a little bit less clear, right. Was Isabella opening up an official path for Wanna to be declared insane or was she honestly concerned by Wanna's actions? Was she just worried that Wanna was under Philip's thumb and quote might not like to reign because it would cause marital strife. I mean, the possibilities are kind of endless there, they really are. But even if Juanna and Philip did rule, Isabella had a little catch in in her orders here that made sure Ferdinand was still in the loops somehow. She wrote that they should obey him quote as good and obedient children. Um. So it was pretty important for Ferdinand to get this official nod from his dying wife since he had no personal claim to Castile. And we described this a more length than the last podcast, but he was just the king of Aragon, and that partnership between the two kingdoms than Castile was the more powerful of the two and the larger of the two really relied on both of them being alive. So at first he played humble, you know, he put on a show like he accepted this publicly acknowledged his daughter as the new Queen of Castile renounced any claims he had there. But there was a delay of fifteen months before Juanna and Philip again returned to Spain, and that gave both Ferdinand and Philip time to make their own plans against Wanna. So Philip, for his part, proclaimed himself king, and so did Ferdinand. He announced this at the Council of Toro, said that his daughter was unfit to rule, so sort of like thanks for that convenient insanity story to look up that story. He also made a French alliance, marrying Germaine de Foix, the niece of Louis the twelfth, and so if they had a son, at least Aragon would slip out of Juana's inheritance and Philip's control. But Castilian nobles were not fans of Ferdinand at all, and this new French marriage only made things worse, and so when Philip and Juana arrived in April fifteen o six, they offered up their support to Philip and Juanna, and finally Ferdinand, who was seeing how the situation really was, finally decided that it might be better to work with Philip than risk war alienating him, and so in June of fifteen o six, the two men signed a treaty. Just Juanna was not included in this at all, unsurprisingly, and they acknowledged that she was unfit to rule. Almost immediately though, fernand backed out of the treaty. He said it interfered with his daughter's rights. And it's around this point too that Juanna, who had been using her best political tactic of delay the entire time she was in Spain, you know, not signing anything saying that she wanted to meet with her father first, she wanted counsel first, most of at this point, finally decided that Philip was not working in her own interests and attempted an escaped from him on horseback, you know, she claimed she was going out for a light horseback ride, made a dash for it, trying to reach her father, who had by this point left Castile for Aragon. She was quickly caught by philips soldiers. So this gave Philip a pretty clear sign that Wanna was a threat to him or to his claims. And he also had the approval of the Castilian Cortes in his favor, so he had legitimacy for his regency on behalf of her. So he was ready to imprison her, to lock her up. I mean, we talked about how he had done that before back home um and he thought that his stories he had been circulating for so long now that she is mentally unbalanced, had enough traction that the public would accept it, that they would accept him. But just like the last episode where there were repeated unexpected illnesses and sudden death, unexpected illness struck again and Philip became desperately ill with a fever. Wanna, who was five months pregnant at this point, nursed him for six days before he died September in fifteen o six at only age. So what happened next is kind of the core of the Wuannala Loca legend. For a period of several months, wanted just froze while the country fell into complete disorder. She needed to make a plan to find a way to claim her throne without arden supporters or any money. So by December eighteenth she finally swung into action. She canceled Phillip's appointments and concessions and trying to set up a counsel, and in a fateful decision, she ordered Philip's body to be removed to Granada, where her mother was buried. It made sense from a dynastic perspective. While Philip may have been abusive and manipulative in life, it would have made a statement about him in death that he was this powerful ruler from a powerful family that deserved to be buried near Queen Isabella. So this was important for Wanna's son's future in a way, she thought as a good pr move almost but it turned out to be a bad decision, especially when the elaborate funeral procession had to stop just a few days after starting for wanted to give birth to her daughter, Catalina. Her insistence that the procession begin again gave her enemies the opportunity to categorize her as this deranged widow, someone who would open the coffin to look at her husband. But it's interesting to add here that Julia Fox, the author of Sister Queen's notes that there really is no mention of coffin opening from the chronicler who was on the trip, and even if it was opened, it was probably just so Wanna could I d Philip. Meanwhile, though, with this maccabre procession going on and rumors building around it. The country was suffering from famine, and civil war seemed imminent, and fernand came swooping back into Castile too to handle everything. He took over Juanna's money, took over her household, took away Prince Ferdinand that was the son who had been born when when she and Philip first returned to Spain. Her elder children were being raised off in Burgundy still, but Wanna didn't and wouldn't actually relinquish her rights to her father. She wouldn't sign the papers that renounced her claim as queen. I think this is one of the most fascinating parts of the story. Um her insistence on this point. I mean, clearly being queen was important to her, regardless of anything else that happens. That didn't matter though to Ferdinand. He could forge the documents, and by the spring of fifteen o nine, Juanna's father had her and baby Catalina and Philip spot He all sent off to Tortosa Castle. The body was put into the care of the nuns of St. Clair, which was nearby. Wanna was twenty nine years old, and she spent the next forty six years in Tortoise. If it was of course important for Ferdinand during this time to keep Juanna alive because without her, little Charles would become king, and since he was often Burgundy being raised by his aunt Margaret, it was likely that Ferdinand would have to deal with plenty of interference from the boy's paternal grandfather, Maximilian, who was the Holy Roman Emperor, a worthy opponent to Ferdinand exactly. But aside from that, there were a few considerations made for one at all. Tortoise Us was a favorite old retreat of queens, but it was extremely isolated, so Wanna had luxurious possessions like tapestries and fine clothes, but she only had two rooms to live in. She had a large religious library and was sometimes allowed out to the convent, and she educated to Catalina herself. That was really her her main purpose in life, it seemed, educating her daughter Um because nobody else was around. Really. Ferdinand, who only visited her twice in seven years, would pass on information to her from time to time, but he didn't allow her to write, and there are no records of her having written anything again from when she goes into Torti see Us at age nine. Um. Sometimes she did show unhinged behavior. You know, she would refuse to eat her sleep, she attacked her women guards. But it was also clear by the care that was taken to keep her out of the public eye, that she was not insane. She was not the woman um rumors had her being. If anyone really saw her, Ferdinand was afraid that they would know she was being imprisoned unjustly. When Ferdinand died in January January fifteen sixteen, having failed to have a surviving son with his second wife, it left Wanna, technically a queen of Castile and Aragon want a son. Charles, though, maintained the same policy that his grandfather had, and he quickly claimed throne for himself. And Charles wasn't popular. He had been raised abroad, and the Castilians really resented his immediate assumption that he would just bypass his mother and take the throne. So Charles had an uphill battle to gain control over Castile and Aragon. But he had a more immediate problem as well. The people of tortoise Us rebelled against wanna treatment. They had long heard the rumors that want his caretaker, Mossain Ferrer, was abusing the queen, and upon Ferdman's death, they decided to chase Ferrer out of town. And so after this, Charles sent a cardinal Sinairos to stop the riots and to investigate these claims. And the cardinal was actually disturbed enough to order Ferrer never to be let near the Queen again. And in fact, letters from Ferrer do suggest that he was willing to put her on the rack and stop her self harm protests like starvation, though Fox says it's more likely that she was beaten. I mean, still not good. No, And this is I think probably a good point to to mention that while a lot has been speculated about Juanna's mental state, certainly situations like this would not have helped it over the years. And what more than forty years of imprisonment would eventually do to somebody, especially under circumstances like this, where you're possibly threatened or beaten um because of protesting and the only way you can it's not gonna help matters. But Charles may not have wanted his mother beaten. You know, he he removed this guy, but he didn't exactly swoop in to save the day either, you know, to remove her, to to return her to court or certainly to allow her to to rule, and in fact, he played off Ferdinand as the bad guy. He visited his mother in fifteen seventeen for the first time since he was a child. I don't think they had seen each other since she left Burgundy to go to Spain. But he didn't tell her that Ferdinand was dead. You know. It was just around the castle. Thought I'd swing by for a visit, um, And in reality he just kept her thinking Ferdinand was alive. He was the guy behind her imprisonment, and this decision to not tell her about Fernand kind of exposes the full duplicity of of Charles's story. You know, he proclaimed that Juanna had given him her blessing. He was trying to get that approval, you know, not looking like he was just completely bypassing, bypassing or skipping over his mother. Um said she had given him her blessing, But how could she have done that, of course, if she didn't even know that Ferdinand was dead. Um. Charles did some housekeeping too while he was there. He replaced her temporary guard with a guard of his choice. The Marquis of Dania and his wife, and the Danny is really cracked down on Juanna's already pretty limited life. Yeah, they no longer even allowed her to visit the convent, and she protested this by not hearing mass at all. They stopped her also from meeting any of the nobles who tried to see her. They even stole from her. They wrote to Charles saying, quote, the torture might help her condition. There's no record that he approved this though. They even tried to avoid doctors coming in in case word got out that Wanna was saying. At one point, Wanna even had a ten day fever and they wouldn't let a doctor come in to help her get well. And you know, the same goes for Catalina too, who is growing up here. She was sick at one point and wasn't allowed to see a doctor for quite some time. Daniel was really obsessive to very paranoid. He was obsessed with gossiping ladies, maids and servants, and he even wrote to Charles at one point, quote it cannot be permitted that she speak with anybody because she would convince anyone. So that's that's pretty damning, I'd say. But Charles is a bit of an enigma because of the way he's treating his his mother, but also the close frigard he had for a lot of other family members, and of course the most famous of those was Catherine of Aragon, his aunt, who was in her terrible situation with Henry the Eighth, eventually trying to unload her to marry Anne Boleyn. He was a staunch supporter of hers, but also with his younger sister Catalina, who had grown up in Tortos see Us with her mother. She was eleven years old at the time Charles inherited, and when he tried to remove her, he thought she should be socialized a little bit. Want To just spiral deeper and deeper into depression. And so Charles at least knew enough to keep his mother alive and and to keep her happy enough by returning Catalina to her want to. From then on tried to keep her daughter in sight and told Dania that she'd kill herself if they took Catalina away again. And when the time family came for a teenage Catalina to leave, and Mary Wanna stood at the last point that she saw Catalina for twenty four hours. So just another note here Catalina's complaining letters to Charles made it clear that he knew all about how the Daniels were treating his mother, the stealing and all of that, and he still didn't do anything about it. Plus, if he thought that his mother was truly insane, why would he allow his sister to say, and I find Catalina the really fascinating part of the story. It's like somebody should write a historical novel about her experiences growing up in the castle and the um, let's do it to Palina Um. It's easy, though, to wonder why Charles didn't free his mother, especially if he knew she was not insane, but just like his father, like his grandfather before him. He did know that his power relied on Juanna being alive but out of commission um and as an unpopular foreigner, especially when eating the Inquisition, one who had brought his own click with him from Burgundy um thrown out Spanish guys. He was especially concerned that Castilians might choose his mother over him, even if they didn't necessarily allow her to rule in her own right. I mean, it was made clear after years of this that Wanna could be successfully used as a figurehead while somebody else actually did the work of the government, and this became especially worrisome for Charles in fifteen nineteen, it was just two years after he had arrived in Spain when his paternal grandfather Maximilian died, And we mentioned in the last episode that the position of Holy Roman Emperor was not inherited, but you had to have good connections, and Charles certainly had them. He was a likely candidate up against guys like Henry the eighth Francis the first of France Um. But to to increase the likelihood he would get to become Holy Roman Emperor, it meant he had to leave Spain in for a little bit right at the shaky, nerve racking sort of time. And as a side note here, Fox writes how again Wanna wasn't told Maximilian's death, just that he had abdicated. So when Daniel suggested she write a note of thanks to Maximilian for the quote favor he had shown her son, Wanna was like, maybe you should do it, because I haven't written to him since I've been in prison this whole time. Well, and Fox notes too that that's kind of a might have been Daniel hoping to get even more ammunition against the Wanna is crazy, especially when it comes to dead people. If she's this lady who followed her husband around and kissed his dead body's feet, maybe it wouldn't be too surprising that she was writing letters off to her dead father in law. But Castille did in fact take this opportunity to rise up against Charles when he was out of the country and a group of rebels started what was called the Communero revolt. On August, a group of Communero officials finally got as Dania in order to plead before the queen. They offered her castile. They begged her to help her people and asked her to sign her approval. For about one hundred days. Wanna met with the rebels and listen to their offers. She took up her favorite political tactic again, though here she started to delay. She wouldn't sign anything until she could call a council of her own. Finally, though miraculously almost, she chose her family again, even all after all that had happened to her, saying, if Charles quote all that belonged to her was his and he would take good care of it. Super sad, I don't know, it's yeah, it's more unexpected than miraculous, at least from Juanna's perspective, because as soon as the rebellion was put down, you know, Charles didn't come in saying, oh, it's really glad to hear what you what you said. Instead, he rewarded her loyalty with an even stricter regime at Tortoise if she was cut down to one room. Eventually, of course, Elena was taken away, um, and she was stuck with the hated Daniels too. She would complain about them bitterly. Apparently just the sound of their voices became agonizing for her to hear, and they were the only ones she heard a people there. Um, And so just kind of I don't know, we can't go into too much more detail about that, just similar days, day in day out, for decade after decade, forty six years. Um. The strangest part of this story though, is that there are these little bright spots in it. You think this woman would be a hundred percent shunned by her family if they were willing to do this to her, But that wasn't the case. Her family did visit her sometime. They would bring the kids, bring the grandkids um. They certainly weren't considering her a deranged woman who might be dangerous to the hopes of their kingdoms. But they also didn't exactly let her back into the family circle. No, no, certainly, not even as Charles position became more secure to I think this surprised me, and this is just um, um, it's just hard to imagine why you would keep your family member in prison for so long, but why they didn't let her back in as some sort of dowager queen type role, especially if she grew older. According to Fox, Though, there were sixteen family visits between fifteen thirty five. Yeah, recorded visits, um. And like I said, bringing the grandkids, bringing the kids, her grandfon Philip, stopping before he married a cousin, and then stopping before he married another cousin that time married Tudor. Very but I don't know, just so part I can't really understand of this story. She did have them on one point, though, and that was religion. It was sort of the one thing that she could really control. So after her confessor was dismissed in fifty three, she just stopped making a full in fashion. And this was something that really immensely disturbed. Charles and his son Philip as well and her granddaughters. Everyone just couldn't handle this for some reason. No, they were. They were deeply concerned about Nah's soul, the state of her soul, what would happen should she die? Um. By age seventy five, those fears became pretty major, four of them. She was getting very frail. She did die April eleven or twelfth, and fifteen fifty five. Before her death, she was willing to make a partial confession because her family was desperate at this point trying to get her to do it, but she held out on the full deal, kind of feisty to the end here and once she was dead too. This is again where the story changes. She's not somebody to be hidden away anymore. She's somebody for the family to celebrate. She was entombed in Granada with her husband Philip. He ended up there just where she wanted him to be. Ultimately, Um, Ferdinand and Isabella, little Prince Miguel, Um, all of them end up where Wanna was expecting them to. So she, finally, I guess, wasn't accepted part of the family after all those years of being shunned. After she died. So it's a sad ending to a story that was really entirely unexpected. It is. I certainly went into it expecting and knowing that there was a lot of controversy over whether she was really Wanta a Loca Joanna the mad um and um. You know how much the power play among her family members had to do with her long imprisonment. But it's one crazy thing. I mean, not to make a bad pun, there is if you go around reading stories about Wanna uh difference versus still treat her condition as insanity, you know, like she was in prison because she was insane. Um, rather than getting into the full story behind it. You know how her mental state is is troubled clearly, but certainly not to the level that her family claimed it was, although it degraded to over time, well as it would when you're imprisoned for that long and unable to to talk to to leave, or to do anything that you want to do, to even to write. But I think in a sense it's probably almost easier just to say, well, choose crazy, because even if you know the full story, you can speculate forever about why the decisions, why she made the decisions that she made and why her family made the decisions they made too, I mean power aside um why some of the things that happened happened. But certainly a fascinating story. I'm glad that we finally covered this one. I hope all those listeners who suggested it enjoyed it. Uh And you know, sorry, it's not a super Macob kiss in the Dead Body Foot episode, but it's just not how it turned out. So to Bolina, we have a really fascinating listener mail today. Yeah, you were saying it comes from Facebook. Not all listener mail comes from email. That was very true. And it's from listener Ellen, who was writing about our episode on the real Tokyo Rose Eva to Guri Uh, an episode both of us really enjoyed learning about, and one I think is kind of stuck with us too, just as another tragic sort of story. Um. But Ellen wrote in to say that she knew Eva growing up. In fact, her mother was Eva's best friend. After after the imprisonment and all of that, remember from the episode, she moved to Chicago, where her father ran a very successful store and lived in Chicago, so that's where Ellen's mother um met Eva. But it's it's a great message, and I'm just going to read part of it. But the part that I found really touching were Ellen's memories of Eva and how she really kept a lot of humor in her life, something that was incredibly surprising to us considering all she had been through. But just to read a little bit of that she wrote, Eva was a little fireball into her old age. She was full of energy and humor, very quick to make you laugh and share hilarious stories. She had that voice that was so amazing that I can still hear it today. Listening to the old radio broadcast on the podcast brought back many happy memories. Eva never let her hard life show on her face or in her personality. No one really knew who she was when they came into the store and was checking out their stuff the register. She liked to remain anonymous to the outside world because she always considered herself an American and was deeply proud of that. She didn't want to stir up attention to her past for herself and for her father's business. So this was a really touching email, and and she she went on to say too that um, she didn't really realize who she was or how famous she was. Ellen didn't rather until she was older. UM, just because Eva always focused on on others. Really, but that's kind of an example of some of the cool personal connections we sometimes fear about between listeners and the podcast. That is pretty amazing. Thank you for sharing and that story, Like you said, I think it it really touched both of us a lot. And the quote that we mentioned about the tiger changing its stripes. When when we were reading that quote, I was reading that quote during the episode, I got really choked up. And the funny thing is I got choked up when I read it the first time, and when I read it again, and when I read it on the podcast, and then later I was repeating it to my husband and I was retelling the story, and I got choked up then too. It's just something about it. It's just and and this is the story I've offen. I retold it to my fiance, I retold it to a woman we work with. UM not something I usually. I'm not sure if listeners imagine we're just always telling these podcasts to our friends. I try to avoid that. I usually think, you know, if people want to hear it, they can listen. UM. But yeah, I just felt like I had to tell other people this story, and um I was happy to to hear that Eva's later life did seem fulfilling to that certainly added something to my understanding of the subject. So thank you so much Ellen for writing in too to share such a touching story. If you guys want to share any personal connections to subjects, I don't know how many folks are going to have Wanna li loca connections unless you're European royalty than or probably the right to us definitely, or just suggestions, you know, the drill, whatever, whatever you guys, I want to say. We are at History Podcast at Discovery dot com. We're also on Twitter at missed in History, and we're on Facebook, and again we mentioned it a few times during the podcast, but Julia Fox's book on Wanna is really interesting. It's actually a dual biography called Sister Queens, covering Juanna's life and her sister Catherine of Aragon, who, as people always say, would make another fabulous subject. So true. And if you want to learn a little bit more about Captain of Aragon's famous husband, Henry the Eighth, we have an article about that. It's ten heads that roll roll during Henry the Eighth's reign, and you can look up that one by visiting our homepage at www dot how staff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how staff works dot com