Philip (the Handsome) & Joanna/Juana of Castile (Juana the Mad) and their family

[Bernardino]

I think all her other sisters were more emotionally stable...yet Isabella also had some episodes of emotional instability...

Her first marriage to Prince Afonso of Portugal ended in a love match...The Princes loved each other indeed, and she was heart broken when Afonso died after falling from a horse...The marriage lasted only a few months and she wasn't pregnant...

She went back to Castile and seems to have lived in a state of depression, she wouldn't eat becoming really thin...

Then King Manuel I of Portugal (her 1st husband oncle) who had received her on her trip to Portugal (and said to have fallen inlove with her, never leting anyone know this) asked her in marriage...The parents were delighted, but she wasn´t willing to marry again...

After some negotiations she ended up saying yes to the marriage, on one condition: Portugal should expell all the Jews as Spain had already done...The King wasn't very willing to do it, but in the end he did it...

Then she became Queen of Portugal, and wasn't her sudden death and the death of her young son 2 years later, Juana would have never become Queen...

[Prince_Lieven]

Just a teeny question Bernardino - I thought Manuel (Isabel's second husband) was the cousin of her first, Alfonso, rather than the uncle?  

[ilyala]

re: philip's portrait. there are many people that were considered beautiful and we don't see how nowadays. this can be for several reasons:

1. the beauty standards have changed considerably over time. just look at how some women considered beautiful looked in the 80s and you'll see what i mean

2. there are no accurate portraits. the portraits may not show the way they actually looked. there's a portrait of charles the fifth (the emperror) in which he he is painted a brunette, but i believe he was light haired, for example.

3. maybe their beauty was enhanced by some personal qualities like charm, wit, beautiful smile, sparkling eyes, melodic voice... etc etc... those cannot be captured in a portrait

and another observation: one does not need to be very beautiful to have someone fall in love with them. yes, today we are bombarded with images of beautiful people from anywhere, but the truth is that there are many ordinary people out there and they're not single, not lonely, and manage to find their true sincere love despite their ordinariness. philip had a lot of mistresses but that was not uncommon for a prince and maybe they gave in to him due to his social status, rather than his looks. after all henry 8th still managed to get married at 40 something to a teenager, even if he was fat, had a smelly ulcerous leg etc... as far as we know the only woman to actually love philip was juana and, yes, she made a fuss about it, but that was because she was mentally ill. the big fuss in the end was her illness not his beauty

[Bernardino]

Manuel I was a first cousin of King John II (both grand-sons of King Duarte I).

Manuel's sister Leonor married her 1st cousin King John II, so their son Prince Afonso was Manuel's nephew and cousin...quite common among royal isn't it  

[Bernardino]

Manuel was also a first cousin of Joan the Mad's mother: Manuel's mother and Isabella the Catholic's mother were sisters (respectively Beatrice and Isabella of Portugal, daughters of Infant João)...

[Prince_Lieven]

Manuel I was a first cousin of King John II (both grand-sons of King Duarte I).

Manuel's sister Leonor married her 1st cousin King John II, so their son Prince Afonso was Manuel's nephew and cousin...quite common among royal isn't it  

Oh, sorry, my mistake.  

[Lady_Aurora]

wow! thanks everyone! somehow I won't be able to tell my teacher that her story is a bit flawed though, she loves telling it so much and I'm sure that I'm one of the few people who actually listened.

We also discussed Phillip the Handsom's handsomeness in my class and my friend and I just discussed it in our other class (which I'm probably not supposed to be on here now...but oh well) and the paintings of that time could be disceaving.  Some painters changed things for diplomatic reasons or just because.  There are many options and it could have been that in his part of the world at that time period he had the ideal looks.  

[Lorelei_Lee]

In his own time Philip was considered the handsomest man in Europe.  Contemporary descriptions particularly noted the beauty of his hands, which he kept immaculately groomed.  His teeth, unfortunately, were not so good.  Very black and decayed, which of course doesn't show in the pictures.  Still, at the time this was so very common that it wasn't considered the defect that it is now.   He also was tall and wellbuilt and generally quite the athlete, which again isn't something that the portraits convey.  

Lady Aurora, I think your teacher did well!  Even if she didn't get the story exactly right, she got your attention and inspired you to make further inquiry, right?   I had a teacher like that ... oh, about 30 years ago ... and it was she who got me hooked on history.  

[palatine]

Henry VII of England met Juana and her husband in 1506.  Juana must have been behaving normally at the time, because Henry seems to have been quite taken with her.  Henry tried to marry Juana after Philip died.  He seems to have believed that the tales of her madness were false or exaggerated, and that her father was holding her prisoner.  

While some believe that Juana was bipolar or schizophrenic, it seems that her "madness" only set in after she became a mother.  Perhaps she had one of the world's worst cases of postpartum depression.

I remember reading that soon after Philip died, a monk told Juana that he would come back to life in ten years.  Perhaps the monk was only trying to calm Juana down during a fit of hysteria, but she took him seriously.  I've read that Juana's faith in the monk was what made her decide to keep Philip's coffin near her, and that she was shattered after Philip failed to return to life after the ten years passed.

For what its worth, Philip was very handsome compared to his father, who had the severely deformed jaw characteristic to the Habsburgs.  Philip's jaw was only mildly deformed.

[ilyala]

henry wanted to marry juana because:

1. his only heir was henry (future henry 8th) and that was a very fragile heirdom, he wanted to secure the inheritance. his wife was dead, he was thinking about marrying someone else
2. juana was queen in her own right. she had a great position. also she had proven herself to be fertile

i sincerely doubt henry was that taken with her for it to matter. henry 7th was just not the type of guy to marry the first girl he liked (unlike his son )

[Lady_Aurora]

Lady Aurora, I think your teacher did well!  Even if she didn't get the story exactly right, she got your attention and inspired you to make further inquiry, right?   I had a teacher like that ... oh, about 30 years ago ... and it was she who got me hooked on history.  

you are very correct!  even though i've loved history since...forever... she has helped me not feel so nerdy for it.  most of my history teachers have actually been that way.  and her stories are amusing...plus the fact that my friend and i are the ones she always has explain things to the class.

[Lady_Aurora]

the whole monk prophesy is very insteresting i had never heard that story.  or the fact that henry VII wanted to marry Juana.  my teacher did freak out a kid in class by saying when he called her Joanna that she was commonly called "Juana la loca". the kid had no clue what she meant.  but many deseases like depression and such back then were usually dismissed as imbalances or madness.  
i'm wondering if the fact that Juana's little sister (Katherine)  married Henry VII's sons also made Juana a good choice.  a further connection with spain and an added one with the Hapsburgs... maybe...

[umigon]

Juana was indeed mad, not just depressed or emotionally unstable. When she was a small child she had fits of rage after which she entered a period of calmness in which she didn't speak to anyone. She some times slept on the floor, saying she was a saint, or she cut her own tongue with pieces of glass... Not just a depressed woman, I will say, but a mad one...

[Lady_Aurora]

I agree that, yes, she must have been mad.  But one wonders if something led to this "madness"?  It could be possible that she was just born crazy or that something happened in her life to make her crazy.  I don't think her husband's death was what made her crazy in the first place.  I've heard that she was quite mad for years before then.  Anyone know of any horrible thing that might have occured to her when she was young to make her go a bit crazy?

[ilyala]

i'd say the horrible event was having a grandmother that was also crazy