Author Topic: Philip (the Handsome) & Joanna/Juana of Castile (Juana the Mad) and their family  (Read 45019 times)

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Offline Prince_Lieven

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Hi! I was wondering if anyone could give me more info on the daughters of Juana the Mad and her husband Felipe of Burgundy?

Here they are:
1. Eleanor/Eleanora/Leonora/Leonor (1498-1558). She married firstly King Manuel I of Portugal, who had been married first to Infanta Isabel or Aragon and then her sister Maria, Eleanor's aunts. Eleanor married secondly King Francois I of France.

2. Isabel/Isabella (1501-1525). She married King Christian II of Denmark.

3. Maria/Marie/Mary (1505-1558). She married Louis II, King of Hungary and was later Regent of the Netherlands.

4. Catherine/Catalina/Katharina (1507-1578). she married King John III of Portugal.

Any info is appreciated (umigon and cimbrio, I'm looking at you!  ;D) Thanks!  :D
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Offline cimbrio

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I know this is "sort" os connected to this thread, but I've read that Felipe "the Handsome" wasn't as handsome as some historians think he was. I've read that Juana probably gave first sisgns of mental instability after her first sexual intercourse with her husband. Apparently their sexual life was quite enviable. Let's wait and see  what Umigon says ;)

Offline Prince_Lieven

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I know this is "sort" os connected to this thread, but I've read that Felipe "the Handsome" wasn't as handsome as some historians think he was. I've read that Juana probably gave first sisgns of mental instability after her first sexual intercourse with her husband. Apparently their sexual life was quite enviable. Let's wait and see  what Umigon says ;)


Their first . . . *ahem* intercourse must have been pretty bad to drive Juana literally mad!  ;)
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
-Sherlock Holmes

"Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget."

Grand_Duke

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Their first . . . *ahem* intercourse must have been pretty bad to drive Juana literally mad!  ;)


LOL! You are too bad! LOL  ;D

Their love must had been a very wild thing!
Because after their met each other for the first time, they wanted to be married almost immediately so they could go to bed and make sex!

Another freaky thing: Juana was pregnant and she was at a party when she started to feel the labour contractions. Her maids took her out of the party and Juana gave birth to Charles, the future powerful emperor, inside a WC of that time!  :P


Offline Prince_Lieven

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I don't blame Felipe for being keen - Juana was reputedly Isabella's most beautiful daughter . . .

Re Charles' birth - I'm sure that's something he didn't want spread round! Imagine what Francois I or Henry VIII would have said! ;D
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
-Sherlock Holmes

"Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget."

Offline synnadene

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Isabella


umigon

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I know this is "sort" os connected to this thread, but I've read that Felipe "the Handsome" wasn't as handsome as some historians think he was. I've read that Juana probably gave first sisgns of mental instability after her first sexual intercourse with her husband. Apparently their sexual life was quite enviable. Let's wait and see  what Umigon says ;)



Actually, Juana had given signs of mental instability since she was about 10 or eleven. Bury up those legends about Philip and his amazing acts in bed turning her mad... Well yes, that made her even more mad, sex and jeaulousy finally made her totally mad. But when a small child she slept on the floor and she sometimes cut her own tongue with broken glasses! Modern historians have concluded she suffered schizophrenia, an hereditary mental illness which passed from Isabel de Portugal, mother of Isabella of Castile, to Juana, and then to Juana's daughter Isabel, then to many of Juana's descendants.

About her daughter Isabel, hger last years were quite unstable. She had gone mad, not as violently as Juana, but she felt remorses for her Lutheranism faith and abjured. Only to become a Lutheran again and then a Catholic and so on. I don't knbow what faith she was in when she died. Oh! and by the way, Isabel and Christian had seven children in fact: Christian (stillborn son 1516), Hans (educated in Madrid, where he died, lived 1518-1532), Maximilian and Philip (twins who lived 1519-1520), Dorothea (1520-1580), Christina (1521-1590) and Charles (stillborn 1523).
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by umigon »

Offline Prince_Lieven

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I'm disappointed! I thought we had liecence to insult Felipe's abilities as a lover all we wanted!  ;D

Hmm . . . you say the madness came from Isabella de Portugal? Wasn't she descended from Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancster. So the illness may have come from the Plantagents. Since Henry VI also showed signs of 'madness' this seems possible . . .?
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
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Offline Kimberly

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I'm disappointed! I thought we had liecence to insult Felipe's abilities as a lover all we wanted!  ;D

Hmm . . . you say the madness came from Isabella de Portugal? Wasn't she descended from Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancster. So the illness may have come from the Plantagents. Since Henry VI also showed signs of 'madness' this seems possible . . .?

Not sure about that.i wonder wether Henry VI inherited his madness from his grandfather Charles VI of France via his mother, Katherine de Valois.

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umigon

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About Kim's theory, it might be a very possible solution. The mental illness was hereditary, but I think Charles VI and Henry VI had a mental illness with other symptoms. Wasn't Henry the one who was like a vegetable at times??

Juana also turned into a vegetable state sometimes, but she mixed that state with anxiety, violence, sex-addiction and also times when she was stable and mentally sane. Her granddaughter Juana, Dowager Princess of Portugal and infanta of Spain, was mentally unstable in the last years of her life, the same that had happened with Isabel, Juana the Mad's daughter. Juana of Portugal's son, King Sebastián, was also quite unstable, the same as his cousin Prince Don Carlos (Felipe II's son), as they were both great-grandsons of Juana four times!

Emperor Rudolph II and his brother Ernest were also mad (the second being more stable than the first one and both being more stable than their great grandmother Juana the Mad). Endogamic marriages only did things worse, as you can see!
« Last Edit: August 30, 2017, 01:34:28 AM by trentk80 »

Lady_Aurora

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Ok I have heard a story from my favorite history teacher that after her husband (who reportedly slept around quite a bit) died Juana asked that his body travel with her and be put in her bed at night and that she was rumored to have said "If I couldn't have him in life, then I will have him in death."  Now I trust this teacher tons but she always lables it as one of her "worthless bits of information."

I'd like to know if any one else has heard these rumors and possibly any others about Juana (Joanna).
Thanks!

:) Lady Aurora

Offline Prince_Lieven

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I've heard this one too, I'm pretty sure it's true.  ;)
"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"
-Sherlock Holmes

"Men forget, but never forgive; women forgive, but never forget."

Lorelei_Lee

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Yep.  Poor Juana was head over heels in love with her husband Philip "the Handsome".  He was quite taken with her at the outset of the marriage; it was one of those arranged affairs, with bride and groom being wed by proxy before ever meeting in person.  When they finally did meet up, Philip was so enamored that he insisted a priest be summoned at once so they could say their vows and go to bed together.  Unfortunately it didn't take him long to tire of Juana, and he turned to other women.  LOTS of other women.  Juana supposedly became so enraged by one of his affairs that she attacked Philip's mistress with scissors and hacked off her long golden hair.   Incredible as it seems, there are actually ambassadors' despatches from the period documenting these melodramatic incidents.  There may have been an element of exaggeration--I believe Philip was anxious to justify his poor treatment of Juana to her parents, the powerful Ferdinand and Isabella, whose heir Juana was.  Philip no doubt wanted Isabella to believe Juana incapable of ruling, so she would appoint him to be Juana's regent in her stead.  Isabella agreed about Juana being unfit to rule, but chose her husband Ferdinand to be Juana's regent, which kicked off a power struggle between the two men after Isabella died in 1504.  The Castilian nobles supported Philip (they had never much liked Ferdinand but put up with him while Isabella was alive), and he reigned briefly until his death in 1506.  At the time it was rumored that Ferdinand had had Philip poisoned, but more likely he died of natural causes.  Anyway, poor Juana was absolutely distraught after Philip's death.  At first she allowed the body to be embalmed and taken away to the monastery where Queen Isabella's parents were interred.  The corpse rested there for a few months, and Juana only went to visit it once.  Then she announced her intention to take Philip's body to Granada; apparently his dying wish was to be buried there.  That was when things got a bit weird.  She was very heavily pregnant when she set out for Granada with the corpse, and progress was very slow.  She didn't actually take the body to bed with her, but she did have the coffin opened at least once so she could gaze at Philip.  At one point a storm threatened, and the cortege took refuge in what turned out to be a nunnery.  When Juana found out that the place was full of women she insisted upon leaving at once, supposedly because she feared they would steal Philip from her.  Again, while there are eyewitness accounts of Juana's irrational behavior with regard to her husband's remains, they may have been exaggerated so as to justify appointing a regent to rule in Juana's name.   Eventually it was Ferdinand who became regent for his daughter as Isabella had intended; then after Ferdinand died it was her son Charles (Carlos V) who ruled.  Poor Juana didn't die until 1555; she spent nearly 50 years imprisoned in the fortress of Tordesillas by order of her father, then of her son.  

No one knows for sure, but the poor lady really does seem to have been mentally ill.  It ran in the family--her grandmother Isabel displayed similar symptoms, and of course her great-grandson Carlos also was insane.  He was her great-grandson twice over, the child of her grandson Philip II and his first wife Maria, a Portuguese princess who was Philip's first cousin.  

Lorelei_Lee

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Here's Philip the Handsome:



I must say, I don't quite understand what all the fuss was about!  He looks quite ordinary to me.  

« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 06:00:00 PM by Lorelei_Lee »

umigon

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Yes, the story is true, and, as Lorelei has already explained, Juana did indeed go around with her husband's coffin, and, although his corpse wasn't put in her bed, Juana did open it to kiss and embrace her deceased husband. About that phrase, I doubt that she ever said it, because she didn't want to believe that he was dead.


And Juana was indeed mad, probably from some type of schizophrenia, inherited from her grandmother Isabel of Portugal and transmitted to many of her descendants, who did it worse by intermarrying. Juana's madness, in spite of what has been said for centuries, didn't start as a result of her jealousness, because she had been an unstable woman since childhood...