Okay I know i said that I would talk about Mary I in my next post, well, I'll do that later. I just read this article called "Madness in the Spanish Royal Family" from A Dark History: The Kings and Queens of Europe by Brenda Ralph Lewis. I thought that this article was really interesting and i wanted to blog about it! The article is about Queen Juana of Castile (1479-1555). It said a lot about how she was mad and where her madness came from. The article states that her madness came from her grandmother, Isabel of Portugal. It didn't state where Isabel got her madness, probably from Portugal. Juana was the first victim of Isabel's madness in the Spanish royal family. Juana was married to Philip the Handsome, who was the heir to his father Maximilian of Austria, the Holy Roman Emperor. Juana and Philip were in love at first sight. What brought out her madness was when Philip had a new mistress. Having a mistress was common for a King in those times. Juana went a little crazy, angry and jealous. From then on, it only got worse. Sometimes she would sit on the floor of her room, never moving, or she would go into the cornor of her room and act if she was trying to melt through the walls. She didn't eat if anyone was there to see her, instead she insisted that the food was left outside of her room. She would run out and grab the food, bring it back to her room and eat it there. When she finished the food she would either hid it under her bed or throw it against the wall.
This is an image of Queen Juana.
I don't really know if this was madness or depression. maybe a mix of both. Either way, I feel like it couldn't have been her fault. Dumb Philip for doing this to her. I bet all she wanted was someone to help her, she needed a good husband. Philip wasn't that husband. If she lived in this time, she probably could have been helped. She was queen for fifty years, almost as much as Queen Elizabeth I of England.
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