January 30, 2020
The Last
Queen by C. W. Gortner
Joanna (Juana)
of Castile was the second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, older
sister of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII of England. As a toddler, Joanna was promised in marriage
to Philip of Flanders of the House of Habsburg and she was sent to Flanders at
the age of 16. After her mother’s death,
Joanna became Queen of Castile in her own right. Although initially happy in her marriage and
the mother of five children, Joanna grew dissatisfied with her husband’s
overwhelming desire to rule as king of Castile.
But after returning to Spain to take her throne, Joanna soon realized that she was
surrounded by men determined to seize her crown.
I love a
good historical novel about royalty and have read a number of books by Philippa
Gregory, Alison Weir, and Margaret George.
Most books about the royals focus on the British royal families, so I
was glad to find a well-written, well-researched fictional biography of Joanna
of Castile. She was also known as Juana
la Loca (Joanna the Mad), declared mad and unfit to rule by her own father
Ferdinand. Juana is another one of those
unfortunate queens that you keep hoping will have a different,
happier ending to their stories (others include but are not limited to Anne
Boleyn or really any of Henry VIII’s wives, Mary Queen of Scots, and Marie
Antoinette).
Being a
female member of any royal family has pretty much sucked down through the ages,
since daughters and sisters were used as human chess pieces and baby machines
with little regard for their happiness or the appropriateness of their arranged
marriages. There was also the
overwhelming boredom these women experienced – days spent oppressed by court
etiquette, endless embroidering, gossiping and plotting, with virtually no privacy. If you were young and lucky and had forward-thinking parents, you got a few lessons in
music and languages. But other than look ornamental, show up for court occasions, and produce a lot of children, queens didn't do much of anything (has anything changed in the 21st century?).
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