Juana the Mad - Book Review

Becoming herself a queen after the death of her brother and finding her way through a labyrinth of political games in her early life, Isabel believed wholeheartedly that God Himself gave her backing for her rule. She could have never imagined first the loss of her beloved son, followed shortly after by the stillbirth of his only child, then the death of her eldest daughter and her infant son. Thus, Juana stayed very much off centre stage and given very little credence other than as a marriageable infanta. This was to cost her sorely when the time came for to take stage as queen.

Juana the Mad probes new scholarship "in four areas: Spanish constitutional thought, female sovereignty, princely courts and households and cultural understanding of madness," making the modern reader appreciate a little more the very real connection between the "body" of a monarch and their kingdom. She also constructs another bridge for clearer understanding about the medieval and renaissance world and how its patriarchal society imprisoned and controlled women. For Juana, with her father, husband and later her own son desiring to keep the power of the crown from her, this imprisonment was not only through the usual constraints of society but also a very real physical imprisonment.

Why did Juana refuse or fail to exercise her royal authority? Was she really mad? Was it a religious distancing, a desire to emulate the life of her ancestor Saint Isabel - so much so she willing allowed her husband, father and later her son tale the reins from her woman's hands? Did her family, like so many women then and now, simply come first with her, and she put their desires before her own? Aram's Juana the Mad:Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe helps us draw our own answers to these questions.

Whilst we can only really infer what was in Juana heart and soul, Aram's insightful work of thorough scholarship gives women, in those parts of the world fortunate enough to possess them, much reason to reflect they should never take for granted their modern freedoms.

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