Juanna la locad childhood1/6/2024 I particularly enjoyed the details of the life of Juana. There is some good information about Isabella’s children, especially Prince Juan and her daughter Juana. She also believes, based on her own journalistic work, that there was a history of sexual abuse in Isabella’s family. She describes the cannibalism the Europeans discovered in the Caribbean and tells us about the possible origin of the sexually transmitted disease of syphilis coming from the New World. There is a little more detail in Downey’s book about Christopher Columbus and his voyages and their impact on Spain as well as the entire world.ĭowney covers some new material here as well. She writes about the life events of the Queen, sometimes giving a keen insight into her life and at other times giving an overall picture. While Liss’ biography is an academic work with exceptional detail, Downey has a different, but still relevant approach to Isabella’s life. Panama was a trade hub for the shipping of the treasures from the New World to Spain and beyond. When she was a young girl living in the American-controlled Panama Canal Zone, she was captivated by the ruins of Spanish buildings which have existed since the voyages of Christopher Columbus. Downey’s book is also a worthy read.ĭowney explains in her afterword that she has a lifelong fascination in the life of Isabella. I tackled Peggy Liss’ biography first which was very interesting. My interest in Isabella is a result of my lifelong love of Tudor history and the fact that Isabella was the mother of Catherine of Aragon. I’ve been spending a lot of time in Spain recently! There were two biographies of Isabella of Castile on my book shelf and I’ve now completed reading both of them. This has given me a great deal of food for thought and I’m going to do some further research on this illness. Some of the descriptions of Juana’s behavior reminded me of a family member who suffered from depression. That being said, I did get one huge insight from reading this book. She is a woman about whom volumes could be written. The book is very short at 228 pages so I’m afraid there is not a lot of detailed and useful information on Juana. It is unclear if he means that Juana was full of unrest or her kingdom was in disarray or a combination of both. There is no explanation for the origin of the title of the book. He only gives a passing reference to the fact that Juana was imprisoned for most of her life. While this is of great interest, it doesn’t really have much to do with Juana. There is a large chapter with a complete description of Philip’s visit with King Henry VII at Windsor which is a reprint of a chronicler’s record of the event. There is some good information on her tours of Spain to be recognized by the Cortes as her mother and father’s successor. He doesn’t waste much time on her life in Burgundy. Tighe gives a nice description of Juana’s childhood in Castile. As for her being insane, the jury is still out on that one. She was highly educated and spoke and read Latin so she must have had at the very least a modest intellect. I also find it hard to believe a sickly woman gave birth to five healthy children. I can’t see Philip the Handsome being instantly sexually drawn to a woman who was considered ugly. And he fervently insists that she was insane! From what I’ve read so far, Juana was at the very least attractive if not beautiful. This is not very promising.įrom the early chapters, he says Juana was sickly, unattractive and not very bright. His list of sources is not very detailed and includes the “Encyclopedia Britannica” and ‘A Spanish book entitled “Juana of Castile”’ with no author given. This volume is a curious mixture of historical biography and descriptions of historical events mixed with elements of fiction. He may have written other historical books but it’s hard to determine the subjects of some of his titles as there is no information listed about them. I can’t seem to find much information about the author but from what I did find, he was a playwright and a novelist. I’m just going to disclose up front I found this book to be a very weird. In doing research on Juana, I found this book completely by accident as it came up as a recommendation on Barnes and Noble. I’ve mentioned before I enjoy reading older history books and we are lucky some publishers are reprinting some of them or publishing them digitally so we can read them. This book is subtitled: “The story of Juana of Castile, mother of Charles V., born 1479, died 1555” and is a reprint of a 1905 edition that was in the library of the University of Michigan.
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