FIND ME ON SUBSTACK TIKTOK BUYMEACOFFEE ====>>>>>>> KOBI ONE Every single man in her life had brought her closer to ruin and had plotted to take from her everything, sanity included. It was all she had left to think about now. Endlessly wandering these corridors of the Royal Palace of Santa Clara in Tordesillas, Spain, time had left this once so fine a mind as to be almost void, nothing but some grief and a lot of cold hatred. Whenever she sat in her chaise-longue, here in this prison of a room, she was confronted with the ghost of one of these men. Just outside her window, but ten metres removed from her windowpanes, lies her dead husband, Philip the Handsome. May he rot in anguish. For her, there is no escape, no solace, no refuge. She has lost all but her life and she will hold on to it for as long as she can, even if it is just to spite the men that still live. Intermezzo The woman you have just met, imprisoned in a Royal Palace, is none other than Juana la Loca. She will sit in this palace for 46 years with almost no visitors, no contact with the outside world and absolutely no freedom. This is her epic and extremely tragic story. Buckle in. Act One — Maximilian and the Wedding Machine He didn’t get this far without having to suffer for it at the hands of the people of Bruges first, during the initial rebellion against Habsburg take-over. But now that he had ironed out every fold in this finely woven tapestry of Flemish cloth, it was Habsburg business as usual. The wedding machine kicks back into fifth gear and Europe shakes in its boots, while shaking those very same boots to a political game of musical chairs. Maestro, cue the wedding music. The Habsburg motto of the era: Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube. Let others wage war. You, happy Austria, marry. Max would stay true to this established Habsburg tradition. His firstborn is a man some of you will already know as he who accidentally gave way to ‘Flamenco’, the name we gave to that fiery dance and music of the Andalusian Roma gypsy’s. This is mentioned in my first installment of Strange Origins. His name is Philip the Handsome. A nickname easily earned when one stems from the Habsburg dynasty, a family known for many things. Beauty not being one of them. In the spirit of full disclosure and honesty, the chroniclers, such as Venetian ambassador Querini, indeed describe him as to be genuinely beautiful. Readers of my latest Sunday article will know the worst king to have ever lived, which was roundabout his actual nickname, Louis XI, who tried to steal the regions of the fallen Burgundian duke. Now in direct opposition of Maximilian, who married this duke’s daughter and reclaimed all the territories for himself. To undermine the authority of Maximilian and his now firstborn son, he spread rumours that Philip was in fact a girl. Medieval gossip, surviving the tooth of time. Oddly enough, later on in his life, during his actual reign, Philip the Handsome would foster relationships with France, in stark opposition to his very anti-French father, Max. Max’s daughter was named Margaret, later known as the Lady of Mourning, which bodes well for her love life, does it not? The nickname was given to her by her own court poet, which is a job I am willing to take if you are employing. She earned the nickname by jumping out of a window after her second husband, Philibert of Savoy, dies. She was saved and had her husband’s heart embalmed to keep it with her forever. She vowed then and there never to marry again and became a very successful and respected woman in politics. All this leads me personally to believe she was much more clever and cunning than most historians give her credit. I believe the window-jumping and coincidental surviving was all staged as a political move towards independence, claiming her right to not be married off again in her father’s political aspirations and if so, Margaret, I applaud thee. Her first marriage explains her father’s resentment for the French and her own resentment towards her father and fight for independence. To calm both sides of the Burgundian borders, the French king on one side and soon to become Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian of Austria, on the other, Max married off his daughter to Louis XI’s Dauphin, which indeed means both dolphin as does it mean the firstborn of the French king. She was sent off to the French court to be raised there, at the age of three. So she just tragically lost her mother and is now sent to a different country to be raised by a family that was hitherto a mortal enemy of hers, at the age of three. Dang these middle ages… Worst of all, nine years later, Max makes a political move that Louis XI didn’t like all that much so Louis calls off the wedding and sends Margaret packing, back “home” after nine years. She is now twelve years old. Fernando and Isabella — The Other Side of the Deal Back in Spain, the country is being united under one crown for the first time in its history, not counting old Rome or the Visigoths for technical reasons. The king of Aragon, named unsurprisingly Fernando, married the queen of Castilia, Isabella and they each ruled over their own regions, while establishing one empire. As of yet, two crowns. These would merge into one in just a generation. When Isabella and Fernando take back Granada and such from the Muslims, from the Moors, Europe rejoices. This is the first time since the fall of Constantinople that a Christian emperor manages to kick the Islamic infidels off of mainland Europe. Isabella is also the woman that would finance the trip overseas of none other than Columbus himself. All the spoils and riches that would flow to Spain afterwards can be accredited to Isabella. She is yet another phenomenally successful woman from the middle ages with claim to her name both the discovery of the Americas and the first defeat of the Muslims since the fall of Constantinople. Here their children in birth order: Isabella (eldest daughter), Juan (the heir, Prince of Asturias), Juana (third child, second daughter), Maria, and Catherine, who will become Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry VIII of England. Isabella and Fernando take a look across the borders and find Maximilian looking back at them. Nothing but those pesky French in between them. France would become stuck in a medieval, political, wall of death. The Double Wedding — 1496 The deal was made, they somehow managed without having read Trump’s book ‘The Art of the Deal’, amazing. The arrangement was as follows: Philip marries Juana of Castilia. Margaret marries Juan of Castilia. Two Habsburgs into Spain, two Trastámaras into the empire. France encircled on two sides without a single battle fought. While growing into his role as a leader, Philip the Handsome danced a beautiful, and historically extremely boring, rope-dance between his Spanish engagement and his pro-France stance. His Spanish princess, Juana, sailed from Laredo in August of 1496 with a fleet of 120 ships and 15,000 soldiers. A massive storm completely derails the schedule, wrecks big parts of the fleet and totally destroys one ship, killing its 700 passengers. She actually goes through hell the moment she sets forth towards this marriage of hers. Eventually Juana does indeed arrive, presumably at the port of Antwerp, where her soon to be husband is not even awaiting her. She travels with her entourage to Lier, modern day Belgium, where finally they meet. And the historians would have us believe that soon as their eyes lock ZAP electricity sparks. She is 16 years of age, he is 18, they are both chronicled to have been beautiful and intelligent. A priest is demanded on the spot to wed them there and then. The consummation of the wedding was also derailed from its schedule and accidentally managed to happen before the actual wedding. Must have been a medieval glitch in the matrix. Love was in the air, for Juana, that is. For Philip it was more a sexy start to a political marriage. The reality, sadly enough, was that Philip would never be able to fully comprehend his beautiful and extremely intelligent wife’s past and how it led her into his arms. She grew up in a dogmatic and extremely strict religious culture. She was the type of intelligent that does not fare well with dogmas. Though receiving the best education medieval Europe had to offer, or maybe because of it, she estranged from the church as far as politically possible and with it estranged from her family. Something obvious to us today, seeing as we have a paper trail of her parents paying a spy to actually stalk her and assess her piety. She gets a golden ticket out of this rotten family and the first thing that happens to her is witness 700 people die in bloody agony. She arrives in a world vastly different from hers where she recognizes nothing and then, the man she is betrothed to just stirs something in her soul. She is home now, here, with him. And he shows every sign of feeling the exact same way, for now. It would not last. Part Two — Juana, Who She Actually Was Childhood and Character Juana was born in Toledo, Spain on the sixth of November, 1479. Strawberry-blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin, she looked a lot like her mother. She inherited from her mother more than just her looks alone. The same strong, independent disposition that led her mother to the top might well be what caused the first rift between her and her parents, mostly with her father. Her father had married Isabella for clear political and military purposes but had not counted on such a strong adversary of a wife. His wife kept ‘undermining’ his authority, so his youngest child, who was already last in line and acted so much like her troublesome mother, would never be meant to wield any power. Not if he could help it. Her education was exceptional. Isabe
