Joan, princess of Castile
Encyclopedia : J : JO : JOA : Joan, princess of Castile
Princess Juana of Castile, known also as the Beltraneja, was born in 1462 and died in Lisbon in 1530. Her birth caused a scandal in the Castilian court. Her mother was Joana, princess of Portugal, the consort queen of king Henry IV of Castile. The king had no other children from this or the previous marriages and rumour said he was impotent. Because of this and the fact that Joana of Portugal was having a notorious affair with Beltrán de La Cueva, a Castilian noble, Juana was never considered legitimate. Moreover, she was nicknamed the Beltraneja (a mocking reference to her assumed real father) since the cradle. Her mother was banished to Bishop Fonseca's castle where she fell in love with Fonseca's nephew and became pregnant. Enrique divorced her.
Legitimate or not, Joanna remained the only child that could be remotely attributed to Henry IV of Castile. He even made the nobles of Castile swear alliance to her and promise that they would support her as queen. After a few unsettled arrangements, that included French and Burgundian princes, Joanna was promised in marriage to her uncle, King Afonso V of Portugal, that swore to defend her (and his own) rights to the crown of Castile. But when Enrique IV died in 1474, nobody took Juana's cause seriously and the crown went to Isabella I of Castile, her aunt. In the following year, Afonso V married Joan in Plasencia and prepared for the fighting. In 1476 he invaded Castile, but was defeated in the battle of Toro by Ferdinand II of Aragon, Isabella of Castile's husband. After this, Afonso V tried to procure, without success, an alliance with the king of France. In 1479, the king of Portugal gave up on the pretension and signed a treatise with the Catholic kings. Meanwhile their marriage had been annulled by the Pope on account of their family relation. She signed her letters until the day she died, "La Reina" meaning the queen. She thought that she had been cheated out of her inheritance and her aunt sent her to a convent. A drama entitled "Juana la Beltraneja" has been published in Liceus El Portal de las Humanidades by the author Santiago Sevilla. Here the role of Juan Pacheco and Beltrán de la Cueva shows the pernicious influence of certain members of the nobility towards princess Juana.
|- style="text-align: center;"
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.