Reddit reviews Juana the Mad: Sovereignty and Dynasty in Renaissance Europe (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science)

Warning: Brick wall incoming. Joana in particular is one of my favorite misunderstood heroines and I could talk for hours about her.

That story in particular is the primary one used to prove her insanity, but it's rather complicated and can be explained as both a misinterpretation of her actions and straight up lies.

The following information comes directly from this biography.

Almost everything we read about Joana comes as part of a biography of someone else - her mother, her sister Catherine, her niece, Mary - but almost never herself. There are no primary sources from Joana herself, so she was never able to directly explain her actions. She lived in an extremely patriarchal time when the idea of a woman ruling on her own was considered partially insane, which is a bit ironic considering the fact that her mother did a wonderful job.

But because we have no primary sources from her point of view, all of her actions were interpreted either by people who simply didn't understand her, or by people with their own political agenda. And it's the latter we have to be most critical of.

Yes, Joana delayed the burial of her husband for several years, and carted it around with her. But rather than interpret it as insanity, it's possible this was a brilliant political move intended to introduce the Spanish people to their new monarch. Joana and Philip were never supposed to rule. She was the third born child and her marriage to a Hapsburg was meant as a political alliance but she was meant to go to Germany and not come back. Three separate people and an unborn child had to die in order for them to become the heirs to Spain. So by carting around Philip's corpse, Joana may have simply been trying to get the Spanish people comfortable with the idea of a Hapsburg dynasty.

A particular morbid part of the tale that still fascinates people today, and really convinces them that Joana was nuts, is that at one point, Joana somehow either became convinced that Philip wasn't dead, or was so obsessed with her husband that she opened his coffin to stare at his dead body. A fantastic historical fiction book about Joana, The Last Queen, one that portrays her in mostly a positive light, even includes this scene.

But the truth is, the first mention of it shows up several decades after Joana died, and a primary witness to the journey where Joana supposedly opened his coffin never reported it.

Yes, Joana had some quirks that to a modern audience may seem a little weird. When family members showed up in the convent she had been locked away in, they found her emaciated and dressed in what was essentially peasant clothing. She was supposedly starving herself. But further research shows that it was shortly after she lost close family members and typical Spanish mourning included dressing simply and fasting. Mary Tudor and Katherine of Aragon were known to do the same thing.

One report has her banging and screaming on the doors, but further research shows that her husband had locked her in her rooms and refused to let her out.

Shortly before her mother died, Isabella wrote a special part of her will that specifically named Joana (NOT her husband Philip) as her heir and gave her the ability to rule alone. Isabella obviously believed that Joana was capable of doing so. Mere months after Isabella died, Ferdinand was declaring Joana insane and unfit to rule.

Years after Joana had been locked away in a nunnery, onlookers claimed that she was paranoid and was blaming the nuns for stealing her jewelry. Turns out - her family was actually breaking open her coffers and stealing her jewelry.

The truth is, Joana was tortured, gaslit, and finally locked away by her family all so they could rule through her. At one point she was given the opportunity by her people to rule alone, and she passed it up because it might mean her son would lose the ability to rule. She voluntarily put herself back into the nunnery to preserve her family's right to rule. She sacrificed herself. If anything, that might prove her insanity for sticking up for the very people who tortured her.