That became unmistakable when Joanna inherited Castile.
A Queen Everyone Wanted to Control
Isabella I died on November 26, 1504.
Joanna became Queen of Castile.
But Isabella had already anticipated a problem.
Her arrangements provided for Joanna to inherit, while allowing Ferdinand to govern if Joanna was absent, unwilling or incapable of exercising royal authority. That provision made the question of Joanna’s capacity politically explosive.
If she could rule, Castile belonged to her government.
If she could not, someone else would govern for her.
Her father Ferdinand had an obvious claim to that role.
Philip had his own ambitions.
Joanna stood between them.
A struggle developed over control of Castile, with Philip attracting support among sections of the Castilian nobility. Ferdinand eventually surrendered the exercise of government to his son-in-law and withdrew.
But Joanna herself remained legally essential.
The Cortes assembled at Valladolid in 1506 recognized Joanna as queen, Philip as her legitimate husband, and their son Charles as heir.
There is also evidence that Philip sought to establish Joanna’s incapacity so that he could govern without her. A scholarly work hosted by the Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes describes Philip as attempting to govern alone and seeking to confine Joanna on the grounds that she was mentally alienated, an effort that encountered opposition.
This is crucial to understanding everything that came afterward.
Claims about Joanna’s mental condition existed before Philip died.
And they existed in a political environment where proving those claims could transfer effective control of a kingdom.
Then, after only a short period as king, Philip suddenly died.
The Death That Created a Legend
Philip was only 28 when he died on September 25, 1506.
His death was unexpected.
Joanna was pregnant at the time with their sixth child, Catherine, who would be born in January 1507.
Her reaction to Philip’s death became legendary.
Joanna arranged for his remains to be transported toward Granada, where he was intended to be buried. The resulting journey became the foundation of the macabre stories associated with her for centuries.
One tradition describes the funeral party stopping at what Joanna believed was a monastery occupied by monks. When she discovered that the religious house contained nuns instead, she supposedly refused to remain there and had Philip’s coffin moved outside.
The Prado recounts this episode in its explanation of Pradilla’s famous painting, showing how deeply the story became embedded in the cultural memory of Joanna.
Other stories became still more extreme.
Joanna was said to refuse to leave the coffin.
She was portrayed as violently jealous even of women approaching her dead husband.
And some accounts claimed that the coffin was opened so she could look at Philip’s body.
It is here that caution becomes essential.
There is a historical basis for Joanna’s unusual attachment to Philip’s remains and for her accompanying or guarding the coffin. But the theatrical image that developed around the journey was shaped and reshaped by chroniclers, political interests, later historians, artists and popular storytellers.
Even the Prado’s nineteenth-century paintings demonstrate how powerfully later generations romanticized the episode. One painting depicts Joanna clinging protectively to Philip’s coffin; another imagines her permanently guarding his corpse, lost in grief. These works are important evidence of Joanna’s later image, but they were painted more than three centuries after the events they portray.
They should not be mistaken for eyewitness photographs of 1506.
The distinction matters because the coffin story became almost perfect evidence for the nickname history eventually attached to Joanna: