Glyn Redworth re-appraises the life of an unfortunate queen.

Joanna of Castile was a pretty child. She had an oval face and a long delicate nose. Her skin was felt to be attractively light in colour as was her hair. Fiercely intelligent, the basics of Latin came easily to her. She possessed a great aptitude and fondness for music, something which would become one of the few consolations in her increasingly tragic life. Joanna’s destiny at birth seemed to be that of most royal princesses. She was expected to be little more than a brilliant wifely ornament at the court of a great European prince. The chances of her inheriting her parents’ crowns seemed slim to say the least. She had two older siblings. The second of these was a male, Prince Juan. He was expected to inherit both Aragon and Castile from Ferdinand and Isabella. More children were to follow, and if any of them were a male his claim to the thrones of Spain would automatically trump those of his older sisters.

In fact, Joanna’s future seemed likely to be similar to what would befall her younger sister, known to history as Katherine of Aragon... when Joanna was born in Toledo on 6 November 1479, no one imagined that this middle daughter would one day inherit the kingdoms of Castile and Leon and the quickly expanding empire in the New World, not to mention all the realms of the Crown of Aragon and its many territories in the Mediterranean, Italy, and North Africa...