Juana the Mad of Castile, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. Until recently, she came down in history as the result of close, relentless, Hapsburg inbreeding, a complete wackjob. But recent revisionism now attributes her apparent madness on bad press created by the intriguing, ambitious male scoundrels immediately within her court and a life of emotional abuse.
Just being raised in that particular Spanish court as a designated heir to the throne would be enough to drive someone over the bend. Mama Isabella wasn’t exactly a paragon of sanity herself; she felt it her duty to rid Spain of all but Catholics in order to repay God for all that New World gold he gave her after financing the conquistadores, starting with Columbus— even if it meant killing off her most important advisors and financiers (Jews) and the Spanish business community (Jews and Moors) to the point of state bankruptcy, letting all that gold slip through her fingers. And her Confessor, Torquemada, would ensure that good, old fashioned, punitive Catholicism would be carried through into the family as it was throughout the country in his Inquisition. Nobody in that court was batting a thousand. But Juana comes to us as the Mad One.
Juana had one shining moment in her whole manic-depressive life and that was she was betrothed to Philip the Handsome whom she loved very much. Sadly, he didn’t reciprocate prefering the whores of Madrid. But when he soon died, she mourned him wildly, cutting herself, refusing to eat, sleep or bathe, and insisted on sleeping with his unembalmed body for nearly a month—until she was finally drugged and he was taken away. Her father soon became regent for her infant son and Juana was pushed out of the historic picture except as a target for ribald humor and political satire.