Juana de Castro – the maybe queen

Recently, I posted about a book dealing with Inés de Castro, a purportedly very beautiful woman who caught the eye (and heart) of Pedro of Portugal. Now, it would seem the de Castro genes were very good genes, because Inés had a younger half-sister named Juana whose beauty also caught the eye (but not the heart) of a Pedro. Sometimes, things do run in the family, as neither of these sisters were destined for a HEA…

But let us start at the beginning—a very good place to start, as Julie Andrews warbled so prettily in The Sound of Music (and now, dear readers, there will be an interruption as yours truly goes a bit nostalgic and hums her way through some songs) Right: back to Juana, who lived very far from edelweiss, if not mountains. The de Castro family was rich and powerful, with lands all over Castile, but they came from the north, from the mountainous regions in Galicia.

Juana’s father, Pedro Fernandez de Castro, was Alfonso XI’s cousin (his mother was an illegitimate daughter of Alfonso’s grandfather, Sancho IV) Juana’s father belonged to the powerful Ponce de León family, and we can assume our Juana grew up under comfortable surroundings.

Juana had a full, older brother, Fernán Pérez de Castro, roughly of an age with Alfonso XI’s only legitimate son, Pedro. She also had two half-siblings: Alvar and Inés. Where Fernán and Juana lived out their lives and ambitions in Castile, Alvar and Inés spent most of their adult lives in Portugal, where Inés became the mistress of Pedro of Portugal, while Alvar became one of Pedro’s closest counsellors.

We don’t know when or where Juana was born, but given future events I am thinking we can assume she was born in the years around 1335 or so. She married sometime late in the 1340s—a good, dynastic marriage with Diego de Haro, yet another of the powerful Castilian noble families. It would not be a long marriage as Diego died relatively soon, leaving Juana with a young son.

Due to her lineage, Juana was close to the court of the young, new king, Pedro I. It helped that her brother, Fernán, quickly became one of Pedro’s trusted men, which is why it is likely that Juana was among the gay party that converged on Valladolid in 1353 to celebrate Pedro’s marriage to Blanche of Bourbon. Gay and gay. . . The bridegroom was deffo NOT happy about this union—he was in love elsewhere, with the fair Maria de Padilla. But Pedro’s mother and privado (top counsellor) Joao Afonso de lburquerque, had pushed for this alliance with Blanche—plus, she came with an impressive dowry.

The Blanche-Pedro union was a massive failure. In part, this was due to the promised dowry not being paid out, but there also seems to have been a deep antipathy between the two—at least from Pedro’s side,—because it did not take him long to abandon his wife and effectively imprison the fourteen-year-old French princess. She was die in captivity…

As to Pedro, he hastened off to Maria and their baby daughter, Beatriz. Maria welcomed him with open arms, but by early 1354, the Castilian nobles were openly expressing their support for Blanche, saying Castile needed a legitimate heir. Besides, the nobles weren’t exactly thrilled by all the offices that were ending up in the grasping hands of Maria’s male relatives. Pedro, it seemed, had a brewing rebellion on his hands, which may be why he, in 1354, thought he could placate his nobles by wedding one of their own. Enter our Juana…

Maybe it was a need to prove herself as potentially powerful as Inés that led to Juana encouraging the king’s interest in her. Or maybe it was all those comments about her astounding beauty that turned her head. Whatever the case, soon enough the king was VERY interested. But Juana wasn’t about to let any man in over the threshold to her solar without a marriage contract, and, as she told Pedro, he was unable to wed her as he was still married. You know, to poor Blanche.

This Pedro dismissed as irrelevant, and so as to convince Juana to part her thighs for him, he had the bishops of Ávila and Salamanca pronounce his marriage to Blanche null and void. These not-so-moral-or-brave bishops even drew up a document stating this, and with it in hand, Pedro hastened to Juana. In a matter of days, they were wed.

From Pedro’s perspective, marrying Juana was an opportunity to sire a much needed legitimate heir—he had no intentions of ever doing any siring with Blanche. (Regarding Blanche, I lean towards his anger being more about the unpaid dowry than anything else—he felt cheated. And as the French king initially did not object as to his treatment of Blanche, it seems the French king understood from where Pedro was coming)

Juana and Pedro were not to have much joy in their marriage—the pope (presently in Avignon, hence under French control) tool serious umbrage at Padro’s cavalier decision to invalidate his marriage to Blanche (those two Spanish bishops got their ears warmed) and told the Castilian king that either he abandoned Juana or he’d be excommunicated. So, Pedro left and never saw Juana again.

The above is one version as to why Pedro left Juana. The somewhat darker version is that some days after his wedding, Pedro found out that Juana’s half-siblings, Alvar and Inés, had offered the crown of Castile to In+es lover, Pedro of Portugal—assuming the brewing rebellion succeeded. Hmm… Alvar and Inés were not in a position to offer the crown to anyone, and the de Castro family’s wealth and power lay with Juana’s other brother, Fernán, who would never betray Pedro (and he never did).

There is a third version, in which the king lies with his new wife for one single night and emerges a “much changed man”, riding off never to return.

In all these versions, Pedro at some point returns to patient Maria while Blanche remains behind walls. If Juana had hoped to become a true queen of Castile, those hopes were ground to dust mere days after the wedding. Instead, she becomes a parenthesis in the very complicated political context of the time.

Ultimately, Juana was as abandoned as Blanche was, but at least she wasn’t under lock and key, probably because of her powerful familial connections. In difference to Blanche (we don’t know if Pedro ever consummated that marriage), Juana ended up pregnant and gave birth to a son, Juan. Given the papal hullabaloo regarding the Pedro-Juana union, baby Juan was not considered legitimate by anyone but his mother. We don’t know much about this little boy—until he ends up being locked up by his uncle in 1371—but it seems he was raised close to court. Pedro himself never considered him legitimate, how else to explain that he in 1361 legitimised his children by Maria by claiming he had wed her before he married Blanche, effectively making Juan a bastard.

Juana, meanwhile, retired to her dower lands but would continue to refer to herself as Juana, by the grace of God queen of Castile in all future documents.

In 1355, Juana’s sister Inés was brutally murdered by the Portuguese king’s agents. Maybe Juana shivered in relief where she sat safely in her castle, thinking that it was better to be alive if abandoned than to be adored but very, very dead.

Juana died in 1371. She was laid to rest in Santiago de Compostela—an elegant grave that survives to this day. Not, mind you, as beautiful as Inés’ grave: Pedro of Portugal never got over her death and commissioned a new resting place for her, side by side with him. Our Juana, however, lies alone, as lonely in death as she seems to have been in life.