Joan of Portugal

Joan of Portugal or of Avis (Almada, March 20, 1439 - Madrid, June 13, 1475) was Infanta of Portugal and Queen of Castile as the wife of monarch Henry IV.

Biography

Posthumous daughter of King Edward I of Portugal and Infanta Leonor of Aragon (daughter of Ferdinand I of Aragon and Countess Leonor of Alburquerque).

After the death of Edward I, his mother Eleanor was appointed regent by the courts. However, the nobles of the kingdom, opposed to this appointment, due to her status as a foreigner, formed a party around the infante Pedro, brother of the deceased King Edward I, and at the courts of Lisbon in 1439, Eleanor was stripped of her title of regent, retiring to Castile with his daughter Juana.

Juana lived with her mother during her early years in the Monastery of Santo Domingo el Real, in Toledo, until Leonor died in 1445, possibly poisoned by order of Álvaro de Luna, at that time at war with Leonor's brother., John II of Aragon. After the death of her mother, she was claimed by her uncle Pedro de ella, regent of Portugal, and has since lived at the Portuguese court.

Queen consort

In 1455 she married her cousin, King Henry IV of Castile, in the Alcázar of the Christian Monarchs of Córdoba, whose marriage with Blanca de Navarra had just been declared null and void.

After seven years without children, Juana gave birth in 1462 to a girl who was also called Juana (1462-1530).

The following year, Juana became pregnant again, but the pregnancy did not come to fruition, since she suffered an abortion of a male fetus, when she was in the sixth month of pregnancy.

Henry IV's adversaries had called him 'the Impotent', not so much because he had no children from his first wife, Blanche of Navarre, but because his abandonment of his obligations was public knowledge. conjugal Even today, doubts are raised about his heterosexuality. However, it is something that has always remained between history and legend. In fact, the first rumors about the king's supposed homosexuality arose when Juana was born, since the Castilian nobles opposed to the king tried to make it believe that the girl was the daughter of the nobleman Beltrán de la Cueva, deprived of Henry IV, so the As a child, she was given the nickname Juana la Beltraneja. It was at that time that all kinds of rumors arose, including royal homosexuality, as a way to delegitimize the king, being used as a political weapon. Some sources even include the way in which he would have impregnated the queen, through an early artificial insemination technique using a gold cannula (per cannam auream), and other descriptions. physics that allowed Gregorio Marañón to carry out his Biological essay on Henry IV of Castile and his time (Madrid, 1930), which diagnosed the king with eunuchoid dysplasia with acromegalic reaction, and which is currently defined as an endocrinopathy, possibly a pituitary tumor, manifesting chronic kidney stones, impotence, penile anomaly and infertility, in addition to psychopathological characteristics.

Her husband ordered that she be confined in the Alaejos castle under the supervision of Archbishop Alonso de Fonseca y Ulloa, lord of the towns of Coca and Alaejos. During her confinement she had as a lover the archbishop's nephew, the Castilian knight Pedro de Castilla y Fonseca (great-grandson of Pedro I of Castile). This relationship occurred when she was still married to the king, as a result of which two twin children were born. The relationship was known at the time. Her children were:

• Pedro de Castilla y Portugal o Pedro Apostle de Castilla y Portugal, also known by Don Apostle of Castile (30 November 1468 or 1471 - ?), married in second nupcias with Juana de Mendoza;
• Andrés de Castilla y Portugal o Andrés Apostle de Castilla y Portugal (30 November 1468 or 1471 - ?), married to Mencía de Quiñones.

After fleeing from Alaejos, Juana lived with the Mendoza family in Trijueque and, later, in Madrid, in the convent of San Francisco, where she died.

On the death of Henry IV, on December 11, 1474, Queen Juana maintained her daughter's inheritance rights but died a few months later, at the age of thirty-six, on June 13, 1475.

Juana in popular culture

• The novel To Rainha Authentic (The adulterous queen) Marsilio Cassotti and The sad queen by Ricardo Ruíz de la Sierra, novels his story.
• On the Spanish TV Isabel, actress Barbara Lennie incarnates Queen Juana.

Ancestors

Predecessor: Isabel de Portugal

Consort Queen of the Crown of Castile 1455-1474

Successor: Fernando II de Aragón