Juana "la Loca"

I consider myself to be a strong person, but there are still many things that scare me. Most things that scare me are pretty typical, like horror movies, and the dark. Other things I don’t want to scare me, so I do my best to overcome them, such as heights or moving fast on skis. ...  Afficher plus

One of my favorite Spanish artists is Francisco de Goya. He created light hearted paintings of picnics and beautiful religious scenes, but also dark, sometimes disturbing, etchings of war and social injustice. Goya lived in a tumultuous time in Spain, and he witnessed many sad mo ...  Afficher plus

Juana of Castile has gone down in history as "Juana la Loca." But Juana's mental state was likely not as bad as it seemed. Was she instead the victim of conniving relatives? In this episode, we discuss Juana's youth, her marriage and more.

Depending on which stories you read, Juana of Castile is either a woman who went mad after the death of her husband, or a maligned figure who was manipulated by the men in her life so they could rule Spain in her place. Her life is a perfect example of the stories we like to t ...

In this second part of our series, Juana has become her mother's unlikely heir. Just a few years after inheriting Castile, she is declared insane and imprisoned. But was she actually mad? And why didn't her son free her when he came to power?

Hortense Mancini is perhaps most famous for being a royal mistress, but her life was a series of adventures and scandals. Hortense was willing to do whatever it took to be a woman who lived on her own terms in the 17th century.