The nation where I was born is ruled by conflict. We advance and conquer a land that originally belonged to us. I could consider it somehow logical were it not because we go beyond that. The kings are zealous Christians who defend their faith with such a fervor they arrogantly bestowed themselves the title of “The Catholic Kings”. Whenever a new territory falls upon their hands, the only religion the kings consider true is imposed as an iron yoke. Those who resist, those who desire to maintain their own, personal ideals, receive the most severe punishments. Freedom is one of the greatest sins, and sinners must be judged. No one is an exception. Not even the daughter of the kings. Not even me.
“Father, Mother. Why must we kill those with a different faith? Why do we spread words of peace and love through violence and murder?”
Those were the words I uttered as an innocent and curious young girl. I didn’t understand it. The Bible said we must love our neighbors as we love ourselves, but that wasn’t happening. Those who disagreed with us were tortured, those who neglected our God were killed.
“This is not the righteous way”, I thought, with the certainty that God would punish these wrongdoings. But that punishment never came. Moreover, it was as if this conquest was blessed with victory. Or, as if everything was a farce. Amidst the naivety that characterized someone my age, a spark of intellect, born from my curiosity, started clearing my mind with its light. I saw the truth. An almighty, all-forgiving God cannot exist. Not in this violent world where His worshipers do not heed His words, not in this reality where things like suffering whose existence He could cease.
⸻ And that spark not only illuminated me, but also set my future aflame.
“This must not exit these walls. The people cannot know the daughter of the kings is a heretic.”
The thoughts that made me think I wasn’t naive anymore made me naiver in truth. I committed the foolish mistake of sharing my conviction with my family. I had refused to pray, or even to touch a Bible. I had refused to have nothing to do with this largely believed to be true fantasy. Indeed, my overzealous parents could only see me as an abomination because of it. Had we not been tied by blood, I would surely have experienced the torments of Hell before diving to it. I was only punished with torments that left little to no signals of having been performed. That is, physically speaking. Inside my head, this penitence, this torture, was as horridly painful as a red-hot iron piece stabbing my entrails. The me at that time was blind to her own foolishness, and could only wonder
“What did I do wrong?”. Sorrow and pain had begun to cloud any other emotion of mine. Whenever I met my mother’s eyes, mine were brimming with tears that pleaded her to put an end to this cruelty, and hers were filled with the same apprehension of looking at vermin. Parents usually do what they think correct for the sake of their children, but I could perfectly feel this wasn't the case. I still ask myself why she didn’t just order my assassination and claim that I had passed away from an illness.
I am now 17 years old. As per custom, I had been designated a husband without allowing me to intervene and choose the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Love didn’t count, only the political interests from the kings were important, another proof of their selfishness. In my case, the person I will marry is the son of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg, Felipe, archduke of Austria. Parting to meet my spouse produces mixed feelings within me. On the one hand, I want to reject this as I rejected my faith, to rebel once more against my egoistic parents. On the other hand, the journey will make me be away from them, which means I can be a bit more free than usual. Besides, although it’s difficult to admit, I feel curiosity to know what kind of person I will marry……
The journey to Flanders is long and has some contretemps, but I consider it an enjoyable adventure. In these two months, I have had to spend some days in England due to the bad weather, and the ship with most of my belongings has ran aground a sand shoal, forcing us to abandon it. The most saddening thing is not having been able to meet Felipe as soon as I arrived to his country, but I know of his circumstances, and avoid complaining. But the extended wait was worth it.
“Lady Juana, this is the archduke Lord Felipe , your future husband.”
Oh, did he make honor to his moniker! He was the fairest man I had ever seen. His looks alone captivated my heart and made me praise myself for my decision, but there was more. Through conversations with him, I discover that his heart is as beautiful as his face. Thinking that this marriage will be prosperous isn’t just a hunch, it’s a fact. I will say yes. I will say yes to being with him. I will say yes to loving him. I will say yes to anything as long as it means dying away with this man. Of course, I eschew talking with him about religion for the moment, lest our sure-to-be different viewpoints ruin this marriage, and pretend not to be a dissident during the ceremony. Apropos, I enjoy the far more festive and less sober ambient of the Flemish lands.
⸻ But that heart would not emerge unscathed from this marriage, and jealousy would quickly start to slowly corrode it.
Two years have passed since my wedding. Two years that started between joy and happiness, but that soon sank in a sea of sorrow. My two elder siblings passed away during this time, one each year, and so has the son of my sister, my nephew, done. To the pain of the tortures that my mother ordered to be inflicted upon me, the grief of mourning my relatives was added. I started to feel more and more depressed, I needed a shoulder to cry on. Thankfully, I had the fortune of having married a man that would help me get over it, a person that would unconditionally support me. That was what I thought, but once more I was too naive.
“I’m no longer interested in you, Juana. There are better women than you out there.”
Too fast. It had been too fast. So fast that I didn’t have time to taste the sweet joy before it was overshadowed by this bitterness. The flame of love burned so intensely in my heart that it could burn my whole body to ash at any moment, but in his case it was just a small burst that was lit only for a short time. With each day, he feels more and more distant. I know he is cheating on me with other women, but I don’t understand it. I love Felipe. I love him more than anyone else. I certainly love him more than any of those harlots he screws behind my back! But there is nothing I can do. I love him too much. I feel angry at him, but I cannot express my anger. If this is what makes him happy, the only thing I can do is trying harder to please him. Because I am his most devote lover.
⸻ But it hurts. It hurts a lot. Every bond resulted to be a rusty chain that would break with the littlest of strains, and when those bonds break, my fall becomes faster.
My mother has passed away. I feel logically sad for her decease. She was family, after all. But I cannot help but feel relieved. She was the one who ordered my punishments, therefore I hope that they decrease, or at least stop. I know that my father is barely different from my mother in his zealotry, but I must keep hoping. Given that my siblings and nephew passed away, Felipe and I have now become kings of Castilla. At this time, the totality of our original territory has been recovered. Those of a different religion have been cast away, killed, or forced to refrain themselves from showing their faith. In this hopefully long rule of mine, I greatly expect that I can change that. Meanwhile, Felipe and my father have had arguments regarding the power. My father wished to take over the throne of his departed wife, but Felipe finally convinced him not to put his hands over my, no, our kingdom. I still cannot tolerate that he doesn’t share what I feel for him as he did in the past, but his tenacity makes me feel proud of wedding him.
⸻⸻ Again, my battered heart will be victim of cruelty, restlessly thrashed by the fate that seemingly hopes to murder it.
Two years after the death of my mother, Felipe dies, or rather, is killed. The medical reports say he suffered from high fevers caused by drinking cold water while overheated for playing ball. There is no way I can consider it true. I am certainly sure that my father, with his characteristic greed and selfishness, sent someone to poison my husband. Ruling matters not. Not anymore. What I must do now is giving the one I loved so passionately, the one who, even without loving me, blessed me with his seed six times, a proper burial. But once more, the egoism of my family bounds and shackles me. My father doesn’t want Felipe to be buried in Granada, where my mother lies, before he dies. I lost the debate, and I forced myself to wander around Castilla with the coffin for about eight months, accompanied by a large committee of noblemen.
“The queen is not sane!”
“Juana doesn’t care about her nation!”
“The queen Juana is mad! Juana la Loca must abdicate!”
Indeed, a queen that spends her time traveling only at nights with a corpse could only be seen as insane. People complain that I am not fit to rule, for my biggest concern is a dead man and not an alive kingdom. I know. I know what I am doing is wrong. I know what is expected for me to do. But I am simply unable to do anything about it. My heart and my soul scream with sadness and despair, for the only one to have supported me is now gone.
⸻⸻ Lone, lone, lonely, alone. Words that echo in my head as a cursed requiem. Words that resound and vibrate and change the world around me.
I have finally acceded to let my father reign Castilla. My son Carlos is still too young to become king. A regent is required. For a long time, I have been trying to hold the reins myself. I have said no to any proposed candidate, no to convoking the Courts. I have even said no to the archbishop entering my palace. But without Felipe, this is too much for me to handle alone. I have no other choice but to return to my father with the tail between the legs. Forgive me for this, Felipe. My only hope is that our son can become a good king, a better one than his grandfather.
⸻⸻ The time to put this so-called monster inside her cage has come. She is completely human, but her fame distorts her appearance, and therefore is a monster.
“My daughter is mad! Take the former queen to Tordesillas and enclose her in the palace! She must never leave that place!”
Under the unjust, egotistical and inconsiderate orders of my father, I finally am deprived of my freedom. He uses the word “palace”, but this place is in truth the same as a jail. I am only allowed to take the youngest of my daughters due to her being too young, but I know that when she grows up, I will be completely alone. Once I cross the gates, I would only receive the most important of messages, such as the crowning of Carlos or the demise of my father. But nothing else. My only companions are a bunch of nuns that continuously try any method to convert me, to expel whatever demon they think I may have within my body. Honestly, I cannot understand them. They should be the ones to be called mad. They consecrate their whole life to their imaginary God and even go as far as to say they are her wives. How isn’t that mad? How is it I the one who is called mad, when I just mourned my husband?
I feel boundlessly sad. I have lost everything that mattered to me. Since I was a young child, I have lost more than what I have earned. My freedom of speech was cut off, my love was rotten and split in half, my reputation was tarred, my land was given away, and lastly my wings of freedom have been twisted and rent. There is no longer a path for me to walk, I can only plummet to an abyss of depression. Not even my children visit me. Furthermore, my son Carlos orders not to set me free under any circumstance. My own children have betrayed me. I cannot believe in anything anymore.
But the last glimmer of light in this thick darkness of nil gives me some hope. Yes. Everything else may have been lost, but I am still myself. I am still Juana de Castilla. Even if the rest of the world sees me as a maddened demon, as long as I can see myself as a woman who fought to maintain what was hers no matter how emaciated I was, I will not have completely⸻⸻
They want to kill me. The nuns want to kill me. I am old and frail, therefore there is no need for me anymore. No, it’s not that. I never was needed, they were just waiting for me to be so weakened that I could not defend myself to end my life. I cannot feel secure even in my own room. If I fall asleep, they will asphyxiate me with a pillow. If I hunger, they will feed me poison. Stay away. Stay away from me! Don’t touch me!! Don’t come any closer to me!!!
Almost fifty years of my life have been spent recluse between these walls, almost all my life has been spent alone. Even in my death, this is still true. I finally lose the only thing I had left: my life. Nobody cares about my death, nobody cares about my thoughts. Despite my atheism being widely known, a priest is at my side in the deathbed. This is so painful. Why did nobody care? Why didn’t anyone have regards for what crossed my mind? I cry disconsolately. Felipe… If I was wrong, please wait for me in the afterlife…
⸻⸻ Sad. Sad. So sad. That is the only word that could be used to describe this life.
⸻⸻ Futile. Futile. Everything was futile. No matter how much I fought, my efforts to follow my convictions didn’t bear any fruit.
⸻⸻ Hate. Hate. I hate. Whether it is my own weakness or those around me, I don’t know it, but I could only curse the cruelty of this world.
⸻⸻ Revenge. Revenge. I want to take my revenge. I want a second chance. I want to show everyone what it is to lose everything. I want to show them that, when you have lived my life, you will undoubtedly break and become mad.
Originally Posted by pinetree
Posting Permissions
