Sister Queens
Katherine of Aragon and Juana Queen of Castile
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- €3.99
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- €3.99
Publisher Description
The first dual biography of Katherine and Juana of Aragon, based on a comprehensive re-evaluation of the sources
Katherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first bride, has become an icon: the betrayed wife, the revered Queen, the devoted mother, a woman callously cast aside by a selfish husband besotted by his strumpet of a mistress. Her sister, Juana of Castile, wife of Philip of Burgundy and mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the most powerful man in Renaissance Europe, is still more of a legend. She is 'Juana the Mad', the wife so passionately in love with her husband that she could not bear to be parted from him even by death, keeping his coffin by her side for year upon year.
They were Sister Queens - the accomplished daughters of Ferdinand and Isabella, the founders of a unified Spain. A gripping tale of love, sacrifice, the demands of duty and the conflict between ambition and loyalty - at a time when even royal women had to fight for their positions in society - Julia Fox's vibrant new biography teems with life. Linked not only by blood but by cruel experience, their dual stories enrich our understanding of them both, casting a searchlight onto the turbulent age in which they lived.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Daughters of Spain's Isabella and Ferdinand, the sister queens Katherine of England and Juana of Castile epitomized the pitfalls of being "born female in a male-dominated society." Although Juana became queen of Castile after Isabella's death, her closest male kin, beginning with her bullying husband, Philip of Burgundy, usurped her throne by circulating rumors that the temperamental queen was deranged; then her father, and then her son, kept her as an abused prisoner. But Juana bore healthy sons and her descendants dominated Europe for some two centuries after her death. The politically astute Katherine was Henry VIII's closest adviser in their marriage's early days and enjoyed a productive, contented life. But she lost Henry's affection and her title as queen consort when she failed to produce a male heir. If Fox's recreation of the characters' interior worlds feels contrived and her downplaying of Katherine's self-righteousness and Isabella's brutal religious fanaticism are questionable, the author offers an absorbing, rich, and fresh view of the entwined royal relationships that helped define the 15th- and 16th-century European political landscape. 16 pages of color photos; 1 map.
