The Oldman and the Girl

The Oldman and the Girl

A History of Ambition, Marriages, Battles and Bedroom Problems in early Modern Age Spain


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>>A hardly known fact is that there was an actual chance of Aragon and Castile uniting at the end of the 15th Century. Had Isabella the Ambitious been victorious over the teenage Queen Joanne I in 1479, there is no doubt that the history of Europe, the world and of course the Spanish Kingdoms would have been vastly different.<<


From The Queens War: A view of the Castilian War of Succession (1475-1479). Santiago de Almeida, 1998.

The roots of the conflict are remote and can be tracked to the reign of the founder of the House of Trastámara, Henry II (1369-1377) who was called “The Gift Giver” because the extensive concessions he was forced to give to the Castilian nobles. Henry, a bastard and a rebel, was able to get to the throne due to the discontent of the nobles wit his half-brother Peter I, a king especially liked by the bourgeoisie and the Jewish minority. (…)

The conflict between the nobles and the king was still in full force a century after Peter’s assassination at Montiel. The first demanded more and more shares of power over the decades, something that, unlike in most of Europe, had not been the custom in Castile due to its particular historical development, always in the frontier against the Infidel. The latter, of course, wanted to retain as much power as he could. The fight peaked during the reign of John II in 1406-1454, who was a child-king for most of his mandate and in consequence very vulnerable to the palace intrigues, and was inherited by his son Henry IV after his death. (…)

The problems of Henry IV were aggravated by the fact that he had troubles to create an heir off his first wife, Blanche of Navarre. Henry supposedly made bastards with other women, though, but in the face of the Pope, he though it was a good reason to claim personal infertility along the fact he and Blanche were cousins. Pope Nicholas V annulled their marriage, but the rumour of infertility would haunt him for the rest of his life spread by interested nobles (…) It was still en force when Henry married Princess Isabella of Portugal in 1455, and the fact she didn’t give an heir to the king for almost a decade didn’t other thing but reinforcing the rumours about the king’s “especial” genitalia…

Was Juana I of Castile the first human born by artificial insemination? Published on SuperHistoria, N. 243, Sept. 2005

Contemporary tales of Joanne’s birth make the event look either like a miracle or a fantastic scientific achievement. King Henry was widely regarded as sterile and his marriage with Joanne of Portugal had reached seven years when his only daughter was born in 1462…

The chronicler Juan de Palencia tells us that the king was so desperate with his infertility that he hired a Jewish doctor, Samaya, to study his problem. After examining the king’s genitalia, this doctor concluded that the penis was so weak and the glans so big that Henry couldn’t achieve a right erection, but that the sperm looked good (…). Samaya proposed then to use a technique developed by Jewish cattle traders in which bull sperm was collected on a cane and then deposited on different cows genitalia to produce several calves for the prize of one.

After his royal consent, His Highness was masturbated with a silk glove and his seed collected in a golden cane, to show the proper respect. This collected sperm was deposited then on the Queen’s vagina and, to general surprise, she gave birth to a girl nine moths later, the would be Joanne I. Coincidence?

From The Queens War: A view of the Castilian War of Succession (1475-1479). Santiago de Almeida, 1998

In any case, the doubts over Joanne’s legitimacy were enough to be used by the nobles enemies of Henry IV. As soon as 1464, groups of discontent nobles tried to force the resignation of the Prime Minister Beltrán de la Cueva, who was accused of being the true father of Joanne, and the abdication of Henry IV on his half brother Alfonso, who was then only 12 years old. Among these plotters was Alfonso Carrillo, the Archbishop of Toledo, one of the key figures of the Farce of Avila in 1465 and the civil war of 1475-1479…

…the Archbishops of Toledo, Seville and Santiago, the Enríquez family, the Counts of Plasencia, Benavente and Alba, the Marquis of Villena and other minor nobles and clergymen formed an alternate Cortes in Avila. A great wooden platform visible from a large distance was built and a straw figure dressed in full regalia was placed on it. After a mass, the plotters read a manifesto in which Henry IV was accused of being friend of the Muslims, homosexual, weak, and not the real father of Princess Joanne. After these heavy accusations were made, Carrillo stripped the figure of its crown, symbol of royalty; the Count of Plasencia took the sword, symbol of justice, and the Count of Benavente took the sceptre, symbol of government (…) Once naked, the figure was kicked to the ground by the brother of the Count of Plasencia, while screaming “To the ground, fucker!” Next, the prince was carried to the platform and proclaimed King Alfonso XII, starting the traditional kissing of hands…

…a battle between the rebel and royal cavalry took place near Olmedo in 1467, in which none of the contenders was able to gain the upper hand. Hernry IV, too weak to put a harder fight, chose to negotiate with the traitors. This situation remained till the sudden death of Alfonso in 1468…

Following the death of Alfonso, the rebels tried then to force the abdication of Henry on his sister Isabella. As Isabella was a woman and a teenager, Carrillo and his close ally Juan Pacheco the Marquis of Villena though that they could easily dominate her, but soon the girl proved to be smarter than them. As soon as Henry became tired of the fight and agreed to declare Isabella his heir by the Treaty of the Bulls of Guisando in 1468, the Princess kicked out the plotters and secured the support of different noble families. Isabella searched too for foreign support and in 1469 she secretly married Prince Ferdinand, the son and heir of John II of Aragon.

This wedding violated the conditions imposed by Henry the year before so the king stripped Isabella of her rights and declared Joanne his heir once again. But the damage was done. Dead Henry in 1474, Isabella proclaimed herself “Queen and Owner” of Castile in Valladolid, while Joanne did the same in Plasencia. At the same time, the only 12 years-old Joanne married the 42 years-old King Afonso V of Portugal on the request of Joanne’s main supporters: Carrillo and the Marquis of Villena, the very same that had worked so hard to keep her off the throne. Doing this, Afonso tried both to expand the control of Portugal over Castile, and to keep Aragonese influence off of the biggest of the Peninsular kingdoms. From the start of the war the Mint of Toledo - controlled by Carrillo - minted coins with the effigy and legend of “Juana I y Alfonso XIII, Reyes de Castilla por la Gracia de Dios”.
 
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Very good Tocomocho!

Portugal and Castille united under the House of Aviz, and Aragon as an independent kingdom.... Very interesting!

I'm looking forward the next installment!
 
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