I am elated to announce an interview with C.W. Gortner here on Hist-Fic Chick! C.W. is the author of The Secret Lion, and his latest, The Last Queen (read my review here). His next novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, releases March 25th, 2010. The Last Queen was one of my favorite reads of 2009, and I cannot wait to read more from this fantastic author. You can visit C.W. on his website, or at his blog.
As The Last Queen illustrates, history has been unkind to Juana, a queen who, quite rightfully so, gave way to many public outbursts of rage after being wronged so many times throughout her life. Why do you think history has labeled Juana as “La Loca,” when her passion clearly sprang from places far beyond mere histrionics?
Well, first of all, we’ve an interesting cultural phenomenon in Spain: when someone acts up, we often say, “Está loca,” or she’s crazy. We don’t mean it literally; it’s just a figure of speech, often resulting from exasperation with someone else’s actions. I’ve often wondered if somehow that is how Juana first got saddled with the epithet. It would certainly be less cruel than the more plausible explanation that her detractors deliberately set out to brand her as mad. Juana was imprisoned because allegedly she was incapable of ruling; it was actively promulgated she was insane. Whether or not this was true, the label evidently stuck. History likes pigeon-holes: it’s easier to label people with identifiable badges than accept the complexity behind them, the gray areas instead of the black and white.
Trust and betrayal are both central themes in The Last Queen, and subjects that caused Juana a great deal of misery throughout her life. Do you think she was politically naive and overly trusting, or do you think the people she surrounded herself with (willingly or unwillingly) were simply evil malcontents out for their own gain?
I think it was both. Juana was not raised or trained to be a sovereign queen; it was only through a series of tragedies that she ended up inheriting the throne of Castile. I think she found herself plunged into machinations she had no preparation for, with the further ill fortune to be surrounded by men who decided to work against her to further their own ends. It can be argued that her mother Isabel also inherited through tragedy and likewise was not trained to rule, but it’s very important to note that in Isabel’s case she had her husband Fernando supporting her, something Juana lacked. In fact, Juana had her husband actively campaigning against her. Juana also inherited a vastly different Spain from her mother’s. Isabel and Fernando had curtailed the nobility’s privileges and forced them to adhere to the crown; with Isabel’s demise and Fernando’s exile from Castile, the nobility felt at liberty to resist Juana and cajole her husband to restore their privileges, regardless of how it might affect Spain and the rightful inheritance of their queen, Juana.
What do you think Isabella of Castile had in her time that her daughter Juana didn’t, which allowed Isabella to gain firm control of Castile where Juana later could not?
I mentioned this above. Isabel inherited under a unique set of circumstances that were vastly different from those Juana faced. First, Isabel took over Castile upon the death of her half brother, whose reign had been weak and ineffective; in fact, several of the kings before her had been less than stellar rulers and the nobility had garnered ferocious power as a result. Isabel came to the throne wed to Fernando, the future king of Aragon, thus uniting Castile and Aragon under one rule. Together with the support of Fernando, she had tremendous influence and the ability to both curtail the nobles’ ambitions and undertake that historical conjoiner: the re-conquest. By undertaking the task of driving the last Moors out of Spain—something many kings before her had failed to fulfill—Isabel created a powerful propaganda machine in her favor, promising as it did wealth and titles to those who joined her in her cause. She still faced obstacles but she had Fernando and his might to assist her.
Juana, in turn, inherited on the heels of her dominant mother, and the nobility had by and large decided they’d have no more of Fernando and not another queen to rule over them. She also faced the enormous opposition of her husband Philip and of most of her own nobles, who had taken Philip’s bribes and allowed him to keep her in semi-house arrest. We mustn’t forget that Isabel took her throne by force with an army at her back, championed by the might of Aragon and several powerful Castilian lords; Juana returned to Spain to fight for her throne with none of these advantages, and was kept under guard by Philip for most of her struggle. Was Isabel a different character than her daughter in terms of personality and strength? Absolutely. But Isabel also benefited from several socio-political factors that gave her the upper hand. Had these same factors been at Juana’s disposition, the situation might have turned out quite differently.
Based on your research, in your opinion, did Juana truly love her husband Philip? If so, did she ever stop loving him after all he put her through?
I think she honestly loved him. I think that Juana was not an ambitious or cunning woman; she genuinely would have been happy to live her life as the archduchess of Flanders, raising her children and keeping court with Philip. I believe the tragedies that made her Isabel’s heir were the worst things that could have happened to her, because her sudden elevation in status warped Philip’s weak sense of integrity. Suddenly, he found himself in an inferior position to his wife’s and he didn’t relish it. It doesn’t excuse everything he did to Juana but I do see where he was coming from. Insecure, a puppet prince who’d never been accorded what he believed was his proper station in life: he reacted predictably, to Juana’s great misfortune. Did she ever stop loving him? Only she could answer that. I think that in many instances, when we love someone some part of us always loves them, even when they turn against us as monstrously as Philip did on Juana. Juana had a great heart, a great capacity for love: it would have been in her nature to hate Philip and fight him while he was alive, yet also find solace in the love they once shared after he died.
In the Afterword at the end of The Last Queen, you mention that Charles finally did visit his mother in captivity in Tordesillas, after over 20 years of separation. Though there is no record of their conversation, what do you imagine was said between the two behind those walls, and why do you think Charles never released her? Do you think he was grateful to her for protecting her throne so vehemently, so that one day he himself could rule over Spain, or bitter that he had to wait for his mother to die before he could officially take up her crown?
I’d have done anything to have a true record of what Charles and Juana said to each other during that meeting! Alas, my instinct tells me that Charles was probably disturbed by Juana’a coherence. All indications leading up to their meeting, including the records left by the Comuneros who freed Juana for a brief time, indicate she was dazed by everything that had happened since she’d been imprisoned but showed no signs of being insane. She asked pointed questions and she was the one who demanded to speak with her son, Charles. When he arrived to brutally suppress t
he popular revolt that had sought to overthrow his rule and restore Juana to the throne, I can’t imagine he was in a good mood. I believe he found a mother who was both fully aware of the injustices perpetuated on her and he decided then and there to never release her. Remember, though she never abdicated officially, he ruled in fact already and he wasn’t about to let Spain go. He relied too much on the country’s resources to replenish his struggles with his far-flung empire. And his actions demonstrate as much, for as soon as he left Tordesillas Juana’s imprisonment was strictly enforced. He removed her former custodians and replaced them with men loyal to him; henceforth, you begin to see in the records a very severe watch over Juana’s daily activities, to the point that she wasn’t even allowed to walk the leads without a companion who reported to her castle custodians. I believe Charles V conspired to hide the truth of his mother’s condition from the world not because she was mad and he sought to spare her the indignity, but rather because he knew she was not and he sought to hide the truth, so he could keep ruling Spain. Like his father and grandfather before him, he wanted the throne of Castile and was willing to do anything to retain it.
What aspects of The Last Queen are factually based, and what is fictionally imagined?
This is a difficult question to answer, simply because the factual and fictional blend in many instances, as usually happens in a work of historical fiction. For example, the fall of Granada as I depict it isn’t strictly factual. Granada surrendered more or less peacefully but other Moorish-ruled cities before Granada did not, so I chose to combine incidents from several of the Catholic conquests in order to demonstrate the full tragedy of the last Moorish expulsion from Spain. It was important to me to show in that first opening chapter the opposing sides of the Reconquest, as seen through the eyes of an impressionable sensitive girl. However, several of the more outlandish scenes in the book—such as Juana’s defiant rage at La Mota or her jumping over a wall on horseback while seven months’ pregnant— are factual. I found that with Juana’s story, the factual was often more dramatic than anything I could have made up!
Even as an Infanta of Spain and Queen in her own right, in the 15th century, Juana was essentially powerless simply because of her gender. How do you think Juana would fare in modern times?
I think she would have been a striking, loving woman, who would have had a career, but would have treasured above all else her family.
What can you tell us about your next novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici, releasing March 25th, 2010?
Catherine de Medici is usually seen as the eternal black-clad widow, a ruthless, power-hungry queen-mother who manipulated her sons and brought dark chaos upon France; she is known as that Italian woman, Madame Serpente, Queen Jezebel. She’s a marvelously complex character, and so very different from Juana! Yet I was drawn to Catherine at first for the same reasons that I was drawn to Juana; Catherine de Medici is maligned by history, and I’m always attracted to dark historical legends. I figure, if the person had a strong enough personality to garner a legend, then the truth has to be even more spectacular. And as in Juana’s case, Catherine de Medici’s legend – while certainly lurid, even heinous—doesn’t begin to do justice to her incredible strength and complexity. Catherine rose from obscurity as a neglected queen-consort to dominate France during one of the 16th century’s most savage religious conflicts; she was mother-in-law to Mary, Queen of Scots, and mother of the last Valois kings; she ruled at the same time as Elizabeth I, who seriously considered marrying one of Catherine’s own sons. She led an intensely dramatic, tumultuous life; she made many mistakes, one of them so violent and bloody it blackened her name forever; but she also showed remarkable tolerance in an age infamous for its bigotry, and her fight to save France from destruction forestalled the fall of the French monarchy for 200 years, until the Revolution. I like to say that just as Juana is far more than the stereotypical passionate woman who went mad out of love, Catherine is much more than the clichéd evil queen, with her poisons and hidden daggers. I hope readers will find her as fascinating as I have, for she has become one of my favorite historical characters.
Allie, thank you so much for your generosity and for taking this time with me. I hope your readers enjoy THE LAST QUEEN. Readers can always visit me at http://www.cwgortner.com to learn more about my work and upcoming books, as well as special offers such as a virtual tour of Juana’s world.
