Joan of Portugal
Encyclopedia
Joan of Portugal was Queen consort of Castile as the second wife of King Henry IV of Castile
Henry IV of Castile
Henry IV , King of the Crown of Castile, nicknamed the Impotent , was the last of the weak late medieval kings of Castile...

 and a Portuguese
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 infanta, the posthumous daughter of King Edward of Portugal and his wife Eleanor of Aragon. She was born in the Quinta do Monte Olivete, Almada
Almada
Almada is a municipality in Portugal, covering an area of 70.2 km² located on the southern margin of the Tagus River. Its municipal population in 2008 was 164,844 inhabitants; the urbanized center had a population of 102,357.The seat is the city of Almada....

 six months after the death of her father.

Queen of Castile

On 21 May 1455 in Córdoba, Spain
Córdoba, Spain
-History:The first trace of human presence in the area are remains of a Neanderthal Man, dating to c. 32,000 BC. In the 8th century BC, during the ancient Tartessos period, a pre-urban settlement existed. The population gradually learned copper and silver metallurgy...

, she married as his second wife King Henry IV of Castile
Henry IV of Castile
Henry IV , King of the Crown of Castile, nicknamed the Impotent , was the last of the weak late medieval kings of Castile...

 who had repudiated his first consort, Blanche II of Navarre
Blanche II of Navarre
Blanche II of Navarre , titular queen of Navarre, was the daughter of John II of Aragon and Blanche I of Navarre. She was also Princess of Asturias by marriage....

, after thirteen years of marriage. It was rumoured that their marriage had never been consummated due to the king's impotence. In February 1462, six years after Joan's marriage to Henry, she gave birth to a daughter, also named Joan, called La Beltraneja because of rumours that she was in fact the daughter of Don Beltrán de la Cueva
Beltrán de la Cueva
Beltrán de la Cueva y Alfonso de Mercado, 1st Duke of Alburquerque was a Spanish nobleman and presumed lover of Queen Joan of Portugal.-Early life:...

, 1st Duke of Alburquerque
Alburquerque, Badajoz
Alburquerque is a town in the province of Badajoz in Spain. It has 5,600 inhabitants. It is very close to the border with Portugal and was an ancient dominion of the kings of this country...

, who was Joan's lover.

Henry banished Joan from the royal court and she went to live in Coca at the castle of Henry's supporter, Bishop Fonseca. She soon fell in love with Bishop Fonseca's nephew; they embarked on a sexual affair, which resulted in Joan bearing her lover two illegitimate sons (see below). Henry subsequently declared their marriage had never been legal and thus divorced her in 1468.

At the death of her former husband in 1474, Joan championed her daughter's right to succeed to the throne, but she died shortly thereafter.

Scandals and illegitimate children

At the Spanish court, prior to her banishment, Joan had provoked much criticism as she allegedly wore dresses that displayed too much décolletage, and her wanton behaviour was considered scandalous. Joan has been credited with many lovers, including the poet Juan Rodríguez de la Cámara
Juan Rodríguez de la Cámara
Juan Rodríguez de la Cámara , also known as Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, was a Galician writer and poet, considered the last poet of the Galician school.Born in Padrón, he was born to a hidalgo family...

.
Joan had two illegitimate children by Pedro de Castilla y Fonseca "el mozo", nephew of Bishop Fonseca, and a great grandson of King Peter of Castille.
Her two sons were: Pedro de Castilla y Portugal and Andres Apostol de Castilla y Portugal. The birth of her two illegitimate children only added to Joan's considerable notoriety.

She later entered the convent of San Francisco in Segovia
Segovia
Segovia is a city in Spain, the capital of Segovia Province in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is situated north of Madrid, 30 minutes by high speed train. The municipality counts some 55,500 inhabitants.-Etymology:...

.

Joan died in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

 on 12 December 1475 at the age of thirty-six. She was buried in Madrid.

Ancestry

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