Title: Reign of Madness Author: Lynn Cullen
Published: August 4, 2011
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 437
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Juana of Castile, third child of the Spanish monarchs Isabel and Fernando, grows up with no hope of inheriting her parents' crowns, but as a princess knows her duty: to further her family's ambitions through marriage. Yet stories of courtly love, and of her parents' own legendary romance, surround her. When she weds the Duke of Burgundy, a young man so beautiful that he is known as Philippe the Handsome, she dares to hope that she might have both love and crowns. He is caring, charming, and attracted to her-seemingly a perfect husband.
But what begins like a fairy tale ends quite differently.
When Queen Isabel dies, the crowns of Spain unexpectedly pass down to Juana, leaving her husband and her father hungering for the throne. Rumors fly that the young Queen has gone mad, driven insane by possessiveness. Who is to be believed? The King, beloved by his subjects? Or the Queen, unseen and unknown by her people?
Lynn Cullen’s Reign of Madness offers a window into the life of one of Spain’s most notorious monarchs, Juana “the Mad” of Castile. Third child of the famous Spanish rulers, Fernando and Isabel, Juana married a Habsburg archduke, and upon the deaths of her elder siblings and mother, became the heir to her mother’s kingdoms. However, common consensus was that she was insane, so her husband had her put under house arrest, and after her husband died, Juana was kept imprisoned by her father and later her older son. Reign of Madness spans a time period of several years, starting when Juana is 14 and ending around the time her husband, Philippe the Handsome, dies and her father, King Fernando, seizes Juana’s crowns. Overall, I found this novel to be well-written and informative, though it was often hard reading due to how hopeless and powerless Juana’s life becomes toward the last quarter of the text.
I think my most pressing complaint about Reign of Madness is concerning how familiar the plot feels, even though there are really no stories similar to Juana’s in history. I can think of so many novels about female royals during the European Renaissance that follow a similar formula to the one Cullen employs here. A young princess marries a foreigner, but that marriage turns sour, so she instead seeks love in the arms of a handsome (but probably lowborn) courtier, all while dealing with her husband’s inability to rule. I’ve read a lot of historical fiction that covers those bases, and while perhaps it’s not an uncommon storyline in reality, I get frustrated because all my reads about European royals are starting to blend together. Sure, the idea of Juana having a romance with Christopher Columbus’s son whilst dealing with her husband’s ambition and tyranny is pleasant, but I felt like I’d read it before, you know? Authors of historical fiction seem to draw on the “forbidden love” side plot far more often than is necessary. With all that was going on in Juana’s life, I hardly think that she needed a romantic affair. Though I do admit that it allows Reign of Madness to have more hopeful/lighthearted moments than would otherwise be possible, all things considered.
What I did very much enjoy—and wish had been expanded upon in more depth—was Juana’s complicated relationship with her mother, Queen Isabel. The dynamic between mother and daughter was fascinating and nuanced, and I felt that Cullen did a good job with it for the most part, though I think she could have emphasized it more (and perhaps, in doing so, cut out Juana’s illicit love affair). In any case, I felt that Reign of Madness captured Juana’s conflicted feelings of resentment, respect, and envy towards her mother, and also displayed how those feelings evolved as Juana herself matured and gained a wider understanding of marriage and politics. In general, though, I felt that Isabel was more my favorite character in the book, as Juana often came off as someone who complained constantly and was exceedingly (and perhaps willfully) ignorant—as she’s the first-person narrator, this became frustrating. I’m not sure I really like Isabel of Castile, as a person, but she’s far more interesting and admirable than Juana in some respects, and I think Cullen did such a complex, driven woman justice.
As I mentioned, I did have problems with Juana herself, which made it hard to read the book in some respects. Juana, for instance, believes that her mother “made” her father have affairs with other women because she was too dominant and assertive as a wife—that kind of victim blaming is troublesome and infuriating, even from a character in 1500 AD. Juana also complained a lot, though she didn’t seem to do much to attempt to alter her situation. Again, considering historical context, Juana really was powerless in most respects, so it’s hard to fault her for that, though, again, if we look at Juana’s mother, we see a woman who was able to wield much power in spite of her societal limitations.
Another interesting detail about Juana’s story is that, when a mob attempted to free her from her prison in 1520, Juana…refused to be freed. That kind of behavior is extremely difficult to justify, considering that Reign of Madness makes the case that Juana was completely sane and merely imprisoned due to the fact that the men in her life were jealous of her power. Which seems like a plausible premise, except for Juana’s apparent refusal to fight back when given a clear opportunity to do so. Lynn Cullen “explains” this behavior by having it that Juana was waiting for Christopher Columbus’s son, her lover, to come and rescue her (or something along those lines). Honestly, I didn’t buy that, but since I felt the entire love plot was unnecessary in the first place, this comes as no surprise.
All things considered, I thought that Lynn Cullen did a very admirable job of trying to make sense of a historical figure as shrouded in controversy and myth as Juana of Castile. The book was easy to read and rich in detail, and my complaints all stem from disagreement with the author’s interpretation (and embellishing) of history, which in historical fiction is hardly something to get too upset about. So, all in all, Reign of Madness was well-written, nuanced, and enjoyable, and as I don’t have anything supremely negative to say in any respect, I’m inclined to call this a successful, worthwhile book.
