I was looking at his wikipedia page and on the styles section it mentioned him being the duke of Schleswig-holstein and I was wondering how a Russian monarch was a duke of a German province.
Joanna was the third child of Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the medieval Spanish monarchs of Inquisition fame, whose union had united the separate Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Aragon to form a dynastically unified Spain. Her siblings included two future queens of Portugal, as well as Catherine of Aragon, the future queen of England.
Raised in one of the most powerful families in Europe, Joanna was brought up to become an ideal future bride, as her title as princess meant she could be used to expand the power and influence of her family's kingdom. Like any other high-ranking medieval lady, she would have had a working knowledge of singing, dancing, languages, history, spelling and grammar, civil and canon law, hawking, riding, mathematics, philosophy, and needlework.
By around the age of fifteen, Joanna began to rebel against the strict Catholic doctrine her mother raised her with, refusing to attend confession and expressing 'heretical' views around Catholic rites and prayer. This expression was met with harsh punishment from her mother, whose devotion to the Catholic religion and hatred of heretics did lead to the execution of thousands of people. Mosen Luis Feffer, one of her father's chamber-men, wrote that Joanna had been punished for this behavior via "la cuerda", or 'the rope', where she had been suspended from the floor via a rope, with weights attached to her feet.
At sixteen she was betrothed to Philip of Flanders in an alliance set to strengthen the bond of Joanna's Trastámara and Philip's Habsburg families. Joanna left Spain to meet her husband in 1496 and the two were married later that year in what is now modern-day Brussels. Their union would produce six children, all of whom who grow up to be emperors or queens. Their relationship was one that waxed hot and cold, with the couple feuding over Phillip's infidelities and Joanna's jealous attempted to keep him from other women.
Joanna's political fortunes changed with the deaths of her two older siblings and their children, which made Joanna the heir to her parent's kingdom. In 1502, Joanna was legally recognized as the heiress of the Castilian throne and named Princess of Asturias. When her mother died in 1504, Joanna became queen regent of Castile. This resulted in Ferdinand, her father, losing his monarchial rights to C
... keep reading on reddit ➡How do I get control of it? Britain owns it but I want it for strategic protection.
