The history books have cast Katherine of Aragon, the first queen of King Henry VIII of England, as the ultimate symbol of the Betrayed Woman, cruelly tossed aside in favor of her husband’s seductive mistress, Anne Boleyn. Katherine’s sister, Juana of Castile, wife of Philip of Burgundy and mother of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, is portrayed as “Juana the Mad,” whose erratic behavior included keeping her beloved late husband’s coffin beside her for years. But historian Julia Fox, whose previous work painted an unprecedented portrait of Jane Boleyn, Anne’s sister, offers deeper insight in this first dual biography of Katherine and Juana, the daughters of Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella, whose family ties remained strong despite their separation. Looking through the lens of their Spanish origins, Fox reveals these queens as flesh-and-blood women—equipped with character, intelligence, and conviction—who are worthy historical figures in their own right.
When they were young, Juana’s and Katherine’s futures appeared promising. They had secured politically advantageous marriages, but their dreams of love and power quickly dissolved, and the unions for which they’d spent their whole lives preparing were fraught with duplicity and betrayal. Juana, the elder sister, unexpectedly became Spain’s sovereign, but her authority was continually usurped, first by her husband and later by her son. Katherine, a young widow after the death of Prince Arthur of Wales, soon remarried his doting brother Henry and later became a key figure in a drama that altered England’s religious landscape.
Ousted from the positions of power and influence they had been groomed for and separated from their children, Katherine and Juana each turned to their rich and abiding faith and deep personal belief in their family’s dynastic legacy to cope with their enduring hardships. Sister Queens is a gripping tale of love, duty, and sacrifice—a remarkable reflection on the conflict between ambition and loyalty during an age when the greatest sin, it seems, was to have been born a woman.
From the inimitable bestselling author Thomas Cahill, another popular history—this one focusing on how the innovations of the Renaissance and the Reformation changed the Western world. A truly revolutionary book. In Volume VI of his accla...
Named a Best Book of the Year by: * Financial Times * New Statesman * History Today * The Spectator * “Like a Renaissance wonder cabinet, full of surprises and opening up into a lost world.” —Stephen Greenblatt The impeccably resea...
Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art ...
The first major biography of the Borgias in thirty years, Christopher Hibbert's latest history brings to life the family and the world they lived in: the glittering Rome of the Italian Renaissance. The name Borgia is synonymous with the corruption, ...
Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the fifteenth century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Among their number...
A fascinating and counterintuitive portrait of the sordid, hidden world behind the dazzling artwork of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, and more Renowned as a period of cultural rebirth and artistic innovation, the Renaissance is cl...
At its height, Renaissance Florence was a center of enormous wealth, power, and influence. A republican city-state funded by trade and banking, its often bloody political scene was dominated by rich mercantile families, the most famous of which were...
The startling truth behind one of the most notorious dynasties in history is revealed in a remarkable new account by the acclaimed author of The Tudors and A World Undone. Sweeping aside the gossip, slander, and distortion that have shrouded the Bor...
The fifth in the new Naxos Audiobooks series ‘In a Nutshell’, The Renaissance is a short and accessible introduction to the era that gave us Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Palestrina. The Renaissance swept across Europe between the ...
{"id":"318502","ean":"9780307967466","abr":"Unabridged","title":"Sister Queens: The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile","subtitle":"The Noble, Tragic Lives of Katherine of Aragon and Juana, Queen of Castile","author":"Julia Fox","rating_average":"5","narrator":"Rosalyn Landor","ubr_id":"318502","abr_id":"0","ubr_price":"22.50","abr_price":"0.00","ubr_memprice":"14.62","abr_memprice":"0.00","ubr_narrator":"Rosalyn Landor","abr_narrator":"","ubr_length":"Unabridged: 14 hr 50 min","abr_length":"Abridged: "}
