The first czar of all Russia, Ivan IV (whose nickname in Russian implies imposing or threatening more than evil) expanded Moscow’s influence into the lands of the ancient Eastern European federation known as the Kievan Rus. A group of rebels freed Joanna in 1520 and pronounced her sane and fit to rule-but changed their minds after she refused to support them instead of her son and sometime tormentor Charles.
When he was concerned that she might try to flee during a plague outbreak, Charles arranged for fake funeral processions to pass by her lodgings, convincing her to stay put. From then on it was Charles who kept his mother imprisoned, creating a fictional world to keep her in isolation. After Ferdinand’s death in 1516, Joanna and her teenage son Charles were made co-monarchs. After Philip’s death in 1506, Joanna’s confinement continued for another decade of her father’s regency.
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When a series of deaths made her heir apparent to Isabella’s throne, her husband kept her confined after her mother’s death in an attempt to press his claim (over Ferdinand’s) for the Castilian throne. Born fourth in line to the throne of her parents Ferdinand and Isabella, Joanna was married off to Philip “the Handsome” of Burgundy at age 16. Joanna of Castile (1479-1555)įew queens’ stories are sadder than that of “Juana la Loca,” whose family and rivals colluded to keep her confined in asylums. Ming-era novels such as “The Zhengde Emperor Roams through Jiangnan” cast the emperor as foolish and gullible, at one point enjoying a bowl of rice gruel he believes to have been made from cooked pearls. When the two fell out five years later, the emperor ordered Liu executed by a three-day process of slow slicing (Liu succumbed on day two). During the first five years of his reign, he unwisely put a senior eunuch, Liu Jin, in charge of most of the affairs of state. He was fond of leading capricious military expeditions and liked to give orders to an imaginary double he called General Zhu Shou. One of the most notorious rulers of the Ming Dynasty, the Zhengde Emperor was renowned for both his foolishness and his cruelty. He was deposed by Yorkist forces in 1461, exiled in Scotland, briefly restored to the throne in 1470 but then reimprisoned and murdered the next year.Ĥ. After a temporary recovery, his condition worsened in 1456 into lethargy punctuated by a routine of religious devotions.
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Never a strong leader, Henry suffered his first full mental breakdown in 1453, which left him in an incommunicative stupor for more than a year. The subject of a three-part Shakespearean drama cycle, Henry VI was made king before his first birthday but spent his final decades battling mental illness as his kingdom lost land to France and slid into the chaos of the War of the Roses. He built a lavish house for his horse Incitatus and attempted to appoint the steed to the high office of consul, though he was assassinated before he could complete the promotion. Tall and hairy, Caligula is said to have banned the mention of goats in his presence, but practiced facial contortions to better terrify his subjects. In another episode he ordered his troops to “plunder the sea” by gathering shells in their helmets. He once had his army construct a two-mile floating bridge so he could gallop along it on his horse. Topping even his nephew Nero for the crown of cruelest and craziest Roman emperor, Caligula was known for his lavish projects, his sadism and his eccentricity. The Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness became the framework through which royal insanity was seen in the Judeo-Christian world. According to that account, the arrogant king was struck down for his disbelief in the Hebrews’ God, leaving his palace and living in the wild. The granddaddy of all mad kings is King Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler whose first-person account of a seven-year descent into animal-like insanity is one of the most fascinating sections of the Old Testament book of Daniel. Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (604-562 B.C.)
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