The Broken Crown

When Queen Isabella dies, two men face each other over the throne of Castile: her husband Ferdinand the Catholic and her son-in-law Philip the Handsome. The legitimate heir is Juana. Both sides, however, are chiefly interested in proving that she cannot govern, and the claim of madness becomes a political instrument rather than a diagnosis. The future of an empire is argued through one woman's sanity. Jordi Frades's Spanish production was made as a sequel to the television series Isabel and a prequel to Carlos, Rey Emperador, with the same actors from both. Irene Escolar plays Juana. It looks at the woman history calls mad by asking who applied the word.