Juana Manuel

Juana Manuel (1339 – 27 March 1381) was Queen of Castile from 1369 until 1379 by marriage to king Henry II of Castile. She was also the heiress of Escalona, Villena, Peñafiel and Lara, as well as Lady of Biscay.

Family

Juana was the daughter of

Marriage

Juana's father had been an enemy of King Alfonso XI of Castile, while the king tried to neutralize the Peñafiel family. On 27 July 1350 Juana's brother and guardian, Fernando Manuel of Peñafiel, married her to Henry, an illegitimate son of Alfonso XI.^[1]

Inheritance and queenship

In 1361, on the death of her niece Blanca, daughter of her brother Fernando Manuel who himself had died in c. 1350 without other children, she inherited Villena, Escalona and Peñafiel.^{[citation needed]}

Because Juana was a maternal granddaughter of La Palomilla (Juana Núñez de Lara), she also inherited Lara and Biscay.

In 1369, her husband became King Henry II of Castile, after he deposed and murdered his half-brother to take the throne, and she became queen of Castile and León.

When in 1381 she died and left her inheritance to her son, it was finally united with Castile, and ultimately Spain.

Issue

• King John I of Castile (1358–1390)
• Eleanor
  (died 1416)
• Joanna

Family tree

References

Sources

• Doubleday, Simon R. (2001). The Lara Family: Crown and Nobility in Medieval Spain. Harvard University Press.