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Feature screenplay, in development.

 

Accursed women of a divided kingdom.

 

Four sisters in a man's world yet destined for greatness, each one a victim in different ways.

 

The four daughters of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, all destined to be queens, three Queen Consorts and one Queen Regnant, although nominally. The year is 1506.

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The eldest daughter Isabella, already widowed and married again to King Manuel of Portugal, has been dead since 1498, her second husband being the uncle of her first. Isabella appears in flashbacks and ghost scenes throughout the piece.

The second daughter, Juana, Queen of Castille and subsequently of Aragon, was accused of madness and yet was in fact merely a pawn in the machinations between her father Ferdinand, following the death of her mother Isabella, and her husband, Philip the Handsome, Austrian Archduke, although she was to outlive them both.

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The third daughter, Maria, married her sister’s widowed husband Manuel of Portugal and after a series of almost nonstop pregnancies she finally succumbed, along with her last son, in 1517.

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The fourth daughter was Catherine of Aragon, famous in England as wife to Henry VIII, having been wife to his eldest brother Arthur in 1501. A marriage which lasted less than a year. Arthur’s death plunged Catherine into the first of the precarious stages in her life which was to culminate in her infamous divorce from Henry.

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This piece, explores what was happening to all four women in 1506, a key year for Juana when her husband Philip, died, some say of poison, which afforded Juana’s father the opportunity to grasp the government of Castille. Obviously, Isabella is already dead at this time but she is a spectral character, bemoaning the fate of her Royal house since her death and that of her heir. Maria and Catherine are abroad, consorts to kings, but their role here is as arch letter writers, which Juana, reads and tries to define in delusional state.

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A collaborative process has begun with actors Carmen Garcia Martinez, Juan Jose Bastidas, Christina Garcia Martinez (actors), Nigel Bray (director) and myself (writer).