Entry taken from the book The Plantagenets
Juan Sin Tierra has gone down in history as a devious character, hated by his people, capable of betraying his brother Ricardo Corazón de León and conspiring so that he would not return from his captivity in Austria after his return from the Crusades. Novels and movies about Robin Hood and Ivanhoe have contributed to creating this image.
However, John, with his faults, was a much more important monarch for the history of England than his brother (who only spent eight months of his reign on British soil and who in everything was more of a French king than an English one). . During his reign, one of the most important legal provisions in English history (known as Magna Carta) was imposed on him. and he also fought (unsuccessfully) against the primacy of the papacy in his domain… but that's another story, n. Furthermore, all the English kings for the next three centuries were descendants of the ill-treated John the Landless and not the adored Richard the Lionheart (both have dedicated blog posts which you can access at the links above).
Today we are going to focus on the figure of one of the natural daughters of John I, Joanna Plantagenet, and how she became Lady of Wales.
Joanna, born around 1188, was the natural daughter of Juan Sin Tierra (not to be confused with the legitimate daughter of the king of the same name, who was queen of Scotland). Her mother's name was Clemence and it seems that she came from Verdun and she knew John when he was just the 'landless' prince of the Plantagenets; Because her parents were both unmarried at the time of her birth, she was declared legitimate in 1226 by papal decree. Little is known of her childhood, which was apparently spent in France, before her father called her to her side in 1205 to betroth her to the rebellious Welsh lord Llywelyn.
Wales was traditionally a thorn in the heel in the English South West. Nominally vassals of the king of England, the Welsh lords rose with some frequency against this subjection; Lywellyn had learned that to have any chance of defeating the English he had to avoid open-field engagement, and he subjected the English troops to relentless guerrilla warfare and ambush, taking advantage of his perfect knowledge of the impassable Welsh terrain that made it difficult for an army to move. like the English, disciplined but unable to respond to the swift incursions and retreats of the Welsh.
In 1205 John was in one of the innumerable fights of the English kings of the Plantagenet dynasty in French lands in defense of their possessions on the other side of the English Channel and he needed of peace on the Welsh front in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his disputes on French territory. For this reason, and as part of a peace treaty with the Welsh, he proposed to Llywelyn to give him his daughter, our protagonist, Joanna, in marriage. Although she was a natural daughter and much younger than him, Llywelyn accepted and the couple married in 1206.
The first years of the couple seem to have been happy and from their union a daughter named Elen and a son named Daffyd were born, destined to have an important role in the history of Wales.
However, in 1230 Joanna was caught in flagrant adultery with the English nobleman William de Braose; he was executed and she, although she spent a year in captivity, it seems that she was forgiven by her husband and she returned to live with him until her death in 1237.
Llywelyn, Prince of Gwynedd, is known as the Great for his achievements in unifying Wales under his sole rule and for his struggles with the English, until in 1218 in the Treaty of Worcester the English recognized him as the supreme ruler of Wales.
Welsh custom stated that on his death his domains should be divided equally between his two sons:his eldest son was named Gruffyd and he did not prevent the hereditary rights of him who was a natural son; Regarding his youngest son Daffyd, it was the result of his marriage to our protagonist, Joanna.
However Llywelyn did not want his efforts to unify Wales to be wasted by dividing his domains and decided, with the support of the Pope and the English King Henry III (son of John Sin Earth) name Daffyd as sole heir. Gruffyd's opposition to this decision led to him being thrown from jail to jail during the reigns of his father and his brother who finally handed him over to the English king Henry III. In 1244 Gruffyd met his death trying to escape his captivity in the Tower of London. He had a son, to whom we dedicated a blog entry, named Llywelyn after his father who achieved the unique milestone in history of being officially recognized with the title of Prince of Wales
Daffyd not only inherited his father's title in 1240, but also the need to fight the English and other Welsh lords to assert his lordship over all of Wales. Although he succeeded, a deadly disease caused his death in 1246.
Whoever wants to know more details about the life of Joanna Plantagenet and about the environment of the disputes between the Welsh and the English and between the Welsh among themselves in the reigns of Juan Sin Tierra and Enrique III you can read the series of novels by Sharon Kay Penman; the one that deals with the episodes in this post is Here Be Dragons, although the biography that traces the early years of our protagonist lacks historical basis.