Book excerpt: "Drawing upon recent scholarship and years of archival research, Bethany Aram offers a new vision of Juana's life. In this part biography, part study of royal authority, Aram asserts that Juana was more complicated than her contemporaries and biographers have portrayed her. Not the frail and unstable woman usually depicted, Juana employed pious practices to defend her own interests as well as those of her children. As queen, she worked tirelessly to assure the succession of her son Charles V to the throne and thereby to establish the Habsburg dynasty in the kingdoms that others managed to govern in her name. She emerges as a woman of immense importance in Spanish and European history."--BOOK JACKET.