Three Queens for the Same Throne: Politics, Sex and Disorder in TVE’s Isabel

Abstract

Isabel the Catholic (1474–1504) is one of the best-known queens regnant in European history. Yet she is seen by many historians as a usurper. In order to secure her claim to the throne, her supporters conducted a defamatory campaign against her half-brother, Enrique IV, and his family. They accused the king of being a sodomite, his wife of being an adulteress, and named their daughter a bastard. The first season of Televisión Española’s series Isabel (2012) transforms this narrative in several significant ways in order to appeal to the postmodern audience. In the series, Isabel is presented as a feminist heroine who seeks personal retribution. She does not attack Enrique for being homosexual, nor is he represented as such; rather, Isabel seeks revenge for the emotional and sexual abuse inflicted upon her by her sister-in-law, Juana de Avis. The portrayal of these characters illustrates the intersection between homophobia and misogyny, as the homophobic discourses of the fifteenth century slip back into misogyny in the twenty-first. Despite being marketed as a feminist story, Isabel draws on misogyny—in the form of a femininely incompetent Enrique and a sexually-disordered Juana—in order to justify Isabel’s rise to power.