A life behind walls – meet Diego and Juan

Some of the sadder stories in history are about children who are caught up in the wars of their elders.

Take, for example, the sad story of Manfred of Hohenstaufen’s very young children, who were locked up (and purportedly blinded) by Charles of Anjou in 1266  after he killed Manfred and claimed Sicily as his kingdom. The eldest boy, Fredrick, was seven when Manfred died, and while his sister, Beatriz, would one day be set free, two of the boys would remain imprisoned for the rest of their lives—in the case of the second son, Henri, he was four when he was locked up and fifty-six when he died, still imprisoned.

Then, of course, there’s the equally sad story of Llywellyn and Owain, brothers and sons of Dafydd ap Gruffydd. Llywellyn was at most 14, Owain around eight when, in 1283,  Edward I locked them up in Bristol Castle. Llywellyn died young, but poor Owain was to live for many, many years as the king’s prisoner.

Why were these children locked up? Because they were potential threats to the future stability of the kingdom, this due to their bloodlines.

Today, I’m introducing you to another set of child prisoners—and I bet most of you have never heard of them before.

We’re headed to Castile, around mid 14th century. And yes, there is a reason I am writing so much about Castile—blame it on my WIP. Not that today’s protagonists feature in my WIP—they weren’t even a blink in their father’s eye during my narrative. But their father features, albeit indirectly and primarily as a child. I give you Pedro, legitimate son of Alfonso XI and thereby heir to the throne. Pedro had many, many siblings—half-siblings—seeing as his father spent most of his adult life with his beloved mistress, Leonor Guzmán. Pedro’s mother, Alfonso’s wife, returned to Portugal when Pedro was barely out of clouts, sick of being humiliated by Alfonso’s evident preference for Leonor.

Still: the wheel of fortune turns and turns, and one day Alfonso was dead and Pedro was king, not quite sixteen years old. His mother, Maria, returned from Portugal and shouldered the role of regent. She also exacted her revenge on Leonor—or maybe that was Pedro, who must have detested all the times he was summoned to his father’s court to see him playing happy families with Leonor and all their children.

Pedro has a bad reputation—to some extent because most of what we know about him comes from chronicles written during the reign of his successor (and half-brother) Enrique II. But several events attest to a streak of violence and meanness. Like how he threw his cousin out of a window, killing him. Or how he beat one of his half-brothers to death and had the two youngest killed. Or how he killed his aunt. No wonder his surviving half-brothers led a rebellion against him that would soon explode into a full civil war.

But there was a softer side to Pedro. In 1352, he fell heads-over-heels in love with the fair Maria de Padilla. He was not quite eighteen, she a bit younger. But Pedro was a king and he needed alliances—especially given the increasing tensions between him and his half-brothers—so he had to wed as it best served his kingdom. Or so his mother told him, as did his tutor and main counsellor, both of them urging Pedro to do his duty and marry Blanche of Bourbon.

Maria was probably devastated. She was of good birth and had likely been wooed with promises of marriage—sincere promises, because Pedro really did want to wed her. Whatever the case, in 1353 Pedro married Blanche. Pedro seems to have disliked Blanche on sight, plus he accused his half-brother Fadrique, who had escorted Blanche from France, of having seduced her. Which might explain why he beat Fadrique to death several years later. Or not.
Anyway; Pedro abandoned his fourteen-year-old bride after two days and subsequently had her locked up. (Poor, poor Blanche! Read her story here) Then he convoked some of his bishops and demanded they grant him an annulment.  Which they did, and he hurried off to marry. . . You’re all betting he married Maria de Padilla, right? After all, he was madly in love with her. Except he didn’t. Instead, he married Juana de Castro of impeccable Castilian lineage.

Juana de Castro was the sister of one of Castile’s most powerful men, Fernán Ruiz de Castro. She was also the sister of Ines de Castro—and her very tragic story you can read here. Juana was, apparently, very beautiful, and it helped that by marrying her, Pedro could also count on the loyalty of her brother. There was probably no love involved—no, Pedro’s heart beat for his Maria, his lovely mistress (like father, like son, right?) Pedro and Juana wed in 1354, and according to the anti-Pedro chronicles, he abandoned her after one day, leaving her pregnant with a son, Juan. Other sources indicate he actually hung around for longer, and it was only the pope’s threat to excommunicate him for bigamy (the pope insisted Pedro was married to Blanche) that drove him to ride off. Whatever the case, once Pedro was gone, he was gone, and Juana never saw him again.

Juana styled herself Queen of Castile throughout her life, and  when her Juan was born, she was convinced the babe in her arms was the future heir to the Castilian throne. But by then, Pedro was back with Maria, and some years later he had the Cortes approve documents that placed Maria’s children before baby Juan in the succession, claiming he had secretly wed her. Err… Hard to claim, as either he was married to Blanche or to Juana, both of whom were still alive when this purported wedding took place. Not that Blanche would be a problem for long, she died in 1361, supposedly after having been poisoned on Pedro’s orders.

As an aside, those documents legitimising Pedro’s offspring by Maria de Padilla is why John of Gaunt would one day claim the title of King of Castile by rights of his wife—he married Constanza,the oldest surviving daughter of the Pedro-Maria union.

Maria de Padilla died in 1361. It seems to have left Pedro utterly distraught, and the back and forth in his war with his half-brother, Enrique, likely did not help. Pedro allied himself with the English, but when he couldn’t pay the gallant Black Prince and his companions what he’d promised, the English looted where they went.

Enrique had the support of the French who remained incensed at the treatment of poor Blanche. In 1369, Enrique managed to lure Pedro to a meeting and stabbed him to death. Castile now had a new king, a king determined to eliminate any threats to his new-born dynasty, the House of Trastámara.

Pedro was evidently a very virile man—and it was pretty much the norm for Castilian kings to have multiple mistresses. (The one exception to that seems to have been Alfonso XI who held himself true to Leonor throughout his life. Not that that endeared him to his poor wife) So when Enrique set out to assess potential male claimants to the Castilian throne, he found three young boys: other than Juana de Castro’s son, Juan, there were the very young brothers, Sancho and Diego who were six and four respectively.

Never mind that they were children. Juan, who was around fourteen, was locked up in the Castle of Soria. The two younger boys were in the Castle of Carmona together with Pedro’s and Maria de Padilla’s daughters. After two years of siege, Carmona gave up, having accorded with Enrique that the two infantas, Constanza and Isabel, were to be allowed to leave for England. It was also agreed that Enrique would let Sancho and Diego go free, but no sooner were the boys under Enrique’s control but he had them locked up. Sancho was carried of to the Castle of Toro and little Diego ended up in the Castle of Curiel de Duero. The two little boys weren’t even allowed to remain together, and some months later, Sancho died.

In 1388, the Treaty of Bayonne effectively confirmed Enrique’s usurpation. According to this treaty, John of Gaunt and his wife Constanza relinquished all claims on the Castilian throne. The then king of Castile, Enrique’s son, Juan I, promised Constanza a significant compensation, and to really seal the deal, John of Gaunt’s  and Constanza’s daughter, Catalina, was to wed Juan’s son Enrique. Everyone was happy—and the treaty also specifically stated that Pedro’s surviving bastard sons should be set free.
“Absolutely,” Juan said. But he didn’t.

In 1388, Pedro’s eldest son, Juan was over thirty and had spent nineteen years behind walls. Little Diego was no longer so little—he was over twenty—and had not seen anything of the world outside his prison. There is little record of how he was treated, but with the arrival of Catalina of Lancaster, Diego suddenly had a person on the outside who seemed to care: there were letters and money and clothes and little gifts. Catalina addressed him as her dear uncle, and she also interceded on behalf of Juan. She was also adamant in ensuring both Juan’s and Diego’s offspring be adequately educated. What? I can hear you saying, they had offspring?

They most certainly did, in both cases entering into a relationship/marriage with the daughters of their respective castellans.

Juan had two children: a son born in 1396 who became a bishop and a daughter born before 1405 who became a prioress. As grandchildren to a dethroned king, an ecclesiastic career was probably the safest choice. One could have thought that this meant the end to Juan’s lineage, but not so, as his son—bishop or not—sired several children.

Diego had at least six children, and they seem to have been born at least a decade later than Juan’s, which may also be why these children were treated differently. Queen Catalina took a dedicated interest in their education, and the eldest daughter was raised at court and became a lady-in-waiting to a future queen. She married and had children. Diego’s eldest son, Pedro de Castilla, married a lady called Beatriz and had a son called Pedro who apparently was handsome enough to seduce a future Castilian queen and impregnate her with twins. But that, I think, is a story for another day.

In difference to the sad fate of Manfred’s sons or the two Welsh princes, Juan and Diego seem to have had some sort of life, despite being locked up. All in all, though, theirs were stunted lives, lives of restrictions and walls, everywhere walls. Their crime? They were the sons of a dethroned king.

Juan died in 1405, after 36 years in captivity. Diego was released in 1434. He had been imprisoned for over sixty years. One wonders how that felt like: it must have been with some trepidation he stepped over the threshold to stand beneath the wide blue sky. Diego had six years as a free man before he died in 1440. I hope he made the best of them!