In 1328, fifteen-year-old Maria of Portugal married Alfonso XI of Castile. He was a couple of years older than her, still a teenager, had been king since he was a baby and had, at the age of fourteen assumed control over his realm. They were first cousins on both sides, which required papal dispensations. (As an aside, it always surprises me that the Church officially forbade marriages between close kin, yet so often gave the dispensation required for such marriages to take place )
Maria was not Alfonso’s first wife. Some years earlier, at the age of fourteen, he’d wed Constanza Manuel, at the time a young child. This he did to distract Constanza’s father from his rebellious intentions. So, while Don Juan Manuel was celebrating the fact that his daughter was now a queen, young Alfonso arranged for the murder of one of daddy-in-law’s accomplices. Once that had been done, Alfonso divorced little Constanza and married Maria.
It doesn’t seem as if Maria and Alfonso hit it off. Also, Alfonso was an impatient sort, and so far, no babies. Plus, of course, there was the major, major fact that somewhere along the line, Alfonso had met Leonor de Guzmán and fallen in love.
A queen must give her husband an heir—even if she detests the man. And I imagine that by the time Maria’s little Fernando was born in 1331, she was no Alfonso fan. He openly preferred Leonor to her, inviting Leonor to stay with him at court while relegating Maria to whatever convent was convenient—very often the convent of San Clemente in Sevilla.
Leonor had given Alfonso a son some months before little Fernando’s birth. She was pregnant for the third time when Fernando died in his infancy. Maria grieved. Alfonso grieved. But not together.
They did, however, have to do something together: create a new heir. Two people who didn’t like each other, she repeatedly humiliated by him, him in love with another—but they had to do their duty.
In 1334, baby Pedro was born. By then, Leonor had already given Alfonso four sons, but Pedro was far more important—he was the heir. Things between and Maria and Alfonso didn’t change: he still preferred Leonor to her, she was still shoved aside. So, a year after Pedro’s birth, Maria packed up her stuff –well, she didn’t, her household servants did, led by her loyal steward Martim Afonso Telles de Meneses—and returned to Portugal.
Alfonso’s nobles weren’t exactly thrilled by their king’s preference for his mistress. Not because they objected to him having a mistress—most of them had liaisons on the side—but because they worried Leonor was becoming too powerful. Having the ear of the king meant having the power to influence him, and then there was the fact that the king was VERY generous with his mistress. Leonor seems to have been wise enough not to abuse her position (beyond all the lands settled on her whenever she gave the king yet another son) but the Castilian nobles remained suspicious. So some of them rebelled, led by Don Juan Manuel, father to Alfonso’s first little bride.
The Portuguese king, insulted on behalf of his daughter, supported the rebels. However, if there was one thing Alfonso excelled at, it was war, and soon enough most of the rebels were obliged to make their peace, while the Portuguese had suffered the humiliation of having their army chased back across the borders to Portugal.
A tense status-quo followed. But Castile had other enemies than disgruntled nobles, more specifically the Marinids, a Berber dynasty that ruled most of North Africa and wanted to reclaim the lands of al-Andaluz. Alfonso realised he would not be able to fight off this enemy on his own—he needed Portuguese support.
According to some sources, this led to him exiling Leonor to a convent and approaching Maria to help him negotiate with the king of Portugal. I am somewhat doubtful regarding the convent, seeing as Leonor birthed yet another child relatively soon after the concluded treaty, but I imagine Alfonso did put some distance between them—for a while.
The Marinids were trounced at the Battle of Salado, the two kings covering themselves with glory as they beat back the infidel. But no sooner were the festivities over, but Leonor returned to court. Maria must have gnashed her teeth. However, she had won certain concessions: her husband allowed her to more or less raise their son, little Pedro. And as Maria preferred to keep her son far from Leonor and all those little bastards, Pedro rarely saw his father.
When Alfonso died of the plague in 1350, Maria finally came into her own. Her young son was now the king, counselled by men loyal to Maria, not Leonor. At last, Maria could exact her revenge! Leonor was imprisoned and executed in 1351. Maria’s revenge was to cost her son dearly: Leonor’s oldest son, Enrique would never forgive what was done to his mother.
Meanwhile, Maria was coming to realise that Pedro was not exactly an easy son to manage. He was temperamental and stubborn and had little respect for the men presently helping him rule Castile. Things came to a head in 1352, when Maria and royal advisor Joao Afonso de Albuquerque effectively strongarmed Pedro into agreeing to marry Blanche of Bourbon. According to Pedro’s elders, this was an important dynastic match that would also help replenish the royal coffers—Blanche came with a dowry of 300 000 florins.
Problem was, Pedro was already in love with a young woman named Maria de Padilla. And when he realised Blanche had arrived in Castile without the promised dowry, he was incensed. He abandoned Blanche, then proceeded to lock her up, holding her as a hostage until the dowry was paid in full. Meanwhile, he forced two bishops to annul his wedding to Blanche and hastily married another woman, Juana de Castro. All this had the dowager queen groaning in exasperation—“like father, like son,” she probably muttered when Pedro abandoned Juana as well and returned to his beloved Mari.
The Castilian nobles were enraged by how Pedro treated his French bride. Okay, that was probably a pretext. They didn’t quite like how Pedro was attempting to expand the power of the king at the expense of the nobles. Whatever the case, in 1354 rebellion reared its ugly head, led not only by Pedro’s half-brother Enrique, but also by Albuquerque. Maria also joined the rebellion against her son, incensed on behalf of Blanche—she knew what it felt like, to be discarded.
It took some time, but Pedro managed to defeat the rebels—this time. In 1356, he showed up where Maria was staying, forced his mother and her retainers to come outside to meet with him, upon which his men attacked. It is said Maria fainted, and when she regained her senses, it was to see the men who served her lying dead and stripped around her. Devastated, she returned to Portugal, where she died in early 1357.
Maria had expressed a wish to be buried beside Alfonso XI. That was not to be—she lies this day in the convent of San Clemente with her firstborn Fernando and another babe—a child who likely died upon birth, seeing as it is never mentioned.
All in all, a sad life, a woman treated badly by both husband and son. In my upcoming release, Queen of Shadows, Maria has been given a voice. Below an excerpt of a young Maria who has recently left Castile for Évora in her father’s kingdom.
“My daughter!” Afonso of Portugal strode into the room, and everyone bowed. He gestured for them to straighten up and came towards her, smelling of road dust and sweat. “I need a bath and a shave. Damned hard to do either when you have a band of determined Castilian rogues snapping at your heels. I tell you, they ambushed us in a most cowardly manner. If not,” he broke off to slam his gauntleted fist down on a nearby table, “we would have crushed them.”
María shared a quick look with Dom Martim. They already knew her father had suffered a humiliating defeat.
King Afonso pulled off his gauntlets and sank down into a chair, calling for wine. He extended his legs before him and scrutinised her. María stiffened her spine, twirling the rose casually. This was why she had chosen these particular garments, something akin to a man donning armour before entering the fray. In these expensive fabrics she looked every inch a powerful woman, a woman in control of her own fate. In reality, she’d been rendered inconsequential by her adulterous husband.
For now. If God was good, the day would come when it was her son sitting on the throne of Castile, she his trusted counsellor.
“That whelp is a lucky bastard,” the king continued. “We almost had him—would have had him had that useless pile of Aragonese shite chosen to ride with us.”
María held her tongue. All this fighting, what purpose did it truly serve? She did not fool herself into believing either Juan Nuñez de Lara or Don Juan Manuel had taken up arms on her behalf. Yes, her father may have requested of them that they add the demand that their king banish his favourite, but de Lara and Juan Manuel were self-serving men.
Dom Martim had never taken to Juan Manuel, calling him a conniving serpent. She, however, had enjoyed hours of learned discourse with the Lord of Villena. The man was intelligent, well-educated and would as happily discuss religious texts as romances. He was also an excellent writer, dispensing with clerks while he produced one volume after the other. It was odd that one man could contain such different sides to him: on the one side, the educated man who spent hours at his carrel; on the other, a rebel who took to arms and bloody violence to further his interests.
By the table, a page was setting down a laden tray containing everything from a flagon of wine to platters of cheese, olives, roasted meats and bread
“Ah, at last,” the king said.
“Bom proveito, my liege,” Dom Martim said, bowing deeply.
“Yes, yes.” Father waved him up. “How are you finding life in Évora?”
She wasn’t quite sure if he was asking her or Dom Martim. Besides, she’d been here for over a year. A pointed look from her father had her clearing her throat.
“It is peaceful,” she said. Plenty of time for contemplation on the lessons learned from a saint’s life, she thought, having to bite back a giggle. Not that there was anything humorous about it—she lived like a nun here. On the other hand, she’d spent months and months living with nuns in Sevilla, and in comparison, this was a markedly freer existence.
“Boring is what it is.” He stabbed the air with his eating knife. “You should not be here—you should be in Burgos or Sevilla, wherever that godforsaken husband of yours is. You should be constantly present, reminding him of just who is his wife!” He stuffed a piece of meat in his mouth and chewed. “All we need to do is rid the world of that vile Lilith.”
“How?” Surely, they would not stoop to murder?
Father smirked. “Never you mind, my girl. Let’s just say that revenge can taste as sweet as honey.”
She wanted revenge. But more than that, she wanted some sort of contentment. She also wanted access to her son, and something told her that should anything happen to Leonor because of her father and his allies, Alfonso would exact a terrible retribution—on her.
“I do not want her hurt,” she therefore said, moving over to the large window while playing with the rose.
“No? She’s a vile temptress!”
María looked away, affixing her gazed on a distant solitary cloud. Leonor de Guzmán was no temptress; she simply adored, and Alfonso basked in her admiration, her love. And where she adored, he worshipped. She moved closer to the window. It was her unfortunate fate to be caught between. The rose stem snapped, a thorn pricking her thumb. One single drop of blood oozed down her skin. Yes, most unfortunate.