January 25, 2017 • 27 mins
When Prince Pedro of Portugal was married off in the 1300s, he only had eyes for his new wife's lady in waiting. The story of Inês and Pedro's love has everything: romance, deception, murder, and a corpse crowned as queen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
Holly Frying and I'm Tracy Wilson. Tracy. Valentine's Day is
coming up. I know it's um uh not a holiday
(00:24):
I usually have like the standard associations with. It's always
more of like a friends and family holiday to me.
But people sometimes like some themed stuff, so I didn't
want to be too on the nose where a little
ahead of Valentine's Day. Uh, you know, various romantic topics
have been suggested, but I don't always like to be
literally and happy because I'm just contrary. Um. And a
(00:48):
lot of the stories that we have done around Valentine's
Day have been relatively tragic in their love story nous.
I'm thinking Abillard and Hellouise. Yeah uh. And thankfully, our
listener Tressa wrote in with an idea that I loved.
And while this one can definitely be categorized as romantic,
(01:08):
there is also some deception. There's some cheating, a little
bit of murder, a little bit of gore. For those
of us in the crowd who like darker fare, we're
talking today about the person who is sometimes referred to
as the corpse brid of Portugal and as de Castro,
and the story of her love affair with Prince Pedro,
who later became Padrew the First puts Romeo and Juliet
(01:29):
to shame in the intensity and tragedy categories. And it
has in fact been rumored that these two fourteenth century
lovers were the inspiration for Shakespeare's tale. And this is
one of those stories that also has a lot of
versions of it because it's been told and retold for centuries.
It is, uh, such a good story in terms of
(01:49):
like it has all of the ingredients you would want
in a good and engaging story. Uh. That it is,
you know, a big part of Portugal's history and their
oral tradition. Uh. And that means that some of the
details have shifted and changed in various tellings. Some details
are probably fabricated. And we're gonna talk a little bit
about the mythology that this has taken on and some
of the more glaring cases of artistic license that happened
(02:12):
related to their story a little later in the podcast.
But first we'll give you the basic story, and that
story starts out with Pedro, sometimes known as Peter who
would become Pedro, the first King of Portugal. On April eighth,
thirteen twenty, the king of Portugal at that time a
Fonso the fourth and his consort Beatrice of Castile had
(02:34):
a son, and that son was Pedro. We don't know
a lot about his childhood. There's not many details about
him as a young boy, but we know that in
thirteen thirty nine or thirteen forty, right around the age
of nineteen or twenty, Pedro married Constanza of Castile. But
Pedro found Constanza's lady in waiting and As de Castro
far more appealing and as was actually a cousin of Constanza,
(02:58):
and Pedro was utterly entrance by her. There is one
history where it says that he was taken in completely
by her heron like nick. So she was a very elegant,
lovely lady. And she was the great granddaughter of King
Sancho the fourth of Castile, though her father had been
an illegitimate grandson of Sancho the fourth. Inez Perez de
(03:19):
Castro was born sometime in the early thirteen twenties, and
her father was Pedro Bernandez de Castro. That's the illegitimate
grandson of King Sancho the Fourth. We just mentioned. She
had traveled to Portugal to become Constanza's lady in waiting,
and Pedro and Constanza were married as planned, but he
was clearly not devoted to his new bride but to
(03:42):
her cousin, and he was apparently madly in love with
an Is. This wasn't just like an infatuation, or if
it was, it was a very deep one. He just
was completely enthralled by her, and he said to have
sent her messages by dropping his letters to her in
a water pipe that flowed from his residence to her
quarters at the Monastery of Santa Clara Avella. As you
(04:03):
can imagine, Pedro's new wife was displeased at this insulting
behavior on her husband's part, and so when she and
Pedro had their first child, a son, also named Pedro,
Constanza invited Eniz to be the child's godmother. So that
seems like a really nice gesture, it wasn't. Constanza's motivation
(04:27):
was this. She was counting on the fact that, in
the eyes of the Catholic Church and the Is, becoming
the baby Pedro's godmother would make her considered a close
family and so the idea was that with that connection established,
Constanza was hoping to spin the relationship between her husband
and her cousin as having a patina of incestuousness. So
(04:50):
it wasn't enough that it was infidelity, right, it had
the added ammunition of also being incestuous. But that plan
did na see to have any real impact on the
situation at all, regardless of how anyone else felt about them.
The lover's Pedro and Inez were just devoted to one
(05:10):
another as much as they had been before. And additionally,
Constanza's baby wound up living sadly only a few weeks,
so the idea that Enez was family through her godmother
position lost all impact. In thirteen forty four, the King,
who was troubled by all of this drama in the
Pedro Constanza and his love triangle, and concerned for both
(05:32):
the peace of the royal household and the impact that
this affair could have on the regency, banished and As
from Portugal and she was sent back to Castile. But
that did not put an end to the affair either.
Pedro just traveled to Siena Is whenever he possibly could.
On November thirteen forty five, Constanza died She had given
(05:52):
birth to her third child with Pedro at that point,
a son named Fernando, that was two weeks before her death,
and the baby served fived and became next in line
to the throne after his father. Yeah, you'll often see
that written up as though she died in childbirth, which
isn't entirely correct. She was very ill and it, you know,
(06:12):
was that that stress on her body that eventually led
to her demise, But it was actually a couple of
weeks later. So immediately after Constanza's death, Pedro took advantage
of his unfettered single status and went straight to Castile
to get in his and bring her back to Portugal.
And from that point on they maintained a home in Couimbra,
(06:32):
which I probably butchered in my apologies. And while they
lived there they lived as husband and wife. Once they
were no longer conducting an affair in secret, which we
are putting in finger quotes because everybody knew about this secret,
even though it was supposedly clandestine, Inez and Pedro started
a family. They eventually had four children, A Fonso, Beatrice, Juoo,
(06:57):
and Denise A Fonso. Their first son died when he
was still a baby, and the other three were born
over the span of seven years from thirteen forty seven
to thirteen fifty four. So if things played out merely
as at this point the fulfilled love story of Pedro
and Anez that we have right at this point in
the telling, it might have been a more or less
(07:18):
happily ever after situation. Pedro Andz at this point were
finally together, they have children that they love, they're living
as a family, and everything seems great. But as the
two of them were expanding their family, and as his
brothers Alvaro and Fernando were bending Pedro's ear about a
plan they had hatched, the Castor brothers allegedly wanted their
(07:41):
sister's beloved Prince Pedro of Portugal to take advantage of
the weak situation of his cousin, Pedro of Castile, who
was inheritor to the throne of Castile. So yes, to
make things a little confusing, especially in an audio format,
there were two Pedros at this point. Yeah, they're are
actually multiple Pedro's ruling Europe in a very short period
(08:03):
of time. So it gets really confusing when you're reading, uh,
any any of the histories, you kind of have to
highlight and color code them. And as you may recall,
Pedro of Portugal was the grandson of King Sancho the
fourth of Castile, so he did have a lineage connection
to the Castile throne on his mother's side. Uh, And
he was kind of being convinced Bianeza's brothers that making
(08:27):
a claim for the throne was a good idea. But
his father, King Afonso the fourth, was really not enthused
with this whole drama. I feel like King Afonso is
constantly going wise. There always drama around Pedro and and
az uh. He was concerned that, thanks to the bad
influence of the Castros, his entire kingdom was going to
be in peril, and there was some legitimate concern there
(08:48):
it was not in Portugal's interest to get involved in
Castile's squabbles over the line of succession. Also, Afonso was
worried that in AZA's scheming brothers would try to insert
their sister's children with Pedro of Portugal and to Portugal's
line for the throne, which would almost certainly lead to
a civil war. Prince Pedro's son Ferdinand, who he had
(09:10):
had with Constanza, was next in line for the throne.
And King Afonso wanted to ensure that transition. And there
was also some concern that Ferdinand, who was a rather
frail child, could be an easy target for someone with
designs on the Portuguese throne. So there was certainly a valid, uh,
you know, interest in stamping out any potential um uprisings.
(09:35):
And to top all of those concerns off, King Afonso
the Fourth would have really liked to make another political
alliance by marrying his widowed son to an eligible and
well placed royal from another family, But Pedro had no
interest in any other woman but in his so next
we will talk about how Pedro's father dealt with this problem,
(09:55):
but first we will pause for a word from one
of our sponsors. So Afonso, to deal with this issue,
consulted with his most trusted advisers, and they suggested a
course of action that would put an end to the
problem instantly and permanently. And by the nature of those words,
(10:17):
you have probably guessed that the solution that they put
forth was to get rid of an Az entirely. And
the king weighed this possibility in his mind, but he
was really having difficulty making the decision to have an
As killed However, on January seven, Nance was murdered. I'll
find it the Fourth had known of this plot to
(10:39):
kill her, and he had in fact been involved with it,
but he had continued to be torn between his desire
to do what he thought was best for the country
and the family line, and his very real feelings for
these children that in As and his son had had together.
He was their grandfather, and and Az allegedly begged the
king for her life when he and his men arrived
(11:01):
at her home with her children right there with her,
and he, unable to fully commit one way or the other,
turned and left, telling his men to do whatever they wanted,
and apparently what they wanted to do was murder in Az.
So they stabbed her to death, and she was buried
in the monastery at Santa Clara. It's also possible that
(11:21):
Pedro had learned about this plot himself, and encyclopedia, written
in eighteen thirty six switched to be fair as much
later claimed that the Queen had gotten wind of this
treachery and warned her son, but that Pedro dismissed the
information as propaganda that was just intended to frighten him
away from me. Nice Prince Pedro was, of course i
rate at the loss of his love and z and
(11:44):
this murder catalyzed a rebellion against the king, with Pedro
at the lead and as his brothers joined him in
this revolt, and over the course of several months, the
bereaved and irate Pedro and his men waged a war
against Pedro's father, Offonse of the force. In the end,
Queen Beatrice had to get involved. As the wife of
a Fonso the fourth and the mother of Prince Pedro,
(12:07):
she was able to broke her a piece between the
two men. Father and son forgave each other, at least
in word, and Pedro pardoned the men who had murdered Eniz,
and things settled down in the royal family for the
next two years. But then Alfonso the Fourth died, leaving
Pedro as his successor to the throne. Pedro the First
(12:29):
of Portugal was crowned in thirteen fifty seven, becoming the
eighth King of Portugal, and almost immediately after assuming his
role as monarch, Pedro made it plain that while he
claimed to have forgiven it as his death, he was
still very angry the men who had been part of
the murder plot had all fled Portugal even after Pedro
(12:50):
and Alfonso had made their truth, and Pedro wanted them
brought back to faith justice. He was able to negotiate
for the return of the two of the men, Pedro
co Hello and Alvarez gon Salvas, who had fled to
Castile in exchange for other fugitives that country wanted from Portugal.
Portugal the third man had fled to Aragon, and the
(13:12):
Portuguese king was not able to secure his return. The
two men that were returned to Pedro the First face
torture for what they had done, and then they were
put to death in a gruesome execution parallelling what King
Pedro the First felt when Anez was killed. The men
had their hearts cut out, one had his pulled out
(13:32):
through his back, the other through his chest, and King
Pedro is said to have witnessed the executions as his
servants brought him his dinner. Pedro the First calculated move
to wait until he came to power and then exact
his revenge earned him the nickname Pedro the Cruel. It's
also worth noting that there were three men named Pedro
(13:54):
ruling in the area at the time. One over Castile,
one over Aragon, and then Pedro the First of Portugal,
when all of them have been given the name Pedro
the Cruel in various writings, as we said, especially confusing
in an audio format, Pedro the First of Portugal is
(14:14):
also referred to as Pedro the Jest. Yeah, just to
further confuse things, there is also a Pedro the First
of Brazil that sometimes when you do a search, you
will realize that other historians have conflated the two of
them a little bit. So there's a lot of untangling
and like sort of thread combing you have to do
to figure out what, when and where people are referring
(14:37):
to which Pedro. But the executions of Ineza's killers did
not bring King Pedro the First any sort of peace.
Several years after his reign began, Pedro announced on June twelve,
thirteen sixty then in fact, he and he and Anez
had been secretly married two years after Constanza had died.
(14:57):
Two men, a bishop and that bishop's attendant, were named
as having witnessed the wedding, and while no specific date
of the nuptials could be recalled by any of the men,
this announcement was backed up by a papal document indicating
that Pedro had gotten consent to remarry from the Pope,
and that papal document was publicly displayed as proof and
validation of the marriage to Anez. This declaration had an
(15:21):
important impact. First, it made Anez de Castro Queen of Portugal,
although posthumously, and second it also legitimized their three surviving
children and opened up futures for them that otherwise would
have just been unthinkable. But this also meant that as
Queen in Az was entitled to a much grander final
resting place than she had initially been given. So she was,
(15:44):
at Pedro's request, exhumed from the Santa Clara monastery and
moved to the Tomb of Kings, where she was reinterred
in a tomb on April two of thirteen sixty one.
Her final burial ceremony was extravagant and regal in every way.
Her body was escorted from Santa Clara and Coimbra to
the monastery of Alcobasa by a full parade of maids, nobleman,
(16:08):
clergy and horses, with the reported thousand men carrying candles
to ensure that there was always light on her One
historian who wrote about these events in the eighteen nineties
described the processional as being led by two lines of stars,
just such a beautiful image, and as de Castro's tomb,
(16:28):
which still exists, and we'll talk about this some more,
is quite a thing to behold. It is an intricately
carved white marble work of art it depicts and as
lying atop it protected by angels, while scenes of the
New Testament are carved into the sides, and the entire
tomb sits atop six figures which bear the weight, which
(16:49):
have human faces but animal bodies, and the sculpture of
a naz wears beautiful robes in the crown of a queen.
But the artist or artists involved who created this example
of Gothic funerary sculpture remain unknown. Pedro lived another six
years after Inez was laid to rest again for the
second time. He was assassinated in thirteen sixty seven, and
(17:13):
was then succeeded by his son Ferdinand. The first. Pedro's tomb,
which was placed next to his beloved is also lavishly
carved of marble. The sides on his feature scenes from St.
Bartholomew's life and Likeanz, Pedro has represented atop the tomb
with angels surrounding him. The sides of the tomb feature
scenes from start Bartholomew's life and Lianez. Pedro has represented
(17:36):
atop the tomb with angels surrounding him. He is wearing
a crown and in his left hand is his sword,
and there is also a dog at his feet. There
are many other details to it. It's really quite beautiful.
His tomb also sits on six stone figures like Innz's,
but his figures are lions and it also features the
crest of Portugal. Next up, we will talk a little
(17:58):
about the mythology of Pedro inter Is, but first we
will take another quick break for a word from one
of our awesome sponsors that's Holly mentioned at the top
of the show. This is one of those historical stories that,
both because of its age and it's very romantic and
pretty dramatic nature, has been blurred by retellings over the centuries.
(18:23):
For example, while Inis was most likely killed at Santa
Clara of Veja, where she and Pedro had been living
with their children, the story is often told that she
died in a completely different location, Quinta Dust lagrimas, which
translates into a state of tears. According to myth, her
blood still stains the stones there, and there are some
(18:46):
tales that she haunts the place. Yeah, and while many
versions of the story uh indicate the inn As was
stabbed when she was killed, some say she was decapitated,
and to make things extra gruesome, that this happened while
at least one and possibly all of her children looked on.
And this is contradictory to some of the other mythology
(19:06):
that we're going to talk about in just a moment. Additionally,
while Pedro the First of Portugal had the nickname of
Pedro the Cruel, he really seemed like a kind monarch
when it came to his people. He cut spending on
the part of the nobility to ease the burden on
the more common people. He also reformed the Portuguese justice
system and instituted the beneplacital Reggio, which was a means
(19:30):
by which any decree, act or document of the church
had to be approved by the monarchy before it could
be released publicly. And this is possibly also why he
was known as Pedro the Just. The people he reigned
over saw him as benevolent. While the nobility may have
called him cruel more because of the cutbacks that he
forced on him rather than necessarily his vengeance plot, he
(19:52):
has also sometimes characterized as being called just because of
his affinity for seeking justice, and even to the degree
that at times the execution of Eniza's murderers is described
as having been carried out by Pedro himself, including tearing
the men's hearts out with his bare hands. Another area
where this mythology of star Cross lovers takes on some
(20:13):
pretty fantastic claims is in the various descriptions of Enniza's
royal burial after her exhimation, and some versions of the story,
Pedro placed his deceased beloved on a throne before her
in tumb, placed a crown on her head, and then
kissed her hand, and then made the entire court pledge
their loyalty to the queen and also kiss her hand
(20:34):
in turn. Some versions say they had to kiss the
hem of her gown. Okay, so if you think about
this for just a moment, the math involved makes this
super gruesome. There were six years between Ennesza's murder and
her exhamation, so if any of this putting on the
throne kissing the hand did happen. It is a marvel
(20:54):
that the entire court would not have fainted in horror.
It takes I think, on average, I'm I'm completely pulling
this out of air. So if I'm incorrect, know that
it's not verified information. Something like eight to twelve years
for a not involved body to decompose, so you can
imagine what state she might have been in after six years. Additionally,
(21:15):
if she had been beheaded, this whole affair would have
been even stranger. And there doesn't seem to be any
mention of a head listen as ever, having been put
on the throne in her deceased state. One of the
important things to consider when turning over the various accounts
of Pedro and in AZ's love story is the fact
that they were all written quite some time after the fact.
(21:38):
I mean, this was a fourteenth century story, and a
lot of the accounts that we talked about were from
the nineteenth century. A great deal of the chronicling of
Portuguese history that was done by writers officially entrusted with
the task by the crown would have wanted to legitimize
and honor the lineage of the royal family they were
serving at the time they were writing it. Yeah, the
(22:01):
earliest ones are in I think the late fourteen hundreds
and it goes on from there. So, any any given
regent that was asking a writer to write down the
chronicles may have wanted to position things in one way
or another, but they were always to make that regent
look the best. So uh, that's the scoop. Uh. There
have been many, many, many fictionalized versions of the pedro
(22:25):
In and his love story over the centuries. That pair
has been the subject of poems and novels and paintings
and sculptures, operas and ballets. Just about any creative medium
that you can think of has been used to convey
the romance and tragedy of this piece of Portuguese history.
And as we mentioned at the very beginning of the show,
it's possible that their story was actually the inspiration for
(22:46):
Romeo and Juliet. The monastery at Alcabasa, where the lovers
were entombed, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Gets
situated in central Portugal, north of Lisbon, and dates to
the twelfth century. It was founded by King alphons Are
the First and is closely related to the beginnings of
the Portuguese monarchy. Yeah, there's some beautiful pictures on the
(23:08):
UNESCO site of this monastery. And then in eighteen eighteen eleven,
some of the sculptural details of those beautifully carved tombs
were damaged by Napoleon's troops. The looting and apparent beating
of these pieces of art that was done by the
French at the time has left some of the delicate
work permanently spoiled. Pedro and andez Do remain there in
(23:32):
their tombs, although they are no longer placed side by side.
They had to be moved apart a bit to make
room for the many visitors who often come to see
the doomed lovers Happy Valentia. It's a good story though.
It really is a compelling one and very interesting even
when you strip it down to the bare bones. Uh,
(23:54):
there's a lot of intrigue there. Yeah, it's good stuff.
Do you also have listener? May? I do? And this
listener mail comes with a little bit of a personal
story that it cracked me up when this listener mail
arrived for reasons having nothing to do specifically with the
mail itself. Uh, First I will read the mail tell
you what it is, and then I'll tell you why
(24:14):
it was funny. Uh So, it is a letter that says,
dearest Holly and Tracy, greetings from Cabbage Town, Atlanta. This
gift is a small token of my obsession with your podcast.
I love the range of topics. Anything Marie Antoinette focused
is always a favor, and you're down to earth approach
to sharing knowledge. I hope you enjoyed these two many
prints of pre and post guillotine. Marie, keep up the
(24:36):
marvelous work and thank you for your podcast warmly. Shay
uh So. Shay is actually an artist that I have
been following on Instagram for a while. And what made
this super funny there too absolutely lovely little prince of Marie.
One she looks beautiful and Christine and the other her
head is no longer attached to her person. It is
(24:57):
also beautiful, but in a different way. But what made
this produper weird and wondrous is that when this came
only like half an hour prior to this little parcel
arriving on my desk, I had placed an order at
Chase Etsy store for three prints. It like I placed
an order and thirty minutes later a package came, but
(25:17):
it was not the same package. We just had coincidental
good timing where she delivered a thing to me, to us,
uh you know, at the same time that I was
making orders. So that kind of cracked me up and
seemed way too weird but also wondrous. Uh so yeah,
so I also ordered some Star Wars art for me.
(25:38):
So thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Shay.
And we can include a link to her Instagram in
our show notes because her work is really beautiful. She's
got a really fun style and I love, love, love it,
and she does a lot of historical figures. So thank you,
thank you, thank you, Shaye. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast
at how stuff works dot com. You can also find
(25:59):
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If you would like to learn a little bit today,
you can go to our parents site, which is how
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(26:20):
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com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(26:47):
Is it how staff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
Holly Frying and I'm Tracy Wilson. Tracy. Valentine's Day is
coming up. I know it's um uh not a holiday
(00:24):
I usually have like the standard associations with. It's always
more of like a friends and family holiday to me.
But people sometimes like some themed stuff, so I didn't
want to be too on the nose where a little
ahead of Valentine's Day. Uh, you know, various romantic topics
have been suggested, but I don't always like to be
literally and happy because I'm just contrary. Um. And a
(00:48):
lot of the stories that we have done around Valentine's
Day have been relatively tragic in their love story nous.
I'm thinking Abillard and Hellouise. Yeah uh. And thankfully, our
listener Tressa wrote in with an idea that I loved.
And while this one can definitely be categorized as romantic,
(01:08):
there is also some deception. There's some cheating, a little
bit of murder, a little bit of gore. For those
of us in the crowd who like darker fare, we're
talking today about the person who is sometimes referred to
as the corpse brid of Portugal and as de Castro,
and the story of her love affair with Prince Pedro,
who later became Padrew the First puts Romeo and Juliet
(01:29):
to shame in the intensity and tragedy categories. And it
has in fact been rumored that these two fourteenth century
lovers were the inspiration for Shakespeare's tale. And this is
one of those stories that also has a lot of
versions of it because it's been told and retold for centuries.
It is, uh, such a good story in terms of
(01:49):
like it has all of the ingredients you would want
in a good and engaging story. Uh. That it is,
you know, a big part of Portugal's history and their
oral tradition. Uh. And that means that some of the
details have shifted and changed in various tellings. Some details
are probably fabricated. And we're gonna talk a little bit
about the mythology that this has taken on and some
of the more glaring cases of artistic license that happened
(02:12):
related to their story a little later in the podcast.
But first we'll give you the basic story, and that
story starts out with Pedro, sometimes known as Peter who
would become Pedro, the first King of Portugal. On April eighth,
thirteen twenty, the king of Portugal at that time a
Fonso the fourth and his consort Beatrice of Castile had
(02:34):
a son, and that son was Pedro. We don't know
a lot about his childhood. There's not many details about
him as a young boy, but we know that in
thirteen thirty nine or thirteen forty, right around the age
of nineteen or twenty, Pedro married Constanza of Castile. But
Pedro found Constanza's lady in waiting and As de Castro
far more appealing and as was actually a cousin of Constanza,
(02:58):
and Pedro was utterly entrance by her. There is one
history where it says that he was taken in completely
by her heron like nick. So she was a very elegant,
lovely lady. And she was the great granddaughter of King
Sancho the fourth of Castile, though her father had been
an illegitimate grandson of Sancho the fourth. Inez Perez de
(03:19):
Castro was born sometime in the early thirteen twenties, and
her father was Pedro Bernandez de Castro. That's the illegitimate
grandson of King Sancho the Fourth. We just mentioned. She
had traveled to Portugal to become Constanza's lady in waiting,
and Pedro and Constanza were married as planned, but he
was clearly not devoted to his new bride but to
(03:42):
her cousin, and he was apparently madly in love with
an Is. This wasn't just like an infatuation, or if
it was, it was a very deep one. He just
was completely enthralled by her, and he said to have
sent her messages by dropping his letters to her in
a water pipe that flowed from his residence to her
quarters at the Monastery of Santa Clara Avella. As you
(04:03):
can imagine, Pedro's new wife was displeased at this insulting
behavior on her husband's part, and so when she and
Pedro had their first child, a son, also named Pedro,
Constanza invited Eniz to be the child's godmother. So that
seems like a really nice gesture, it wasn't. Constanza's motivation
(04:27):
was this. She was counting on the fact that, in
the eyes of the Catholic Church and the Is, becoming
the baby Pedro's godmother would make her considered a close
family and so the idea was that with that connection established,
Constanza was hoping to spin the relationship between her husband
and her cousin as having a patina of incestuousness. So
(04:50):
it wasn't enough that it was infidelity, right, it had
the added ammunition of also being incestuous. But that plan
did na see to have any real impact on the
situation at all, regardless of how anyone else felt about them.
The lover's Pedro and Inez were just devoted to one
(05:10):
another as much as they had been before. And additionally,
Constanza's baby wound up living sadly only a few weeks,
so the idea that Enez was family through her godmother
position lost all impact. In thirteen forty four, the King,
who was troubled by all of this drama in the
Pedro Constanza and his love triangle, and concerned for both
(05:32):
the peace of the royal household and the impact that
this affair could have on the regency, banished and As
from Portugal and she was sent back to Castile. But
that did not put an end to the affair either.
Pedro just traveled to Siena Is whenever he possibly could.
On November thirteen forty five, Constanza died She had given
(05:52):
birth to her third child with Pedro at that point,
a son named Fernando, that was two weeks before her death,
and the baby served fived and became next in line
to the throne after his father. Yeah, you'll often see
that written up as though she died in childbirth, which
isn't entirely correct. She was very ill and it, you know,
(06:12):
was that that stress on her body that eventually led
to her demise, But it was actually a couple of
weeks later. So immediately after Constanza's death, Pedro took advantage
of his unfettered single status and went straight to Castile
to get in his and bring her back to Portugal.
And from that point on they maintained a home in Couimbra,
(06:32):
which I probably butchered in my apologies. And while they
lived there they lived as husband and wife. Once they
were no longer conducting an affair in secret, which we
are putting in finger quotes because everybody knew about this secret,
even though it was supposedly clandestine, Inez and Pedro started
a family. They eventually had four children, A Fonso, Beatrice, Juoo,
(06:57):
and Denise A Fonso. Their first son died when he
was still a baby, and the other three were born
over the span of seven years from thirteen forty seven
to thirteen fifty four. So if things played out merely
as at this point the fulfilled love story of Pedro
and Anez that we have right at this point in
the telling, it might have been a more or less
(07:18):
happily ever after situation. Pedro Andz at this point were
finally together, they have children that they love, they're living
as a family, and everything seems great. But as the
two of them were expanding their family, and as his
brothers Alvaro and Fernando were bending Pedro's ear about a
plan they had hatched, the Castor brothers allegedly wanted their
(07:41):
sister's beloved Prince Pedro of Portugal to take advantage of
the weak situation of his cousin, Pedro of Castile, who
was inheritor to the throne of Castile. So yes, to
make things a little confusing, especially in an audio format,
there were two Pedros at this point. Yeah, they're are
actually multiple Pedro's ruling Europe in a very short period
(08:03):
of time. So it gets really confusing when you're reading, uh,
any any of the histories, you kind of have to
highlight and color code them. And as you may recall,
Pedro of Portugal was the grandson of King Sancho the
fourth of Castile, so he did have a lineage connection
to the Castile throne on his mother's side. Uh, And
he was kind of being convinced Bianeza's brothers that making
(08:27):
a claim for the throne was a good idea. But
his father, King Afonso the fourth, was really not enthused
with this whole drama. I feel like King Afonso is
constantly going wise. There always drama around Pedro and and
az uh. He was concerned that, thanks to the bad
influence of the Castros, his entire kingdom was going to
be in peril, and there was some legitimate concern there
(08:48):
it was not in Portugal's interest to get involved in
Castile's squabbles over the line of succession. Also, Afonso was
worried that in AZA's scheming brothers would try to insert
their sister's children with Pedro of Portugal and to Portugal's
line for the throne, which would almost certainly lead to
a civil war. Prince Pedro's son Ferdinand, who he had
(09:10):
had with Constanza, was next in line for the throne.
And King Afonso wanted to ensure that transition. And there
was also some concern that Ferdinand, who was a rather
frail child, could be an easy target for someone with
designs on the Portuguese throne. So there was certainly a valid, uh,
you know, interest in stamping out any potential um uprisings.
(09:35):
And to top all of those concerns off, King Afonso
the Fourth would have really liked to make another political
alliance by marrying his widowed son to an eligible and
well placed royal from another family, But Pedro had no
interest in any other woman but in his so next
we will talk about how Pedro's father dealt with this problem,
(09:55):
but first we will pause for a word from one
of our sponsors. So Afonso, to deal with this issue,
consulted with his most trusted advisers, and they suggested a
course of action that would put an end to the
problem instantly and permanently. And by the nature of those words,
(10:17):
you have probably guessed that the solution that they put
forth was to get rid of an Az entirely. And
the king weighed this possibility in his mind, but he
was really having difficulty making the decision to have an
As killed However, on January seven, Nance was murdered. I'll
find it the Fourth had known of this plot to
(10:39):
kill her, and he had in fact been involved with it,
but he had continued to be torn between his desire
to do what he thought was best for the country
and the family line, and his very real feelings for
these children that in As and his son had had together.
He was their grandfather, and and Az allegedly begged the
king for her life when he and his men arrived
(11:01):
at her home with her children right there with her,
and he, unable to fully commit one way or the other,
turned and left, telling his men to do whatever they wanted,
and apparently what they wanted to do was murder in Az.
So they stabbed her to death, and she was buried
in the monastery at Santa Clara. It's also possible that
(11:21):
Pedro had learned about this plot himself, and encyclopedia, written
in eighteen thirty six switched to be fair as much
later claimed that the Queen had gotten wind of this
treachery and warned her son, but that Pedro dismissed the
information as propaganda that was just intended to frighten him
away from me. Nice Prince Pedro was, of course i
rate at the loss of his love and z and
(11:44):
this murder catalyzed a rebellion against the king, with Pedro
at the lead and as his brothers joined him in
this revolt, and over the course of several months, the
bereaved and irate Pedro and his men waged a war
against Pedro's father, Offonse of the force. In the end,
Queen Beatrice had to get involved. As the wife of
a Fonso the fourth and the mother of Prince Pedro,
(12:07):
she was able to broke her a piece between the
two men. Father and son forgave each other, at least
in word, and Pedro pardoned the men who had murdered Eniz,
and things settled down in the royal family for the
next two years. But then Alfonso the Fourth died, leaving
Pedro as his successor to the throne. Pedro the First
(12:29):
of Portugal was crowned in thirteen fifty seven, becoming the
eighth King of Portugal, and almost immediately after assuming his
role as monarch, Pedro made it plain that while he
claimed to have forgiven it as his death, he was
still very angry the men who had been part of
the murder plot had all fled Portugal even after Pedro
(12:50):
and Alfonso had made their truth, and Pedro wanted them
brought back to faith justice. He was able to negotiate
for the return of the two of the men, Pedro
co Hello and Alvarez gon Salvas, who had fled to
Castile in exchange for other fugitives that country wanted from Portugal.
Portugal the third man had fled to Aragon, and the
(13:12):
Portuguese king was not able to secure his return. The
two men that were returned to Pedro the First face
torture for what they had done, and then they were
put to death in a gruesome execution parallelling what King
Pedro the First felt when Anez was killed. The men
had their hearts cut out, one had his pulled out
(13:32):
through his back, the other through his chest, and King
Pedro is said to have witnessed the executions as his
servants brought him his dinner. Pedro the First calculated move
to wait until he came to power and then exact
his revenge earned him the nickname Pedro the Cruel. It's
also worth noting that there were three men named Pedro
(13:54):
ruling in the area at the time. One over Castile,
one over Aragon, and then Pedro the First of Portugal,
when all of them have been given the name Pedro
the Cruel in various writings, as we said, especially confusing
in an audio format, Pedro the First of Portugal is
(14:14):
also referred to as Pedro the Jest. Yeah, just to
further confuse things, there is also a Pedro the First
of Brazil that sometimes when you do a search, you
will realize that other historians have conflated the two of
them a little bit. So there's a lot of untangling
and like sort of thread combing you have to do
to figure out what, when and where people are referring
(14:37):
to which Pedro. But the executions of Ineza's killers did
not bring King Pedro the First any sort of peace.
Several years after his reign began, Pedro announced on June twelve,
thirteen sixty then in fact, he and he and Anez
had been secretly married two years after Constanza had died.
(14:57):
Two men, a bishop and that bishop's attendant, were named
as having witnessed the wedding, and while no specific date
of the nuptials could be recalled by any of the men,
this announcement was backed up by a papal document indicating
that Pedro had gotten consent to remarry from the Pope,
and that papal document was publicly displayed as proof and
validation of the marriage to Anez. This declaration had an
(15:21):
important impact. First, it made Anez de Castro Queen of Portugal,
although posthumously, and second it also legitimized their three surviving
children and opened up futures for them that otherwise would
have just been unthinkable. But this also meant that as
Queen in Az was entitled to a much grander final
resting place than she had initially been given. So she was,
(15:44):
at Pedro's request, exhumed from the Santa Clara monastery and
moved to the Tomb of Kings, where she was reinterred
in a tomb on April two of thirteen sixty one.
Her final burial ceremony was extravagant and regal in every way.
Her body was escorted from Santa Clara and Coimbra to
the monastery of Alcobasa by a full parade of maids, nobleman,
(16:08):
clergy and horses, with the reported thousand men carrying candles
to ensure that there was always light on her One
historian who wrote about these events in the eighteen nineties
described the processional as being led by two lines of stars,
just such a beautiful image, and as de Castro's tomb,
(16:28):
which still exists, and we'll talk about this some more,
is quite a thing to behold. It is an intricately
carved white marble work of art it depicts and as
lying atop it protected by angels, while scenes of the
New Testament are carved into the sides, and the entire
tomb sits atop six figures which bear the weight, which
(16:49):
have human faces but animal bodies, and the sculpture of
a naz wears beautiful robes in the crown of a queen.
But the artist or artists involved who created this example
of Gothic funerary sculpture remain unknown. Pedro lived another six
years after Inez was laid to rest again for the
second time. He was assassinated in thirteen sixty seven, and
(17:13):
was then succeeded by his son Ferdinand. The first. Pedro's tomb,
which was placed next to his beloved is also lavishly
carved of marble. The sides on his feature scenes from St.
Bartholomew's life and Likeanz, Pedro has represented atop the tomb
with angels surrounding him. The sides of the tomb feature
scenes from start Bartholomew's life and Lianez. Pedro has represented
(17:36):
atop the tomb with angels surrounding him. He is wearing
a crown and in his left hand is his sword,
and there is also a dog at his feet. There
are many other details to it. It's really quite beautiful.
His tomb also sits on six stone figures like Innz's,
but his figures are lions and it also features the
crest of Portugal. Next up, we will talk a little
(17:58):
about the mythology of Pedro inter Is, but first we
will take another quick break for a word from one
of our awesome sponsors that's Holly mentioned at the top
of the show. This is one of those historical stories that,
both because of its age and it's very romantic and
pretty dramatic nature, has been blurred by retellings over the centuries.
(18:23):
For example, while Inis was most likely killed at Santa
Clara of Veja, where she and Pedro had been living
with their children, the story is often told that she
died in a completely different location, Quinta Dust lagrimas, which
translates into a state of tears. According to myth, her
blood still stains the stones there, and there are some
(18:46):
tales that she haunts the place. Yeah, and while many
versions of the story uh indicate the inn As was
stabbed when she was killed, some say she was decapitated,
and to make things extra gruesome, that this happened while
at least one and possibly all of her children looked on.
And this is contradictory to some of the other mythology
(19:06):
that we're going to talk about in just a moment. Additionally,
while Pedro the First of Portugal had the nickname of
Pedro the Cruel, he really seemed like a kind monarch
when it came to his people. He cut spending on
the part of the nobility to ease the burden on
the more common people. He also reformed the Portuguese justice
system and instituted the beneplacital Reggio, which was a means
(19:30):
by which any decree, act or document of the church
had to be approved by the monarchy before it could
be released publicly. And this is possibly also why he
was known as Pedro the Just. The people he reigned
over saw him as benevolent. While the nobility may have
called him cruel more because of the cutbacks that he
forced on him rather than necessarily his vengeance plot, he
(19:52):
has also sometimes characterized as being called just because of
his affinity for seeking justice, and even to the degree
that at times the execution of Eniza's murderers is described
as having been carried out by Pedro himself, including tearing
the men's hearts out with his bare hands. Another area
where this mythology of star Cross lovers takes on some
(20:13):
pretty fantastic claims is in the various descriptions of Enniza's
royal burial after her exhimation, and some versions of the story,
Pedro placed his deceased beloved on a throne before her
in tumb, placed a crown on her head, and then
kissed her hand, and then made the entire court pledge
their loyalty to the queen and also kiss her hand
(20:34):
in turn. Some versions say they had to kiss the
hem of her gown. Okay, so if you think about
this for just a moment, the math involved makes this
super gruesome. There were six years between Ennesza's murder and
her exhamation, so if any of this putting on the
throne kissing the hand did happen. It is a marvel
(20:54):
that the entire court would not have fainted in horror.
It takes I think, on average, I'm I'm completely pulling
this out of air. So if I'm incorrect, know that
it's not verified information. Something like eight to twelve years
for a not involved body to decompose, so you can
imagine what state she might have been in after six years. Additionally,
(21:15):
if she had been beheaded, this whole affair would have
been even stranger. And there doesn't seem to be any
mention of a head listen as ever, having been put
on the throne in her deceased state. One of the
important things to consider when turning over the various accounts
of Pedro and in AZ's love story is the fact
that they were all written quite some time after the fact.
(21:38):
I mean, this was a fourteenth century story, and a
lot of the accounts that we talked about were from
the nineteenth century. A great deal of the chronicling of
Portuguese history that was done by writers officially entrusted with
the task by the crown would have wanted to legitimize
and honor the lineage of the royal family they were
serving at the time they were writing it. Yeah, the
(22:01):
earliest ones are in I think the late fourteen hundreds
and it goes on from there. So, any any given
regent that was asking a writer to write down the
chronicles may have wanted to position things in one way
or another, but they were always to make that regent
look the best. So uh, that's the scoop. Uh. There
have been many, many, many fictionalized versions of the pedro
(22:25):
In and his love story over the centuries. That pair
has been the subject of poems and novels and paintings
and sculptures, operas and ballets. Just about any creative medium
that you can think of has been used to convey
the romance and tragedy of this piece of Portuguese history.
And as we mentioned at the very beginning of the show,
it's possible that their story was actually the inspiration for
(22:46):
Romeo and Juliet. The monastery at Alcabasa, where the lovers
were entombed, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Gets
situated in central Portugal, north of Lisbon, and dates to
the twelfth century. It was founded by King alphons Are
the First and is closely related to the beginnings of
the Portuguese monarchy. Yeah, there's some beautiful pictures on the
(23:08):
UNESCO site of this monastery. And then in eighteen eighteen eleven,
some of the sculptural details of those beautifully carved tombs
were damaged by Napoleon's troops. The looting and apparent beating
of these pieces of art that was done by the
French at the time has left some of the delicate
work permanently spoiled. Pedro and andez Do remain there in
(23:32):
their tombs, although they are no longer placed side by side.
They had to be moved apart a bit to make
room for the many visitors who often come to see
the doomed lovers Happy Valentia. It's a good story though.
It really is a compelling one and very interesting even
when you strip it down to the bare bones. Uh,
(23:54):
there's a lot of intrigue there. Yeah, it's good stuff.
Do you also have listener? May? I do? And this
listener mail comes with a little bit of a personal
story that it cracked me up when this listener mail
arrived for reasons having nothing to do specifically with the
mail itself. Uh, First I will read the mail tell
you what it is, and then I'll tell you why
(24:14):
it was funny. Uh So, it is a letter that says,
dearest Holly and Tracy, greetings from Cabbage Town, Atlanta. This
gift is a small token of my obsession with your podcast.
I love the range of topics. Anything Marie Antoinette focused
is always a favor, and you're down to earth approach
to sharing knowledge. I hope you enjoyed these two many
prints of pre and post guillotine. Marie, keep up the
(24:36):
marvelous work and thank you for your podcast warmly. Shay
uh So. Shay is actually an artist that I have
been following on Instagram for a while. And what made
this super funny there too absolutely lovely little prince of Marie.
One she looks beautiful and Christine and the other her
head is no longer attached to her person. It is
(24:57):
also beautiful, but in a different way. But what made
this produper weird and wondrous is that when this came
only like half an hour prior to this little parcel
arriving on my desk, I had placed an order at
Chase Etsy store for three prints. It like I placed
an order and thirty minutes later a package came, but
(25:17):
it was not the same package. We just had coincidental
good timing where she delivered a thing to me, to us,
uh you know, at the same time that I was
making orders. So that kind of cracked me up and
seemed way too weird but also wondrous. Uh so yeah,
so I also ordered some Star Wars art for me.
(25:38):
So thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Shay.
And we can include a link to her Instagram in
our show notes because her work is really beautiful. She's
got a really fun style and I love, love, love it,
and she does a lot of historical figures. So thank you,
thank you, thank you, Shaye. If you would like to
write to us, you can do so at History Podcast
at how stuff works dot com. You can also find
(25:59):
us across the ring of social media spectrum as missed
in History. That means that Instagram on Twitter, on Facebook,
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If you would like to learn a little bit today,
you can go to our parents site, which is how
stuff Works dot com. Poke around, put in some things
in the search bar, and you're gonna come up with
(26:20):
so much information you won't know what to do with yourself.
You can also visit us at missed in history dot com,
where we have an archive of every episode of the
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So we encourage you to come and visit us at
how stuff works dot com and miss in history dot
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(26:47):
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