The love affair between Inês de Castro and King Pedro I of Portugal is steeped in myth, love and tragedy. Like Portugal’s own legend of Romeo and Juliet, with family feuds, banished lovers and heartbreaking revenge, what makes this legend so enduring is that it is true. The fictional trials and tribulations of star-crossed lovers pale in comparison to these Portuguese lovers, so join us as we discover why this love affair was so forbidden and why our heroine ended up becoming the first and last posthumous queen of Portugal.
The Story of an Eternal Love
Like many Galician noblewomen, Inês de Castro ’s life began in a comfortable manner. Born in 1325, Inês was the daughter of Pedro Fernández de Castro, Lord of Lemos and Sárria, and his Portuguese noble lady, Aldonça Lourenço de Valadares. Her family was descended from Galician and Portuguese nobles and was also connected to the Castilian royal family (through illegitimate descent), which allowed Inês to move in the right circles.
In 1339, at just 14 years old, everything was going normally and Inês arrived in Portugal as a lady-in-waiting to Constance of Castile , who shortly afterwards married Pedro , the aforementioned prince and son of King Afonso IV of Portugal . Like many marriages of the time, it was arranged to create an alliance with another kingdom.
It is said that Pedro initially considered his wife the right choice (how gallant) until he saw Inês, who allegedly had blonde hair, blue eyes and very white skin. Almost immediately, unaware of the future that was destined for him, Pedro fell in love with the young Inês.
The two became involved in an intense teenage love affair, but although his attention was now completely on Inês, Pedro, being the honest man that he was, still had time to get his wife, Constança, pregnant. Until then, Constança had watched as her husband became increasingly infatuated with her lady-in-waiting. So, in an attempt to end the affair, she made Inês godmother to their son, Luís. In the Catholic Church, godparents practically become members of the family, which made the relationship incestuous, which was the aim. Although their lives were beginning to seem like the far-fetched plot of a bad soap opera, Pedro and Inês ignored these implications and continued their romance.
Not only was the prince's marriage beginning to strain, but the affair also put further strain on relations with Castile, the medieval state on the Iberian Peninsula where Constance was from. Pedro's passion also had other consequences, bringing the exiled nobility closer to power, with Inês's brothers becoming Pedro's trusted friends and advisors.
In 1344, although the couple kept their affair secret (as secret as a teenage couple can), the king, Alfonso IV of Portugal, found out about it. He reacted like most parents when they discovered that their son was ruining the royal line: he sent Inês to the castle of Albuquerque on the Castilian border to get her out of the way. Despite the distance, Pedro and Inês continued to meet secretly. Deeply in love, he sent messages in a small wooden boat that glided along the castle’s water pipes. Who needs telephones when there are water pipes?
A year later, Constance of Castile died a few weeks after giving birth to her third son, Ferdinand. Wasting no time, Pedro, somewhat insensitively, immediately brought Inês to him against the king's wishes, which caused a great quarrel between them.
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The Drama of Inês de Castro
Several times, after banishing Inês from court once again, this time to a monastery in Coimbra , the king tried to arrange marriages for Pedro with other Castilian princesses. Pedro always refused, first saying that he mourned his wife's death, but eventually declaring Inês as his true love. Unsurprisingly, it was decided that she would never be eligible to be queen by the king and his advisors. So what did the couple do? Obviously they ignored the uproar and scandal. So much so that Pedro ran away to live with Inês, and began having children, four over the course of 10 years, including two boys.
The nobles and their peers were outraged at the continued relationship, and with the presence of children, rumours ran wild. It was said that the Castro family planned to disinherit Pedro's son Fernando (the true heir to the throne) in favour of Inês and Pedro's children. Others began to speculate that the couple had married in secret while living in Santa Clara-a-Velha .
For 12 months, Afonso was fed these stories and speculations and, after several failed attempts to separate the couple, the king ordered Inês's death . In January 1355, while Pedro was away hunting, three assassins (Pêro Coelho, Álvaro Gonçalves and Diogo Lopes Pacheco), as well as Afonso, went to the convent. Legend has it that, when the moment came, the king was supposedly so moved to see his grandchildren that he rescinded the order. However, the persistent assassins managed to convince him otherwise and he eventually left the room saying: "Do what you want". Beautiful. The three assassins stabbed Inês to death and eventually decapitated her with their swords, an event witnessed by one of her sons. She was only 29 years old.
Devastated and fueled by revenge, when Pedro discovered that his beloved had been brutally murdered, he declared civil war against his father and went in search of the killers. Despite all his efforts, he was quickly defeated. However, two years later, King Afonso died and Pedro ascended the throne in 1357.
One of his first acts as king was to declare that he and Inês had, in fact, married in secret some years before, so that, although she was dead, he made her legitimate queen and assumed her children as heirs. Even today, centuries later, no one has ever confirmed the veracity of the facts, so Pedro's word remains as the only proof of their marriage.
The painting represents the legendary coronation of Inês de Castro as queen consort of Portugal in 1361, six years after her death, in a ceremony that was allegedly imposed by D. Pedro after he ascended the throne.
Making Inês the posthumous queen of the country was not Pedro’s most radical act as king. Some versions of the legend take Pedro’s love for Inês to new heights by suggesting that, after declaring her queen, he had Inês’ body exhumed. As if that were not enough, Pedro forced the entire court to swear loyalty to the new queen and kiss the hem of her dress in an act more Shakespearean than Shakespeare himself. But of course, as driving Pedro mad for love would make a tragic story even more tragic, this part only began to circulate from 1500 onwards and modern sources have found no proof.
The Legend Written in Poem
Legend or not, the renowned Portuguese poet portrayed the episode in his book of poems, "Os Lusiadas", a work of epic poetry by the Portuguese writer Luís Vaz de Camões.
"After this prosperous victory,
Returning Afonso to the Lusitanian land,
To achieve peace with such glory
How much he knew how to win in the hard war,
The sad case, and one of memory,
That men dig up from the grave,
It happened from the miserable and petty
Who after being killed was Queen.
"You alone, you, pure Love, with raw strength,
That human hearts so compel,
You caused his unfortunate death,
As if she were a perfidious enemy.
If they say, fierce Love, that your thirst
Not even with sad tears is it mitigated,
]It is because you want, harsh and tyrannical,
Your altars bathe in human blood.
"You were, beautiful Inês, at peace,
From your years reaping sweet fruit,
In that deception of the soul, happy and blind,
That fortune doesn't let last long,
In the beloved fields of Mondego,
From your beautiful eyes I never dry,
Teaching to the mountains and to the weeds
The name that was written on your chest.
(...)
"Taking Inês out into the world determines,
For taking away his imprisoned son,
Believing in the blood of only Indian death
To kill the burning fire of firm love.
What fury allowed the thin sword,
That could support the great weight
From Mauro's fury, it was raised
Against a weak delicate lady?
(...)
"Such are the brutal killers against Inês
In the alabaster lap, which supported
The works with which Love killed with loves
The one who later made her Queen;
The swords bathing, and the white flowers,
That she had watered with her eyes,
They became fierce, fervent and angry,
In the future punishment do not be careful.
"Os Lusiadas" was the first Portuguese epic poem published in print. Probably begun in 1556 and completed in 1571, it was published in Lisbon on March 12, 1572, during the literary period of Classicism, or late Renaissance, three years after the author's return from the East, via Mozambique.
The work is composed of ten cantos, 1,102 stanzas and 8,816 verses in decasyllabic octaves, subject to the fixed rhyme scheme AB AB AB CC – royal or Camonian octave rhyme. The central action is the discovery of the sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, around which other episodes in the history of Portugal are evoked, glorifying the Portuguese people.
Considered the most important work of Portuguese-language literature, it is often compared to Virgil's Aeneid (1st century BC).
Written in the Homeric style, The Lusiads is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much as Virgil's Aeneid was to the ancient Romans, or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey to the ancient Greeks.
D. Pedro I: The Avenger
However, that was not the end of the story. Six years later, Pedro finally managed to take revenge on Inês's killers. After years of searching, he managed to capture two of the killers (the third ended up escaping) after exchanging them for Castilian fugitives. Pedro publicly executed them by ripping out their hearts while they were still alive, one through the chest and the other through the back, which demonstrated how they had destroyed his.
It was an act that marked his reign. After this event, he became known for delivering justice in some of the most brutal ways. In 1360, in a final act of love to honor his posthumous queen, Pedro ordered that Inês's body be transferred from Coimbra to the Royal Monastery of Alcobaça . He commissioned the construction of two marble tombs, decorated with scenes from their lives, and promised that they would remain together until the end of the world. In fact, the tombs are on opposite sides, to allow Pedro and Inês to "look at each other" after death. Inês's tragic story has been immortalized in several plays and poems in Portuguese, Spanish and French. More than 20 operas and ballets have also been made about Inês, as well as countless musicals and works of art. The twists and turns of this story are ripe for dramatic translation.
But while we celebrate the passion and romance between this loving couple, it is important to remember the true heroine of the story: Inês. Wrapped in a bubble of love, secrets and sacrifice, she was unfortunately the only one to pay the price for following her heart. And that is why Inês, the country’s only posthumous queen, continues to play an important role in Portugal’s history.
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