December 6, 2022 • 32 mins
King Pedro I of Portugal had one love of his life. And when she died, in 1355, Pedro would do everything in his power to make those who were responsible pay.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey listener discretion advised. Hey,
this is Danish Schwartz. Before we begin, just a quick
reminder that I wrote a book that's coming out in February.
It's called Immortality, a Love Story, and it's the sequel
to the book I wrote called Anatomy, a love story
(00:21):
all about a young woman who wants to be a
surgeon in the early eighteen hundreds in Scotland, and a
lot of characters actually that I've covered on this podcast
appear in Immortality. So if you like this podcast, please preorder.
It makes a huge amount of difference and I would
really appreciate it. If you also want to support the
show in other ways, we have a Patreon and March available.
(00:44):
Those links are in the bio, but the best support
is just that you're listening to the show, So thank
you so much. Before we get started this week, I
just want to give a quick content warning for some
listeners who might be sensitive. This episode has um, particularly
gruce Um, Blood and Gore in detail, and so some
listener discretion is advised. On a night in the year
(01:12):
thirteen sixty King Pedro the First of Portugal sat down
in his castle's dining hall in sent o m for
what he expected to be an especially satisfying meal. Servants
walked in with platters piled high with assorted meats, while
bottles of wine were being brought forth for the king's approval.
(01:33):
Though despite the extravagant spread, it quickly became apparent to
all in the room that the king didn't have much
interest in the feast laid out before him. Between the
softly taken footsteps of servers and the muted clatter of
cutlery against serving dishes, the air that was hanging in
(01:55):
the dining hall that evening was charged with a layer
of antis A patient Those in the room attempted to
maintain the facade of normalcy, but at the center of
it all, the king sat motionless, his vacant gaze unmoving
as plate after plate of untouched food arrived in front
(02:19):
of him. Perhaps the king wasn't looking at his plate
so much as he was staring at the knife next
to it, watching the metal glint invitingly in the flickers
of candlelight around the room. Or maybe he was distracted
by the empty chair next to him the space that
(02:41):
had once upon a time been reserved for his queen,
his beloved, and as de Castro, the woman who continued
to hold his heart, even if he could only see
her in the negative spaces that, even five years after
her death persist did inexorably like an opened wound. Whatever
(03:04):
was holding the King's attention during that dinner, the audible
trail of footsteps echoing from beyond the dining hall quickly
shifted his focus back into the present, His eyes locked
onto the door with newfound excitement, just as the entry
gave way and his guards at long last brought in
(03:26):
the final two dinner guests that the king had been
waiting for that evening, though really King Pedro had been
waiting for these two men for the better part of
five years. The two guests in question were Alvaro Gonzales
and Pero Coilo, two of the men responsible for the
(03:48):
brutal murder of the King's beloved and as to Castro
in thirteen fifty five. After years of searching, King Pedro
had finally managed to track two of the assas essence down,
bringing them back to Portugal to stand trial for their crimes.
Of course, the main perpetrator in his love's murder was
(04:10):
Pedro's own father, King Alfonso the Fourth, but considering that
the late king had died in thirteen fifty seven, there
was little more Pedro could do to punish his father
from this side of the earthly plane. Gonsalves and Quelo, however,
were still very much alive in offense that King Pedro
(04:32):
sought to rectify personally. There was little struggle from the
men as the armed guards marched them into the hall.
After all, upon their return to Portugal, a trial had
swiftly concluded that both men were guilty of murder. Their
fates had been sealed from that moment, their deaths assured.
(04:54):
All that was left was to face their sentence, though
I imagine their sense of res all all but crumbled
upon hearing their king's plans for them. That evening, as
the men were held helplessly at the King's mercy, Pedro
looked down at the killers with the same cold stare
(05:16):
they had likely given his beloved Inez before repeatedly running
their swords through her chest. The vacant expression that the
king had held at the beginning of the meal was
long gone. Vengeance was now clearly burning through all other
thoughts behind his eyes. For the murder of his wife,
(05:39):
Pedro's punishment was as simple as it was brutal. The
men were to have their hearts cut out of their chests.
For a moment. No one moved two, stunned by the
king's decree to see it put into action. For only
a moment, though then the guards descended upon the men,
(06:03):
and the room could do nothing but watch on in
horror as the stones on the dining room floor were
painted in crimson, the walls echoing an endless echo of
the criminal's blood curdling screams. When the bodies were finally
relieved of their now unbeating hearts, the hall likewise fell silent.
(06:28):
The only sound was then the scrape of knife on
plait as King Petrow finally dug into the dinner in
front of him. If Pedro noticed a change in the air,
he did not let on. But then again, maybe he
had found comfort in the grotesque display of violence he
had enacted. His in nas may have been gone, but
(06:52):
at least now he wasn't the only man to know
how it felt to live without a heart in his chest.
I'm Dana Schwartz and this is noble blood. Outside of Portugal,
(07:20):
the infamous love story of Pedro the First and an
esde Castro rarely finds its way into popular discourse. With
so few primary sources on the subject, let alone English
translations of scholarship available for public consumption, it makes sense
that the tale of these two ill fated lovers remains
(07:40):
outside of Portugal relatively unknown, but within Portugal itself, the
legend of their love story and the ties they have
to Portugal's medieval history makes them household names. To better
understand the context during which their story takes place, I
want to give you a very brief summary of what
was happening in Portugal, or more accurately, the Kingdom of
(08:04):
Portugal in the fourteenth century. During this time, the Iberian Peninsula,
or what we today typically think of as Spain and Portugal,
was comprised of four kingdoms, which for the sake of
time I won't go into too deeply, except for the
two which relate to that of our lovers, the Crown
of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal. By thirteen forty,
(08:26):
the two kingdoms could only be described as having a
begrudgingly tolerable relationship Back in thirty eight, King Alfonso the
fourth of Portugal had sent his daughter Maria of Portugal
to be married to the King of Castile, which, rather
than unifying their kingdoms as one might hope a marriage,
(08:47):
would only serve to create a larger rift between them.
This was largely due to Alfonso the Fourth receiving reports
that his daughter was being mistreated by the King of Castile, who,
quite after their union, began to pretty immediately take up
with a mistress. In retaliation, Alfonso the Fourth arranged for
(09:08):
his son Pedro the First of Portugal to marry a
Castilian noble woman named Costanza Manuel. For those curious as
to why this specific union would be considered a retaliation,
Costanza was, funnily enough, the King of Castile's first wife.
Costanza's father had arranged her marriage with the Castilian king
(09:30):
when she was just nine years old, which meant that
when the previously mentioned daughter of Alfonso the Fourth of
Portugal was presented as another possible wife for him, the
king promptly annulled their unconsummated marriage so he could wed
Maria of Portugal instead. So really, in other words, Costanza
was the jilted first wife of the King of Castile,
(09:54):
who then chose Alfonso's daughter instead. It's a little complicated,
but I think you the basic picture. Cut to a
few years later, and the King of Castile is suddenly
faced with the consequences of his actions in the form
of his current and former father in law's deciding to
unite their collective hatred of him with the strategic marriage
(10:16):
between his own ex wife, Constanta Manuel and the future
King of Portugal, Pedro the First. Now, I'm going to
fast forward a bit because the ensuing war and ultimate
peace treaty don't exactly serve the story in any significant way.
But from this web of marriages and political ally ship,
I think the two most important points to take away
(10:38):
from this are one, regardless of treatise, tensions between the
Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal, we're fraying
dangerously thin. And two, in thirteen forty, Alfonso's son Pedro
would marry Costanza Manuel, which is where our story truly begins,
(10:58):
because when Constanza arrived in Portugal, she did so with
her lady in waiting, a Galician noblewoman by the name
of Inez de Castro. Now, unfortunately for poor Costanza neither
her first nor second marriage were destined to be fairytale romances.
(11:19):
In fact, almost as soon as she arrived at court
with Annez and how Pedro all but cast her aside
in favor of her lady in waiting. He of course
still performed his marital duties so as to secure himself
an heir to the Portuguese throne. But that was about
the extent of Pedro and his wife's relationship. As you
(11:39):
can probably imagine, poor Costanza was less than thrilled with
this development. Yes, she was set to become the future
Queen of Portugal and her son would one day become king,
but she played this game once before. One annulment later,
and Costanza knew all too well how precarious her seemingly
cemented place in court really was. So in an effort
(12:03):
to keep Annez from continuing her affair with Pedro, in
thirteen forty four, Costanza made a strategic decision and named
Inez her newborn child's godmother. Now this may seem counterintuitive,
doesn't it make Annez and her husband even closer, But
in the context of medieval Portuguese and Catholic traditions, naming
(12:26):
someone a godparent to their child essentially made them family,
which meant that in one move, Costanza changed Pedro and
and As his relationship from an extramarital affair to scandalous
lye incestuous. It was a simple and effective solution that
could have even worked had her son not tragically passed
(12:47):
away just eight days after he was born. As it was,
her son's death brought further suspicion upon Inez by the
Portuguese court. King Alfonso the Fourth was not blind to
what was happening between his son and his wife's lady
in waiting, and though he had been unhappy with his
son's choice and mistress, he had initially dismissed the affair,
(13:11):
hoping it was simply lust and it was clouding his
son's judgment only temporarily. However, after the death of Costanza's
firstborn son, the son to which Anez had been made godmother,
the son keeping Pedro and Anez a part, Alfonso was
now powerless to stop the rumors that began to stir
(13:32):
at court. How had the child died, hadn't poor Constanza
named that Harlot the godmother wasn't at all a bit
too convenient? For years, King Alfonso had allowed Pedro to
carry on with Anez, but as the rumor mill continued
(13:53):
to speculate, the king decided it was finally time to
take action, and he banned and As from court. And
that should have been it, at least it would have
been if their affair had simply been driven by lust.
But when Annez was driven away from court, the strength
of her and Pedro's love, if anything, became more apparent.
(14:16):
In some versions of their story, While Annez was away,
Pedro wrote to her through small messages, which he sent
through a channel of water that went between their two residences.
To Alfonso's dismay, the distance between the two did nothing
to diminish their devotion to one another, a fact that
became all too apparent when in thirteen forty nine, Constanza
(14:41):
Manuel died at just thirty three years old from complications
following the birth of her fourth child. As the country
mourned the loss of their Infanta or princess, King Alfonso
really should not have been that surprised to find that
his son had almost immediately left court to find Inez,
(15:02):
without any marital obligations now barring him from seeing her,
Pedro and Inez were finally free to be together, and
together they were. They weren't married. Their relationship would never
be accepted by King Alfonso, but Pedro and Inez would
go on to have three healthy children. They were happy together,
(15:24):
at least until thirteen fifty four, when they're happily ever
after came to an abrupt and brutal end when it
came to his son. King Alfonso the Fourth of Portugal
was running out of options for years following Costanza's death,
Alfonso attempted to find another suitable marriage for his son,
(15:48):
but Pedro refused to hear a word of it. Meanwhile,
Alfonso's royal advisers reported back rumors that had been floating
around court. People couldn't help but compare the sickly and
weak son Ferdinand, that Pedro had had with his wife Costanza,
a legitimate son, with the three strong and healthy but
(16:11):
illegitimate children that Pedro had with Annez. Equally troubling were
the rumors that Inez's Castilian brothers were spending considerable time
in the Prince's ear, tempting him to intercede on their
behalf in Castilian Civil War. Surely, Anez was poisoning Pedro
(16:31):
with these thoughts biasing the prince in favor of Castile.
Up until this point, King Alfonso had at best tolerated
and as his presence in his son's life. But with
threats to the Portuguese line of succession coming into question,
plus the ever growing potential for an all out civil
(16:52):
war that could possibly end with the Kingdom of Portugal
in the hands of the Castilian crown, Alfonso could no
longer a forward to ignore this young woman who had
stolen his son's heart, and so, at the urging of
his royal advisers, King Alfonso, along with a traveling party
that included both Alvaro Gonzales and Paroquelo, made their way
(17:16):
to Combra to carry out the assassination of Annez de Castro.
It's impossible to say exactly how events unfolded in Coimbra
that day. Later, dramatization of Ineza's death would imply that
in As sat at King Alfonso's feet begging for her life.
(17:38):
Some would say the king began to sympathize with her
as one of her children was in the room with them,
watching on in terror, helpless to stop what would inevitably
come to pass. For no matter if an As sat
at the king's feet, nor if she pleaded for her life,
the end result remained the same. In the fame Is
(18:00):
Portuguese epic poem, Ois Lucida's author Louise vas Jacomas wrote
of her death quote, Thus, Annez, while her eyes to
have an appeal, resigned her bosom to the murdering steel,
that snowy neck was stained with, spouting gore another sword.
Her lovely bosom tore so from her cheeks. The roses
(18:23):
died away and pale in death. The beauteous Annez lay.
On January seven, fifty five, Ines de Castro, mother of
three and the great love of Pedro of Portugal's life,
was stabbed to death by the order of Pedro's father,
King Alfonso the Fourth. The king may not have swung
(18:46):
the blade that took an As his life, but when
news of his father's betrayal finally reached Pedro, none of
that mattered. All that mattered was that his anst was gone,
that she had been brutally taken from the earth at
the hands of his own father, and he was going
to make him pay. If Alfonso had hoped, and as
(19:07):
his absence would quell Pedro's desire to begin a civil war,
he was sorely mistaken. Within days of her death, Pedro
had summoned an army to go to war against his
own father. It was only at the urging of the
only existing neutral party between them, Pedro's mother and Alfonso's wife,
(19:28):
Queen Beatrice, that the two men were able to stop
the fighting. At the queen's behest, father and son signed
a treaty of peace between them. But if this episode's
introduction was anything to go by, I'm guessing you already
know that the piece was just about the last thing
on Pedro's mind. It wouldn't be until two years later,
(19:50):
in thirteen fifty seven, when Alfonso died and Pedro ascended
to the Portuguese throne, that the young king could begin
to enact his re venge and at long last find
the justice he longed for. For Aness. His first order
of business tracking down the men responsible for her murder.
(20:12):
While his men searched far and wide for any trace
of the assassins, The now King Pedro the First enacted
the second order of business he had, commissioning the creation
of two tombs, one for himself and one for his
beloved Inez. After her death, Ines had been buried in Coimbra.
(20:33):
The location of her remains likely chosen out of convenience
rather than geographical significance. But then again, Inez and Pedro
technically had no official ties to one another. They had
three children together, but in the eyes of the Catholic
Church and by extension, Portugal as a whole, and as
(20:55):
to Castro, technically meant nothing, which was exactly In thirteen sixty,
Pedro would announce to the world a secret that would
irrevocably alter the course of Portuguese history. A few months
after he ordered the death of and As his assassins,
with the hollow ache no doubt still lingering in his chest,
(21:19):
Pedro revealed that seven years earlier, he and and Az
were married in a secret ceremony, meaning not only had
his father killed the woman he loved, but the king
had also murdered what would have been Portugal's future queen.
For centuries, the validity of Pedro's secret marriage claims have
(21:42):
been subject to debate. After all, if you're a king
and you get married in a forest and no one's
around to witness it, does it still hold up in
the eyes of the Catholic Church. Some chroniclers from the
time contested the union's legitimacy, but ultimately their doubt would
be a foot note in the history books, especially when
(22:03):
the true intentions behind the now king's posthumous wedding announcements
were revealed and the now widowed king had his late
wife exhumed from her grave on Combrian soil. With his
wife's killers now brutally dead and his healthy children's legitimacy secured,
(22:24):
King Pedro set out to complete his final act of
revenge against his father. Now there comes a point in
stories like this that the mythos surrounding the facts often
begin to outshine the reality of the events themselves. Sometimes
a lack incredible sources inspires others to make up histories
(22:47):
of their own. Some stories that, while not exactly factual,
no doubt, make for a great story. In the case
of Pedro exhuming his wife's corpse, some say that upon
his ascension to the throne, the king was so maddened
in his all consuming grief that he ordered his men
(23:08):
to disenter Inez so that they could prop up her
body on the throne beside him as his queen. They
say that Pedro had her dressed in the finest robes
and laid a crown upon her head, demanding members of
his court approached the throne so they could kiss what
(23:30):
was left of in iss weathered hand as a way
to pay homage to their would be queen. And to
be fair, this maccab display of fealty is rather on
brand for King Pedro. This is the man, after all,
who murdered his wife's killers by cutting out their hearts.
(23:52):
But in reality, and as his disinterment likely, had little
to do with forcing members of the court to bow
at his late wife's ornately dressed corpse, and more to
do with the two tombs Pedro had commissioned as soon
as he had ascended to the throne, for in the end,
Pedro's final act of defiance against his father, as well
(24:15):
as his final act of love for his late wife,
lay within the twin tombs he planned to share with
his beloved Today, if you walked into the Cistercian Abbey
of Alcobasa, you would be immediately taken in by the
incredible display of Gothic Cistercian architecture. Impossibly high, rib vaulted
(24:39):
ceilings would greet you as you passed through the monastery's doors.
They're intimidating heights, subconsciously leading you down the nave toward
the main chapel at the structure's end. And if you
were a tourist, after finding your way to the end
of the monastery's pews, you would most likely notice the
crowds acting, not gathering to view the main chapel under
(25:03):
a halo of skylights, but gathering in two corners of
the transept on either side of you. Upon closer inspection,
you would notice the onlookers gathered around two intricately carved
white stone tombs, the chamber to the right holding the
tomb of King Pedro, the first of Portugal, and to
(25:26):
the left, mirroring it perfectly just steps away from her husband,
his wife Inez de Castro, in direct defiance of his father,
Pedro's final declaration of love for an Az was not
made in hate or violence, but in a gesture that
married his grief with his hope for the future. By
(25:49):
claiming Anaz as his wife, Pedro finally had sufficient grounds
to exhume her body and give her the burial she
rightly deserved the areal of a queen. When the elaborate
tombs he had commissioned were finished some time between thirteen
sixty one and thirteen sixty three. Pedro had and As
(26:11):
his remains disinterred and brought all the way from Coimbra
to Alcabasa, a nearly seventy mile journey from there, and
as his body was put inside of one of the
two intricately carved tombs and placed in the abbey where
she awaited the day the other matching tomb would carry
(26:32):
the body of her beloved and the two of them
would be together once more. But even with the inherent
romance of matching tombs aside, what Pedro did for and
Ez goes far beyond just securing a place for their
bodies to finally be together, To briefly bring you back
to the main chapel in Alcabasa for a moment. The
(26:55):
intricate images carved into an ASA's tomb are beautiful, yes,
but they serve a specific purpose as well. Scenes from
the life and death of Christ are carved into the
side of her tomb in unspoken analogy between the two figures,
being presented like an offering to the viewer. Both the
(27:16):
castro and the Portuguese coat of arms adorn her final
resting place. But the greatest gift Pedro gave an as
his legacy is perhaps the simplest addition to the otherwise
incredibly intricate sculpture work. On the lid of her tomb,
a stone likeness of Annez herself is laid out on
(27:38):
top of the very vessel which contains her earthly remains.
What stands out about her stone counterpart is not her
serene expression, nor the items placed in her hands, but
the crown placed atop her head. When Pedro revealed his
secret marriage with an As to the world, he knew
(27:59):
there would be skeptics who would never see her as
their queen. But in this one detail, Pedro all but
wrote her legacy in stone for generations to come. As
long as stone anyone who came to the Alcabasa would
see his truth. It was in Nez, not Costanza, who
(28:22):
was his wife. It was in Nez who was his
queen even in death. And though their individual tombs hold
differing images, both are inscribed with the same words that
echo across the stone floors where they lay together, words
that translate from the Portuguese to mean until the end
(28:46):
of the world. That's the tragic love story of Pedro,
the first of Portugue and in Nasda Castro. But stick
around to hear how their love story has evolved over
the centuries. Although the tale of Pedro and Andez has
(29:19):
largely evaded English speaking audiences in pop culture, I think
it's worth it to analyze why their story, and particularly
in Nez's presence as a tragic figure, has persisted in
cultural iconography in Portugal and Western Europe. Of course, the
story itself has everything you could ever want in a
tragic love story slash episode of noble blood, romance, betrayal, vengeance,
(29:44):
his and her tombs, to say nothing of the macabre
idea of a disinterred corpse sitting on a throne. But
in all seriousness, what I find most interesting about most
interpretations of Pedro and and AS's love story is the
inherent lack of an Ez that they all seem to share.
What I mean by that is, when conducting research for
(30:06):
this episode, I found little to no information on who
and Asta Castro was as a person, only how she
related to Pedro's story. Other than the physical manifestation of
their love in their three living children, any love the
couple shared is expressed through Pedro's grief and rage, not
(30:27):
through any sort of interaction between the two, which does
make sense since the majority of their story takes place
after she dies. But that's another thing, isn't it. The
love story of Pedro an Andez is not so much
about their love as it is about her death. Any
characterizations that are given to her are on the whole
(30:49):
that she was pious and self sacrificing, but there's little
to no evidence that she was either of those things,
unless you assigned them as reactions she may have had
to the acts of violence taken against her. It's a
sad truth that and As his presence in her own
story mattered more when she was a corpse than when
(31:10):
she was alive. But then again, it's not like treating
women as blank slates in which to project a man.
Story is something we haven't seen before. But who knows,
maybe after seven hundred years, someone will finally given as
to cast the chance to tell her own story. Noble
(31:44):
Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by
me Danish Words. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston.
Hannah's Wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The
show is produced by rema Il Kali, with supervising producer
(32:05):
Josh Thayne and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey listener discretion advised. Hey,
this is Danish Schwartz. Before we begin, just a quick
reminder that I wrote a book that's coming out in February.
It's called Immortality, a Love Story, and it's the sequel
to the book I wrote called Anatomy, a love story
(00:21):
all about a young woman who wants to be a
surgeon in the early eighteen hundreds in Scotland, and a
lot of characters actually that I've covered on this podcast
appear in Immortality. So if you like this podcast, please preorder.
It makes a huge amount of difference and I would
really appreciate it. If you also want to support the
show in other ways, we have a Patreon and March available.
(00:44):
Those links are in the bio, but the best support
is just that you're listening to the show, So thank
you so much. Before we get started this week, I
just want to give a quick content warning for some
listeners who might be sensitive. This episode has um, particularly
gruce Um, Blood and Gore in detail, and so some
listener discretion is advised. On a night in the year
(01:12):
thirteen sixty King Pedro the First of Portugal sat down
in his castle's dining hall in sent o m for
what he expected to be an especially satisfying meal. Servants
walked in with platters piled high with assorted meats, while
bottles of wine were being brought forth for the king's approval.
(01:33):
Though despite the extravagant spread, it quickly became apparent to
all in the room that the king didn't have much
interest in the feast laid out before him. Between the
softly taken footsteps of servers and the muted clatter of
cutlery against serving dishes, the air that was hanging in
(01:55):
the dining hall that evening was charged with a layer
of antis A patient Those in the room attempted to
maintain the facade of normalcy, but at the center of
it all, the king sat motionless, his vacant gaze unmoving
as plate after plate of untouched food arrived in front
(02:19):
of him. Perhaps the king wasn't looking at his plate
so much as he was staring at the knife next
to it, watching the metal glint invitingly in the flickers
of candlelight around the room. Or maybe he was distracted
by the empty chair next to him the space that
(02:41):
had once upon a time been reserved for his queen,
his beloved, and as de Castro, the woman who continued
to hold his heart, even if he could only see
her in the negative spaces that, even five years after
her death persist did inexorably like an opened wound. Whatever
(03:04):
was holding the King's attention during that dinner, the audible
trail of footsteps echoing from beyond the dining hall quickly
shifted his focus back into the present, His eyes locked
onto the door with newfound excitement, just as the entry
gave way and his guards at long last brought in
(03:26):
the final two dinner guests that the king had been
waiting for that evening, though really King Pedro had been
waiting for these two men for the better part of
five years. The two guests in question were Alvaro Gonzales
and Pero Coilo, two of the men responsible for the
(03:48):
brutal murder of the King's beloved and as to Castro
in thirteen fifty five. After years of searching, King Pedro
had finally managed to track two of the assas essence down,
bringing them back to Portugal to stand trial for their crimes.
Of course, the main perpetrator in his love's murder was
(04:10):
Pedro's own father, King Alfonso the Fourth, but considering that
the late king had died in thirteen fifty seven, there
was little more Pedro could do to punish his father
from this side of the earthly plane. Gonsalves and Quelo, however,
were still very much alive in offense that King Pedro
(04:32):
sought to rectify personally. There was little struggle from the
men as the armed guards marched them into the hall.
After all, upon their return to Portugal, a trial had
swiftly concluded that both men were guilty of murder. Their
fates had been sealed from that moment, their deaths assured.
(04:54):
All that was left was to face their sentence, though
I imagine their sense of res all all but crumbled
upon hearing their king's plans for them. That evening, as
the men were held helplessly at the King's mercy, Pedro
looked down at the killers with the same cold stare
(05:16):
they had likely given his beloved Inez before repeatedly running
their swords through her chest. The vacant expression that the
king had held at the beginning of the meal was
long gone. Vengeance was now clearly burning through all other
thoughts behind his eyes. For the murder of his wife,
(05:39):
Pedro's punishment was as simple as it was brutal. The
men were to have their hearts cut out of their chests.
For a moment. No one moved two, stunned by the
king's decree to see it put into action. For only
a moment, though then the guards descended upon the men,
(06:03):
and the room could do nothing but watch on in
horror as the stones on the dining room floor were
painted in crimson, the walls echoing an endless echo of
the criminal's blood curdling screams. When the bodies were finally
relieved of their now unbeating hearts, the hall likewise fell silent.
(06:28):
The only sound was then the scrape of knife on
plait as King Petrow finally dug into the dinner in
front of him. If Pedro noticed a change in the air,
he did not let on. But then again, maybe he
had found comfort in the grotesque display of violence he
had enacted. His in nas may have been gone, but
(06:52):
at least now he wasn't the only man to know
how it felt to live without a heart in his chest.
I'm Dana Schwartz and this is noble blood. Outside of Portugal,
(07:20):
the infamous love story of Pedro the First and an
esde Castro rarely finds its way into popular discourse. With
so few primary sources on the subject, let alone English
translations of scholarship available for public consumption, it makes sense
that the tale of these two ill fated lovers remains
(07:40):
outside of Portugal relatively unknown, but within Portugal itself, the
legend of their love story and the ties they have
to Portugal's medieval history makes them household names. To better
understand the context during which their story takes place, I
want to give you a very brief summary of what
was happening in Portugal, or more accurately, the Kingdom of
(08:04):
Portugal in the fourteenth century. During this time, the Iberian Peninsula,
or what we today typically think of as Spain and Portugal,
was comprised of four kingdoms, which for the sake of
time I won't go into too deeply, except for the
two which relate to that of our lovers, the Crown
of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal. By thirteen forty,
(08:26):
the two kingdoms could only be described as having a
begrudgingly tolerable relationship Back in thirty eight, King Alfonso the
fourth of Portugal had sent his daughter Maria of Portugal
to be married to the King of Castile, which, rather
than unifying their kingdoms as one might hope a marriage,
(08:47):
would only serve to create a larger rift between them.
This was largely due to Alfonso the Fourth receiving reports
that his daughter was being mistreated by the King of Castile, who,
quite after their union, began to pretty immediately take up
with a mistress. In retaliation, Alfonso the Fourth arranged for
(09:08):
his son Pedro the First of Portugal to marry a
Castilian noble woman named Costanza Manuel. For those curious as
to why this specific union would be considered a retaliation,
Costanza was, funnily enough, the King of Castile's first wife.
Costanza's father had arranged her marriage with the Castilian king
(09:30):
when she was just nine years old, which meant that
when the previously mentioned daughter of Alfonso the Fourth of
Portugal was presented as another possible wife for him, the
king promptly annulled their unconsummated marriage so he could wed
Maria of Portugal instead. So really, in other words, Costanza
was the jilted first wife of the King of Castile,
(09:54):
who then chose Alfonso's daughter instead. It's a little complicated,
but I think you the basic picture. Cut to a
few years later, and the King of Castile is suddenly
faced with the consequences of his actions in the form
of his current and former father in law's deciding to
unite their collective hatred of him with the strategic marriage
(10:16):
between his own ex wife, Constanta Manuel and the future
King of Portugal, Pedro the First. Now, I'm going to
fast forward a bit because the ensuing war and ultimate
peace treaty don't exactly serve the story in any significant way.
But from this web of marriages and political ally ship,
I think the two most important points to take away
(10:38):
from this are one, regardless of treatise, tensions between the
Crown of Castile and the Kingdom of Portugal, we're fraying
dangerously thin. And two, in thirteen forty, Alfonso's son Pedro
would marry Costanza Manuel, which is where our story truly begins,
(10:58):
because when Constanza arrived in Portugal, she did so with
her lady in waiting, a Galician noblewoman by the name
of Inez de Castro. Now, unfortunately for poor Costanza neither
her first nor second marriage were destined to be fairytale romances.
(11:19):
In fact, almost as soon as she arrived at court
with Annez and how Pedro all but cast her aside
in favor of her lady in waiting. He of course
still performed his marital duties so as to secure himself
an heir to the Portuguese throne. But that was about
the extent of Pedro and his wife's relationship. As you
(11:39):
can probably imagine, poor Costanza was less than thrilled with
this development. Yes, she was set to become the future
Queen of Portugal and her son would one day become king,
but she played this game once before. One annulment later,
and Costanza knew all too well how precarious her seemingly
cemented place in court really was. So in an effort
(12:03):
to keep Annez from continuing her affair with Pedro, in
thirteen forty four, Costanza made a strategic decision and named
Inez her newborn child's godmother. Now this may seem counterintuitive,
doesn't it make Annez and her husband even closer, But
in the context of medieval Portuguese and Catholic traditions, naming
(12:26):
someone a godparent to their child essentially made them family,
which meant that in one move, Costanza changed Pedro and
and As his relationship from an extramarital affair to scandalous
lye incestuous. It was a simple and effective solution that
could have even worked had her son not tragically passed
(12:47):
away just eight days after he was born. As it was,
her son's death brought further suspicion upon Inez by the
Portuguese court. King Alfonso the Fourth was not blind to
what was happening between his son and his wife's lady
in waiting, and though he had been unhappy with his
son's choice and mistress, he had initially dismissed the affair,
(13:11):
hoping it was simply lust and it was clouding his
son's judgment only temporarily. However, after the death of Costanza's
firstborn son, the son to which Anez had been made godmother,
the son keeping Pedro and Anez a part, Alfonso was
now powerless to stop the rumors that began to stir
(13:32):
at court. How had the child died, hadn't poor Constanza
named that Harlot the godmother wasn't at all a bit
too convenient? For years, King Alfonso had allowed Pedro to
carry on with Anez, but as the rumor mill continued
(13:53):
to speculate, the king decided it was finally time to
take action, and he banned and As from court. And
that should have been it, at least it would have
been if their affair had simply been driven by lust.
But when Annez was driven away from court, the strength
of her and Pedro's love, if anything, became more apparent.
(14:16):
In some versions of their story, While Annez was away,
Pedro wrote to her through small messages, which he sent
through a channel of water that went between their two residences.
To Alfonso's dismay, the distance between the two did nothing
to diminish their devotion to one another, a fact that
became all too apparent when in thirteen forty nine, Constanza
(14:41):
Manuel died at just thirty three years old from complications
following the birth of her fourth child. As the country
mourned the loss of their Infanta or princess, King Alfonso
really should not have been that surprised to find that
his son had almost immediately left court to find Inez,
(15:02):
without any marital obligations now barring him from seeing her,
Pedro and Inez were finally free to be together, and
together they were. They weren't married. Their relationship would never
be accepted by King Alfonso, but Pedro and Inez would
go on to have three healthy children. They were happy together,
(15:24):
at least until thirteen fifty four, when they're happily ever
after came to an abrupt and brutal end when it
came to his son. King Alfonso the Fourth of Portugal
was running out of options for years following Costanza's death,
Alfonso attempted to find another suitable marriage for his son,
(15:48):
but Pedro refused to hear a word of it. Meanwhile,
Alfonso's royal advisers reported back rumors that had been floating
around court. People couldn't help but compare the sickly and
weak son Ferdinand, that Pedro had had with his wife Costanza,
a legitimate son, with the three strong and healthy but
(16:11):
illegitimate children that Pedro had with Annez. Equally troubling were
the rumors that Inez's Castilian brothers were spending considerable time
in the Prince's ear, tempting him to intercede on their
behalf in Castilian Civil War. Surely, Anez was poisoning Pedro
(16:31):
with these thoughts biasing the prince in favor of Castile.
Up until this point, King Alfonso had at best tolerated
and as his presence in his son's life. But with
threats to the Portuguese line of succession coming into question,
plus the ever growing potential for an all out civil
(16:52):
war that could possibly end with the Kingdom of Portugal
in the hands of the Castilian crown, Alfonso could no
longer a forward to ignore this young woman who had
stolen his son's heart, and so, at the urging of
his royal advisers, King Alfonso, along with a traveling party
that included both Alvaro Gonzales and Paroquelo, made their way
(17:16):
to Combra to carry out the assassination of Annez de Castro.
It's impossible to say exactly how events unfolded in Coimbra
that day. Later, dramatization of Ineza's death would imply that
in As sat at King Alfonso's feet begging for her life.
(17:38):
Some would say the king began to sympathize with her
as one of her children was in the room with them,
watching on in terror, helpless to stop what would inevitably
come to pass. For no matter if an As sat
at the king's feet, nor if she pleaded for her life,
the end result remained the same. In the fame Is
(18:00):
Portuguese epic poem, Ois Lucida's author Louise vas Jacomas wrote
of her death quote, Thus, Annez, while her eyes to
have an appeal, resigned her bosom to the murdering steel,
that snowy neck was stained with, spouting gore another sword.
Her lovely bosom tore so from her cheeks. The roses
(18:23):
died away and pale in death. The beauteous Annez lay.
On January seven, fifty five, Ines de Castro, mother of
three and the great love of Pedro of Portugal's life,
was stabbed to death by the order of Pedro's father,
King Alfonso the Fourth. The king may not have swung
(18:46):
the blade that took an As his life, but when
news of his father's betrayal finally reached Pedro, none of
that mattered. All that mattered was that his anst was gone,
that she had been brutally taken from the earth at
the hands of his own father, and he was going
to make him pay. If Alfonso had hoped, and as
(19:07):
his absence would quell Pedro's desire to begin a civil war,
he was sorely mistaken. Within days of her death, Pedro
had summoned an army to go to war against his
own father. It was only at the urging of the
only existing neutral party between them, Pedro's mother and Alfonso's wife,
(19:28):
Queen Beatrice, that the two men were able to stop
the fighting. At the queen's behest, father and son signed
a treaty of peace between them. But if this episode's
introduction was anything to go by, I'm guessing you already
know that the piece was just about the last thing
on Pedro's mind. It wouldn't be until two years later,
(19:50):
in thirteen fifty seven, when Alfonso died and Pedro ascended
to the Portuguese throne, that the young king could begin
to enact his re venge and at long last find
the justice he longed for. For Aness. His first order
of business tracking down the men responsible for her murder.
(20:12):
While his men searched far and wide for any trace
of the assassins, The now King Pedro the First enacted
the second order of business he had, commissioning the creation
of two tombs, one for himself and one for his
beloved Inez. After her death, Ines had been buried in Coimbra.
(20:33):
The location of her remains likely chosen out of convenience
rather than geographical significance. But then again, Inez and Pedro
technically had no official ties to one another. They had
three children together, but in the eyes of the Catholic
Church and by extension, Portugal as a whole, and as
(20:55):
to Castro, technically meant nothing, which was exactly In thirteen sixty,
Pedro would announce to the world a secret that would
irrevocably alter the course of Portuguese history. A few months
after he ordered the death of and As his assassins,
with the hollow ache no doubt still lingering in his chest,
(21:19):
Pedro revealed that seven years earlier, he and and Az
were married in a secret ceremony, meaning not only had
his father killed the woman he loved, but the king
had also murdered what would have been Portugal's future queen.
For centuries, the validity of Pedro's secret marriage claims have
(21:42):
been subject to debate. After all, if you're a king
and you get married in a forest and no one's
around to witness it, does it still hold up in
the eyes of the Catholic Church. Some chroniclers from the
time contested the union's legitimacy, but ultimately their doubt would
be a foot note in the history books, especially when
(22:03):
the true intentions behind the now king's posthumous wedding announcements
were revealed and the now widowed king had his late
wife exhumed from her grave on Combrian soil. With his
wife's killers now brutally dead and his healthy children's legitimacy secured,
(22:24):
King Pedro set out to complete his final act of
revenge against his father. Now there comes a point in
stories like this that the mythos surrounding the facts often
begin to outshine the reality of the events themselves. Sometimes
a lack incredible sources inspires others to make up histories
(22:47):
of their own. Some stories that, while not exactly factual,
no doubt, make for a great story. In the case
of Pedro exhuming his wife's corpse, some say that upon
his ascension to the throne, the king was so maddened
in his all consuming grief that he ordered his men
(23:08):
to disenter Inez so that they could prop up her
body on the throne beside him as his queen. They
say that Pedro had her dressed in the finest robes
and laid a crown upon her head, demanding members of
his court approached the throne so they could kiss what
(23:30):
was left of in iss weathered hand as a way
to pay homage to their would be queen. And to
be fair, this maccab display of fealty is rather on
brand for King Pedro. This is the man, after all,
who murdered his wife's killers by cutting out their hearts.
(23:52):
But in reality, and as his disinterment likely, had little
to do with forcing members of the court to bow
at his late wife's ornately dressed corpse, and more to
do with the two tombs Pedro had commissioned as soon
as he had ascended to the throne, for in the end,
Pedro's final act of defiance against his father, as well
(24:15):
as his final act of love for his late wife,
lay within the twin tombs he planned to share with
his beloved Today, if you walked into the Cistercian Abbey
of Alcobasa, you would be immediately taken in by the
incredible display of Gothic Cistercian architecture. Impossibly high, rib vaulted
(24:39):
ceilings would greet you as you passed through the monastery's doors.
They're intimidating heights, subconsciously leading you down the nave toward
the main chapel at the structure's end. And if you
were a tourist, after finding your way to the end
of the monastery's pews, you would most likely notice the
crowds acting, not gathering to view the main chapel under
(25:03):
a halo of skylights, but gathering in two corners of
the transept on either side of you. Upon closer inspection,
you would notice the onlookers gathered around two intricately carved
white stone tombs, the chamber to the right holding the
tomb of King Pedro, the first of Portugal, and to
(25:26):
the left, mirroring it perfectly just steps away from her husband,
his wife Inez de Castro, in direct defiance of his father,
Pedro's final declaration of love for an Az was not
made in hate or violence, but in a gesture that
married his grief with his hope for the future. By
(25:49):
claiming Anaz as his wife, Pedro finally had sufficient grounds
to exhume her body and give her the burial she
rightly deserved the areal of a queen. When the elaborate
tombs he had commissioned were finished some time between thirteen
sixty one and thirteen sixty three. Pedro had and As
(26:11):
his remains disinterred and brought all the way from Coimbra
to Alcabasa, a nearly seventy mile journey from there, and
as his body was put inside of one of the
two intricately carved tombs and placed in the abbey where
she awaited the day the other matching tomb would carry
(26:32):
the body of her beloved and the two of them
would be together once more. But even with the inherent
romance of matching tombs aside, what Pedro did for and
Ez goes far beyond just securing a place for their
bodies to finally be together, To briefly bring you back
to the main chapel in Alcabasa for a moment. The
(26:55):
intricate images carved into an ASA's tomb are beautiful, yes,
but they serve a specific purpose as well. Scenes from
the life and death of Christ are carved into the
side of her tomb in unspoken analogy between the two figures,
being presented like an offering to the viewer. Both the
(27:16):
castro and the Portuguese coat of arms adorn her final
resting place. But the greatest gift Pedro gave an as
his legacy is perhaps the simplest addition to the otherwise
incredibly intricate sculpture work. On the lid of her tomb,
a stone likeness of Annez herself is laid out on
(27:38):
top of the very vessel which contains her earthly remains.
What stands out about her stone counterpart is not her
serene expression, nor the items placed in her hands, but
the crown placed atop her head. When Pedro revealed his
secret marriage with an As to the world, he knew
(27:59):
there would be skeptics who would never see her as
their queen. But in this one detail, Pedro all but
wrote her legacy in stone for generations to come. As
long as stone anyone who came to the Alcabasa would
see his truth. It was in Nez, not Costanza, who
(28:22):
was his wife. It was in Nez who was his
queen even in death. And though their individual tombs hold
differing images, both are inscribed with the same words that
echo across the stone floors where they lay together, words
that translate from the Portuguese to mean until the end
(28:46):
of the world. That's the tragic love story of Pedro,
the first of Portugue and in Nasda Castro. But stick
around to hear how their love story has evolved over
the centuries. Although the tale of Pedro and Andez has
(29:19):
largely evaded English speaking audiences in pop culture, I think
it's worth it to analyze why their story, and particularly
in Nez's presence as a tragic figure, has persisted in
cultural iconography in Portugal and Western Europe. Of course, the
story itself has everything you could ever want in a
tragic love story slash episode of noble blood, romance, betrayal, vengeance,
(29:44):
his and her tombs, to say nothing of the macabre
idea of a disinterred corpse sitting on a throne. But
in all seriousness, what I find most interesting about most
interpretations of Pedro and and AS's love story is the
inherent lack of an Ez that they all seem to share.
What I mean by that is, when conducting research for
(30:06):
this episode, I found little to no information on who
and Asta Castro was as a person, only how she
related to Pedro's story. Other than the physical manifestation of
their love in their three living children, any love the
couple shared is expressed through Pedro's grief and rage, not
(30:27):
through any sort of interaction between the two, which does
make sense since the majority of their story takes place
after she dies. But that's another thing, isn't it. The
love story of Pedro an Andez is not so much
about their love as it is about her death. Any
characterizations that are given to her are on the whole
(30:49):
that she was pious and self sacrificing, but there's little
to no evidence that she was either of those things,
unless you assigned them as reactions she may have had
to the acts of violence taken against her. It's a
sad truth that and As his presence in her own
story mattered more when she was a corpse than when
(31:10):
she was alive. But then again, it's not like treating
women as blank slates in which to project a man.
Story is something we haven't seen before. But who knows,
maybe after seven hundred years, someone will finally given as
to cast the chance to tell her own story. Noble
(31:44):
Blood is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim
and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is hosted by
me Danish Words. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston.
Hannah's Wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The
show is produced by rema Il Kali, with supervising producer
(32:05):
Josh Thayne and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and
Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Dana Schwartz
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