Happy Saturday. One of the TV shows I have enjoyed watching on TV is Supergirl, which has just ended its run, and in one of the last episodes, I saw something familiar, and that was the tomb of Innesta Castro, which is an Alcabasa Portugal. When I saw this on the screen, I was like, hey, wait, didn't we do a podcast on this? Yes, in fact, we did, so I thought we would share it for anybody who watch a Supergirl and would like some historical backstory. And if you don't watch Supergirl, of course, it is an interesting episode on its own. You don't have to be into Supergirl to appreciate it. And this episode originally came out on January and was a little bit of an early Valentine's Day episode, So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello, and Welcome to the Punk Gusty and I'm Tracy Wilson. Tracy. Valentine's Day is coming up. I know it's um not a holiday 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 literal and happy because I'm just contrary. Um. And a 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, there's 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 Bread 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 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 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 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 a son, and that son with 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, and Pedro was utterly entranced 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 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 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 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 was this. She was counting on the fact that, in the eyes of the Catholic Church and as 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 it wasn't enough that it was infidelity, right, it had the added ammunition of also being incestuous. But that plan did not seem to have any real impact on the situation at all, regardless of how anyone else felt about them. The lovers, Pedro and Enez were just devoted to one another as much as they had been before. And additionally, co Steins's baby wound up living sadly only a few weeks, so the idea that Inez 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 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 seen As whenever he possibly could. On November thirty five, Constanza died. She had given birth to her third child with Pedro at that point, a son named Fernando that was two weeks before her death, and the baby survived 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, was that the 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 Coimbra, which I probably butchered in my apologies. Uh. 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, Jooo, and Denise Alfonso. 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 and is that we have right at this point in the telling, it might have been a more or less happily ever after situation. Pedro and Az at this point are 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 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, there were actually multiple Pedro's ruling Europe in the very short period 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 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, They're always drama around Pedro and his 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 it was not in Portugal's interest to get involved in Castile's squabbles over the line of succession. Also, Afonso was worried that Ineza'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 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. 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, 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, 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 and As killed. However, on January seven, five, Nas was murdered. I'll find to the fourth had known of this plot to 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 As allegedly begged the king for her life when he and his men arrived 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 want to do was murder in Z. So they stabbed her to death, and she was buried in the monastery at Santa Clara. It's also possible that 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 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, a fonse of the force. In the end, Queen Beatrice had to get involved As the wife of a Fonder the fourth and the mother of Prince Pedro, she was able to broke her a piece between the two men, father and son forgave each other at least ston 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 Afonso the Fourth died, leaving Pedro as his successor to the throne. Pedro the First 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 and Alfonso had made their truth, and Pedro wanted them brought back to face justice. He was able to negotiate for the return of the two of the men, Pedro Coelo and Alvarez Gonsalves, 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 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 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 ruling in the area at the time, when 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 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 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 twelfth, thirteen sixty that, in fact he and he and Anez had been secretly married two years after Constanza had died. 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 Anz. This declaration had an 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 Inez was entitled to a much grander final resting place than she had initially been given, So she was, 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, noblemen, clergy, and horses, with a 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, 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 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 was then seeded 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 legan Is. Pedro has represented atop the tomb with angels surrounding him. The sides of the tomb feature scenes from St. Bartholomew's life and ligan As. Pedro has represented 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 Inness, but his figures are lions, and it also features the crest of Portugal. Next up, we will talk a little about the mythology of Pedro in a NEETs, but first we will take another quick break for a word from one of our awesome sponsors. As Holly mentioned at the top of the show, this is one of the 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. 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 tales that she haunts the place. Yeah, and while many versions of the story uh indicate that and 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 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 beneplacidal reggio, which was a means 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 is 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 Aneza'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 fantastic claims is in the various descriptions of Inness's royal burial after her exhimation, and some versions of the story Pedro placed his deceased beloved on a throne before her in hum 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 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 Enness's murder and her exhimation, so if any of this putting on the throne, kissing the hand did happen, it is a marvel 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 embalmed body to decompose, so you can imagine what state she might have been in after six years. Additionally, 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. 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 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 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 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 Alfonso the First and is closely related to the beginnings of the Portuguese monarchy. Yeah, there's some beautiful pictures on the UNESCO site of this monastery and then h in eighteen ten Tina leven, 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 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 Valent. 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, there's a lot of intrigue there. Yeah, it's good stuff. Hey, so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook U r L or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at i heart radio dot com. Our old how stuff Works email address no longer works, and you can find us all over social media at missed in History and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from i heeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,

Happy Saturday. One of the TV shows I have enjoyed watching on TV is Supergirl, which has just ended its run, and in one of the last episodes, I saw something familiar, and that was the tomb of Innesta Castro, which is an Alcabasa Portugal. When I saw this on the screen, I was like, hey, wait, didn't we do a podcast on this? Yes, in fact, we did, so I thought we would share it for anybody who watch a Supergirl and would like some historical backstory. And if you don't watch Supergirl, of course, it is an interesting episode on its own. You don't have to be into Supergirl to appreciate it. And this episode originally came out on January and was a little bit of an early Valentine's Day episode, So enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio, Hello, and Welcome to the Punk Gusty and I'm Tracy Wilson. Tracy. Valentine's Day is coming up. I know it's um not a holiday 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 literal and happy because I'm just contrary. Um. And a 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, there's 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 Bread 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 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 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 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 a son, and that son with 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, and Pedro was utterly entranced 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 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 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 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 was this. She was counting on the fact that, in the eyes of the Catholic Church and as 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 it wasn't enough that it was infidelity, right, it had the added ammunition of also being incestuous. But that plan did not seem to have any real impact on the situation at all, regardless of how anyone else felt about them. The lovers, Pedro and Enez were just devoted to one another as much as they had been before. And additionally, co Steins's baby wound up living sadly only a few weeks, so the idea that Inez 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 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 seen As whenever he possibly could. On November thirty five, Constanza died. She had given birth to her third child with Pedro at that point, a son named Fernando that was two weeks before her death, and the baby survived 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, was that the 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 Coimbra, which I probably butchered in my apologies. Uh. 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, Jooo, and Denise Alfonso. 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 and is that we have right at this point in the telling, it might have been a more or less happily ever after situation. Pedro and Az at this point are 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 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, there were actually multiple Pedro's ruling Europe in the very short period 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 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, They're always drama around Pedro and his 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 it was not in Portugal's interest to get involved in Castile's squabbles over the line of succession. Also, Afonso was worried that Ineza'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 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. 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, 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, 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 and As killed. However, on January seven, five, Nas was murdered. I'll find to the fourth had known of this plot to 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 As allegedly begged the king for her life when he and his men arrived 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 want to do was murder in Z. So they stabbed her to death, and she was buried in the monastery at Santa Clara. It's also possible that 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 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, a fonse of the force. In the end, Queen Beatrice had to get involved As the wife of a Fonder the fourth and the mother of Prince Pedro, she was able to broke her a piece between the two men, father and son forgave each other at least ston 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 Afonso the Fourth died, leaving Pedro as his successor to the throne. Pedro the First 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 and Alfonso had made their truth, and Pedro wanted them brought back to face justice. He was able to negotiate for the return of the two of the men, Pedro Coelo and Alvarez Gonsalves, 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 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 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 ruling in the area at the time, when 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 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 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 twelfth, thirteen sixty that, in fact he and he and Anez had been secretly married two years after Constanza had died. 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 Anz. This declaration had an 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 Inez was entitled to a much grander final resting place than she had initially been given, So she was, 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, noblemen, clergy, and horses, with a 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, 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 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 was then seeded 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 legan Is. Pedro has represented atop the tomb with angels surrounding him. The sides of the tomb feature scenes from St. Bartholomew's life and ligan As. Pedro has represented 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 Inness, but his figures are lions, and it also features the crest of Portugal. Next up, we will talk a little about the mythology of Pedro in a NEETs, but first we will take another quick break for a word from one of our awesome sponsors. As Holly mentioned at the top of the show, this is one of the 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. 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 tales that she haunts the place. Yeah, and while many versions of the story uh indicate that and 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 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 beneplacidal reggio, which was a means 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 is 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 Aneza'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 fantastic claims is in the various descriptions of Inness's royal burial after her exhimation, and some versions of the story Pedro placed his deceased beloved on a throne before her in hum 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 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 Enness's murder and her exhimation, so if any of this putting on the throne, kissing the hand did happen, it is a marvel 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 embalmed body to decompose, so you can imagine what state she might have been in after six years. Additionally, 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. 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 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 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 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 Alfonso the First and is closely related to the beginnings of the Portuguese monarchy. Yeah, there's some beautiful pictures on the UNESCO site of this monastery and then h in eighteen ten Tina leven, 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 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 Valent. 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, there's a lot of intrigue there. Yeah, it's good stuff. Hey, so much for joining us on this Saturday. 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