Being the rightful heir to the Kingdom of Portugal sounds like a pretty sweet deal on the surface, but when my father came to me and told me i was getting married to the Castilian Princess, Constanza Manuel of Vilena, in a political alliance, i was only 8 years old and my first question was can I finish my ice cream and jelly first?
We were married soon afterwards but it was four years later until we met for the first time and she was pleasant enough but it was her lady in waiting, Inês de Castro, that caught my eye and the greatest love story of Portuguese history began.
My wife was already a distant memory as i met Inês in secret but we were rubbish at the secret bit and we got caught and my father banished Inês from the court to stop me from seeing her but i just ran off to be with her.
Seeing his political advantage slipping away, my father proposed i marry another princess but i said i only wanted to marry Inês but he refused
so we lived as a married couple and had several children but my father knew that he had to shake me free from Inês and could only think of one feasible way to do it.
I went on a weekend hunting trip and upon hearing of my trip, my father ordered three of his men to pay Inês a visit and they took along a huge sword with them which they used to decapitate her.
Now comes the blood bit because i went as berserk as only a man who comes home to find his wifes head in one room and her body in another could and spent a year along with the Castilian army run by Inês’s brothers who were none too pleased by their sister’s decapitation, sweeping through the country invading towns and cause as much chaos as possible and was about to ravage Porto when my mother got message to me that my father was dying and the crown would be passed onto me as heir and to generally stop being a dick as i was destroying the country i was set to rule over.
With the crown on my head, one of my first acts was to set out to find the three men that took Inês’s life but one managed to escape but i found the other two, dragged them back to Portugal and tied them up in the public square.
I did consider lopping off their heads but instead plumped for ripping one man’s heart out through his back and ripped the other man’s heart out through his chest and then declared although Inês was dead, being the old romantic that i was, she was still the rightful queen and should have the coronation ceremony and exhumed her body from her grave, sat her on the throne, dressed her with a crown and royal robes, and forced all my vassals to approach and kiss her decaying hand.
As no one really wanted to argue with the man that had just ripped out the hearts of two men, most members of the court decided to go with it and make her queen and then i had her re-buried in one of two tombs i had constructed facing each other with the words 'to the end of time' enscribed between them at the Monastery of Alcobaça where i joined her ten years later and we continue to look each other to this day. Beautiful.
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