We finish the first entry of this series dedicated to the succession of Alfonso IX of León pointing out that in 1218 the Leonese monarch approved the ascent to the Castilian throne of his son Fernando III, but that did not mean at all that he was willing to allow that Ferdinand also succeed him on the throne of León.
Before his son took the Castilian crown, Alfonso IX had foreseen that Fernando would succeed them. This was stated in various documents signed in 1216 and early 1217 by the Leonese king in which his son appears as grantor together with the monarch. But his appointment as King of Castile changed everything and in the following months he ceased to appear in the documents.
There were several candidates for succession. The main one, Sancho (son of Ferdinand II and stepbrother of the King of León), had some kind of disagreement with Alfonso IX and left the court. In addition, the two daughters (Sancha and Dulce) born from the annulled marriage of Alfonso IX with Teresa of Portugal had to be taken into account. A son named Fernando had been born from that union, but he had died in 1214. In a document dated November 1217 in which he agreed to a truce with Fernando III of Castile, Alfonso IX seemed to designate his half-brother Sancho as heir and , if he died, that the crown pass to his daughters Sancha and Dulce.
We do not know if it was the disagreement with Sancho first and then his preference for Sancha and Dulce or if Alfonso IX was first inclined towards them and as a consequence Sancho felt offended and left León, but in 1219 it was already clear that the first succession option of Alfonso IX were the two daughters of his union with Teresa of Portugal. Any obstacles that Sancho could pose to this plan ceased to be a problem when he died in 1220, apparently in a hunting accident.
The option for Sancha and Dulce is confirmed by the royal documents and privileges granted since that date. In the pact signed with Alfonso II of Portugal in Boronal in 1220, it was established that if Alfonso IX died, the Portuguese monarch undertook to maintain said agreement with the infantas Sancha and Dulce, the daughters of the King of León.
Little by little, the "Portuguese party" was imposed on the Leonese court and this influence increased when in 1223 the infante Pedro de Portugal, uncle of the infantas, was appointed royal mayordomo.
Alfonso IX's decision to designate his daughters as heirs was public throughout the Leonese kingdom. However, the last will of the King of León was not recorded in a will or, if he did, it has not been preserved. He possibly did not consider it necessary, because in different documents he had made it clear.
Very forceful in this regard is the jurisdiction of Cáceres of 1229. It specifies that the citizens of the town:«They made a pact with me and my daughters Doña Sancha and Doña Dulce, and under oath, raising their hands, twelve good men granted for all the council that would be forever subjects and obedient to me, Alfonso, by the grace of God king of León, and to my daughters Doña Sancha and Doña Dulce».
And when on August 1, 1230, the monarch, who was already ill, granted the town of Montánchez to the Order of Santiago, he stated that he did so "with the approval and consent of the noble infantas doña Sancha and doña Dulce, my daughters”.
However, as González Jiménez makes clear:«After analyzing the situation, it was evident that the Leonese monarch had been wrong in considering that the succession was something of his absolute personal competence and, perhaps for this reason, he had not bothered to sanction his death. decision in a special convocation of the Cortes in which his daughters were sworn in and recognized as heirs. He surely must have done it. Therefore, at his death, the succession problem was more confused than ever ».
Indeed, the issue of succession was far from being resolved and this would become clear when Alfonso IX died in 1230. He had spent the last few months in Extremadura, where he had managed to conquer the important squares of Cáceres, Mérida and Badajoz for the kingdom of León and had defeated at Alanje a Muslim army led by Ibn Hud.
After staying in Extremadura until the summer, he decided to travel to Santiago de Compostela, as he had done other times, to give thanks for the apostle's support in his conquests. On his way to Compostela he felt ill when he was in the town of Villanueva de Sarria and died on September 24, 1230 after forty-two years of reign
Although Alfonso IX had up to nineteen children with six different women, at the time of his death the candidates to succeed him were limited to four:the infantas Dulce and Sancha, daughters of his marriage to Teresa of Portugal, and King Ferdinand III of Castile and his brother Alfonso, sons of his liaison with Berengaria de Castilla.
As we have seen, the initial decision of Alfonso IX was to name Sancha and Dulce as heirs to the Leonese throne. Chao points out that "from the very moment that his son Fernando was proclaimed king of Castile, he never again named him in his documents, making explicit his intention that he not succeed him to the Leonese throne."
On his part, Puente points out:«According to the will of the monarch, and to keep the kingdom united, the rights of succession passed to the daughters Sancha and Dulce, without any mention of his son Fernando. This solution, described by historians as unrealistic, had no signs of bearing fruit given the impossibility, among other things, of establishing the distribution of power for each of the infantas».
González Jiménez expresses himself in similar terms:«The legality expressed by the king could give rise to a triple and confusing perspective:recognize Doña Sancha, the eldest of the two daughters of the deceased monarch, as heir; divide the kingdom between the two sisters, granting Sancha the kingdom of León and Dulce that of Galicia, or establish a kind of diarchy, presided over by the first. It is likely that any of these formulas could be valid for those who, moved by a visceral anti-Castilianism, promoted for years by the deceased monarch, were willing to prevent by all means that Fernando III inherited his father. Be that as it may, none of these formulas was politically viable since, to the internal insecurity that it could cause […] was added the more than certain refusal of Fernando III to renounce some rights that had been recognized by his father and sworn by the kingdom and that had never been expressly revoked."
This problem between the practical infeasibility of granting the government of the kingdom to the two sisters and the desire to avoid the unwanted dynastic union between León and Castile led to the emergence of a third way that proposed that the crown pass to the head of the second son of Alfonso IX. and Berenguela, the brother of Fernando III named Alfonso, who later became known as Alfonso de Molina (father of María De Molina). But Alfonso nipped her in the bud by not accepting the proposal, according to a chronicle "for doing what her mother ordered."
Thus, there were three candidates for the throne:the infantas Sancha and Dulce, on the one hand, and the King of Castile, Fernando III, on the other. And to what happened after the death of Alfonso IX in relation to his succession we will dedicate the third and last installment of this series.
Image| Wikimedia Commons, Author archive.