- Maria de Padilla
Pedro I of Castile, known as "El Cruel", acceded to the Castilian throne in 1350, after the death of his father Alfonso XI. His reign marked by the constant fights with his multiple enemies, both within Castile and outside of it and by his love affairs.
Among his Castilian enemies, his half-brothers stood out above all, the natural children of Alfonso XI and Doña Leonor de Guzmán, led by Enrique, Count of Trastámara; also his cousins the infantes of Aragon, especially the eldest of them Fernando, first in the hereditary line until Pedro had a legitimate heir; and the members of the La Cerda family, present in all the dynastic struggles of Castile for more than a century; even his own mother and his main adviser, Juan Alfonso de Alburquerque, ended up conspiring against him.
Outside of Castile, his main rival was the monarch of the other great peninsular kingdom, Pedro IV of Aragon, "El Ceremonioso"; but he also earned the enmity of up to three different popes and it was inevitable that Castile would be immersed in the war that the two great European kingdoms, France and England, maintained for more than a hundred years, which ended up causing him the enmity of the French crown.
However, the subject of this entry is not the reign of Pedro I, but rather his relationship with what is generally accepted to have been the love of his life:the Castilian María de Padilla, whom he met when he was still single. However, like every monarch of the time, Pedro was not destined to marry for love, but for political and dynastic reasons. Therefore, although he later declared that he had previously secretly married María de Padilla, Pedro married the French noblewoman Blanca de Borbón in 1352, as part of the Castilian-French alliance in the Hundred Years' War. However, the Castilian monarch had always had more sympathy for the English and was never very convinced of this union; the lack of payment by the French monarch of the agreed dowry and the rumors about the affair between Blanca and the King's half-brother, Fadrique, during his transfer from France to Castile for the betrothal, made Pedro abandon Blanca two days after the wedding and kept her imprisoned in different places until her death without having contact with her again.
Despite his hectic love and sexual life (he also married the noblewoman Juana de Castro for whom he felt an ardent, albeit brief, passion), Pedro always returned next to María de Padilla with whom he maintained his relationship until her death in 1361, shortly after the death of Blanca de Borbón. María de Padilla stoically endured the numerous infidelities of the monarch, who had several natural children, and she was always willing to receive Pedro again.
Three daughters (Beatriz, Constanza and Isabel) and one son (Alfonso) were born from their relationship and in 1362 (that is, after Blanca de Borbón and María de Padilla were already dead) before the Cortes gathered in Seville, Pedro declared that his real wife was and had always been the one he had secretly married before Blanca, in addition to never having consummated the marriage with the latter.
The Courts, how could it be otherwise, sanctioned this statement, although its veracity is more than doubtful; His objective seems to have been more to legitimize his descendants with Mary as heirs to the Kingdom of Castile, question. In this way, after her death, María obtained what had been denied her during her lifetime:her recognition as the legitimate wife of Pedro I “El Cruel”. In addition, her descendants were called to play an important role in the history of Spain, although that is another story.
The account of María de Padilla's relationship with Pedro I «El Cruel», as well as a complete narration of the reign of the latter, can be found in the novel «El corazón of the cursed king» by Graziella Sáenz de Heredia.
Image| Maria de Padilla