Muertes regias

One imagines the last moments of the monarchs wrapped in the same pomp and circumstance that surrounded them in life, without losing an iota of their majesty in the final trance. With serenity, solemnity and in silence. But the exceptions to that ritual and ceremonious canvas are not few. On one side are those who died on the battlefield, such as the Aragonese Pedro II, who died fighting Simón de Montfort's crusaders at Muret (1213), while defending his subjects in Occitania. And there are much more abundant those who lost their lives in strange or bizarre circumstances, which have led to all kinds of theories and speculations. In this entertaining book, the historian Manuel García Parody, with the rigor that characterizes his already extensive career, addresses some of those royal deaths exempt from the solemnity and heroism that is presupposed. Deaths that could well have been those of his most humble subjects. If the reader has the healthy desire to delve into them, he will find very curious and revealing stories.