Rey Don Pedro

"Rey Don Pedro" takes place in the Spanish fourteenth century, in the historical context of the Hundred Years War and the Black Death. Pedro I of Castilla, called the Cruel by his adversaries and the Justiciero by his followers, is killed by his brother Enrique de Trastámara with the help of the mercenary Beltrán Duguesclín, who intervenes in the hand-to-hand fight between both brothers when Pedro was close overcome. Once dead, Don Pedro remembers his life, from the distant day he inherited the throne until the moment of his own death. In that state of stormy lucidity, in which he is able to recall his past in detail, he cannot contemplate the present, or meet again with his dead children, or with María de Padilla, who had been the great love of his life, the only one compensation in an existence lavish in violence and betrayal. When Pedro inherits the throne he is sixteen years old, and his mother, Isabel de Portugal, disgusted by her husband's multiple infidelities, poisons Pedro's conscience against his rival and her husband's lover, Leonor de Guzmán, and against his ten bastard children. His mother's lover becomes the king's worthy and the true inspirer of his policy, both in the interior and with respect to the Hundred Years War, which will take him away from his natural ally, England, to bring him closer to France, arriving to agree to a marriage of convenience with Blanca, niece of the king of that country. Pedro's youth takes place in the midst of numerous sexual conquests and continuous gun duels; his temperament leads him to put his life at risk and to despise state tasks. In "Rey Don Pedro" the protagonism is not in the battles or knightly actions but in the introspection of the king. Pedro lives a childhood with an absent father whose affection is for his bastard brothers, a youth dominated by the hatred of his adversaries and the betrayal of his mother, and a maturity in which he knows only a few weeks of peace throughout almost twenty years of reign.