In the winter of 1353, a fourteen-year-old French princess named Blanche of Bourbon crossed into Castile to meet the man she was to marry, King Pedro I. She had been promised to an eighteen-year-old monarch described by contemporaries as a muscular, unusually tall beauty for his time. To her family, the match seemed ideal. But Blanche resisted the marriage with a desperation they could not understand, as if she sensed what awaited her.
Pedro had earned the nickname “the Cruel” early in his reign. After becoming king at sixteen, his first act was to execute his father’s mistress, Leonor de Guzmán, along with her sons, punishing the woman who had long humiliated his mother, Maria of Portugal. One might have assumed that a king who executed a mistress would remain faithful to his own wife. But Pedro had already begun a relationship with a Castilian noblewoman, Maria de Padilla, long before the marriage contract with Blanche was signed.
It was Maria who advised Pedro, then desperate for money to fund his military campaigns, to marry the French princess and secure her generous dowry of 300,000 gold florins. When Blanche finally arrived in Castile, Pedro was with the pregnant Maria. He sent his mother to meet his bride, a grim beginning for any marriage. On June 3, 1353, Pedro and Blanche were wed, and that evening they retired to their chambers to consummate the union.
The entire court was amazed when, the very next day, the king burst out in a rage. He announced that behind closed doors the bride had confessed something that made it impossible for him to continue the marriage. He would never be with Blanche again. Then he left and went straight to his lover, Maria de Padilla.
A chronicler wrote that he abandoned her as hastily as if she had been the daughter of his servant. Blanche was wife and queen for only two days. Rumors soon spread that the girl was no longer innocent, that she had allegedly conducted an affair with the king’s illegitimate brother, Fadrique, and that this was why the king rejected her. The reality was more pragmatic.
Alone with her husband, Blanche confessed that the King of France did not have enough money to pay the agreed dowry. She had brought only 25,000 florins of the promised 300,000. Pedro had known this even before the wedding but had hoped the money would arrive after the union was sealed. Now he felt deceived.
He could do nothing to Blanche’s family, but the girl herself was his possession, and her fate was entirely in his hands. Pedro pressured the archbishops to annul the marriage and succeeded. But he refused to send his failed wife back to her homeland. Instead, he subjected her to imprisonment, moving her from one castle to another.
In her letters, she insisted her husband was putting her through great hardship. Only a year later, Pedro married again, this time to Juana de Castro. Though the dowry was now in order, she repeated the fate of her predecessor. Days after the wedding, he abandoned her too and returned to Maria.
There was one exception: Juana became pregnant on the first night and soon gave birth to a son, John of Castile. For that reason, she could not be locked away as easily as Blanche had been, though she too was cut off from social life, deprived of influence, and practically never saw her husband. Blanche’s story drew a strong response from the Aragonese aristocrats, who already disliked the young king. Over time, a coalition formed around her in her defense.
They helped her escape her confinement in the Alcázar, and their troops even managed to take Pedro prisoner, though he eventually escaped. After his release, he became even harsher toward his former wife and did everything to ensure she fell back into his hands. This time, he placed her in the most remote castle possible, where she would have no chance of finding support. Pope Innocent VI intervened on the girl’s behalf, demanding her release and threatening Pedro and his lover Maria with excommunication if Blanche was not allowed to return to her homeland.
Instead of freeing an innocent girl, Pedro decided to solve the problem differently. He ordered his personal doctor to poison her, but the overseer guarding Blanche refused to take part and left his post. Pedro sent another man in his place, a crossbowman named Juan Pérez de Rebolledo, whose conscience would not prevent him from dealing with an innocent victim. According to the chronicles, Queen Blanche of Bourbon was shot with a crossbow in 1361, eight years after the beginning of her terrible marriage, at the age of only twenty-five.
Her last words were said to be, “Tell me, Castile, what have I done to you? ” Her death brought Pedro no relief. Soon after, he lost Maria de Padilla, who died of the plague. His reign, darkened by tyranny and civil war, ended with his death at the hands of his half-brother, Enrique, with whom he had fought all his life.
Blanche, the innocent victim, received a far greater response in history. Her remains were later cared for by Queen Isabella of Castile herself, who ordered them moved to the altar section of the monastery of San Francisco. Centuries later, when the Bourbons came to power in Spain, an inscription was placed on her tomb: “Doña Blanca, Queen of Spain, daughter of the Bourbons, descendant of the noble line of the kings of France, was extraordinarily beautiful in body and character. But the concubine prevailed, and she was killed by order of King Pedro I the Cruel, her husband.
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A similar story unfolded decades earlier in Bavaria. Maria of Brabant, daughter of Duke Henry II of Brabant and Lorraine and granddaughter of the German King Philip of Swabia, was a highly enviable bride. There had even been plans to marry her to Prince Edward, son of King Henry III of England, which would have made her queen of that country. But the two sides failed to agree on terms.
On August 2, 1254, she married Louis II, Duke of Bavaria and Count Palatine, of the noble Wittelsbach family. It was not uncommon for married couples of that era to spend most of their lives apart, as men went on military campaigns that lasted years. Correspondence was the only way to stay connected, and Maria and Louis wrote to each other when he went to the Palatinate a year after their wedding. While her husband was at war, Maria devoted herself to duties worthy of a duchess, caring for ordinary people, donating money to charity, and spending much time in church.
But even such an apparently ideal woman managed to make enemies. One day she caught a military court official committing fraud. From that moment, he began spreading rumors that blackened her name, claiming she was unfaithful to her husband. The rumors reached Louis and drove him into a rage, but without real evidence, he could not accuse her.
Then a messenger’s mistake changed everything. Maria’s confessor convinced her to write to her husband asking him to return home and stop besieging a city. She did so and also wrote a second letter to Count Henry I of Baumbach, a vassal, asking him to influence her husband’s decision. The exact wording is unknown, but according to the widespread version, she wrote something like, “If you accompany my lord on his return, I will be glad to welcome you.
” This simple act of politeness was interpreted by Louis as proof of adultery. He immediately went to Mangoldstein Castle, where Maria was staying, and without any trial or investigation accused her of betrayal. On the night of January 17 to 18, 1256, he had her beheaded with an ax in the castle courtyard. He also killed two of his wife’s ladies in waiting, Hélice and Mechtild, cutting their throats and throwing their bodies from the castle walls, believing they had hidden his wife’s affairs.
The castellan and even the guards also fell under the hand of the jealous husband. The chronicles say that when the veil of jealousy fell from the Duke’s eyes, he was crushed by guilt and turned gray from shame and grief. He begged the Pope for forgiveness, who ordered him to found a monastery as penance. Later historians examining the origins of this execution concluded that jealousy may not have been the true reason.
The decision could have had political motives, since Maria was related to his rival, King William of Holland. Louis may also have been clearing space for a new wife, as Maria was twenty-eight at marriage, considered late, and after two years had still not become pregnant. As for his repentance, it may have been driven by the fact that such a brutal execution earned him a reputation for excessive cruelty, costing him his chance to be elected an elector of the Holy Roman Empire. Whatever the exact reason, the execution cost several innocent lives.
Beatrice di Tenda, an Italian aristocrat, seemed the least likely of all to end up married to an abuser. When she first married in the mid-1390s to the condottiero Facino Cane, she immediately showed herself to be a wife with a steel character. She took part in his military campaigns and won the respect of commanders and soldiers. Facino treated her with such respect that he gave her all the wealth he had earned and considered her his equal.
Together they nearly gained control over the Duchy of Milan. In 1412, her husband suddenly fell ill and died, leaving Beatrice a very rich forty-year-old widow and once again a desirable bride. She had 400,000 ducats, holdings in several cities and lands, and a large army. On his deathbed, Facino himself chose a successor for his wife’s hand: Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan.
The Duke had only just inherited his domain. He was a twenty-year-old with no real experience, and he desperately needed someone as intelligent as Beatrice, and of course, her wealth. While the young Duke was settling into his role, his relationship with Beatrice was excellent. He listened to her advice on everything, and she, with her strong and straightforward character, subordinated everything to herself.
Her power was so great that Emperor Sigismund of Germany addressed the two of them together in his letters as if they held equal authority. After five years, everything changed. Once Filippo’s position strengthened, his aging wife began to burden him. She could no longer bear him children, and he had fallen in love with her lady in waiting, Agnese.
On August 23, 1418, by order of the Duke, Beatrice was arrested by a former commander of her first husband’s army, a special cruelty given that she had once given this man his power and was now destroyed by it. She was accused of adultery. To obtain confirmation, she was subjected to horrific torture, but even under torture she refused to admit guilt. They then tortured her servants and the man they claimed was her lover, Michele Ombello.
They turned out not to be as strong as Beatrice and chose to slander themselves. After the forced confession was extracted, all the participants were sentenced to death. On the night of September 13 to 14, 1418, they were beheaded. The story of Beatrice, a deceived and used wife, deeply touched Italians and gradually became part of their culture.
Several centuries later, a novel appeared about her story, and then Vincenzo Bellini wrote a musical work. In the castle where she lost her head, a memorial plaque was installed to return her good name: “Spotless in her loyalty. After securing his throne, Filippo Maria Visconti put to death within these walls on the night of September 13, 1418 his honorable wife. May the horror of this deed nourish and strengthen in the children of Italy the purest affections and the most sacred duties.
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History often remembers kings for wars, victories, and dynasties. But sometimes what says the most about a person is not the lands he conquered but how he treated those who were entirely in his power. Pedro, Louis, and Filippo were rulers, heirs to great houses, players in major politics.
But in the stories of these women, they remained first and foremost husbands who chose betrayal and condemned those who had trusted them to death.
