63 - Various arguments advanced by certain people concerning King Fernando's marriage

Summary

When it became known throughout the realm that the king had publicly married Dona Leonor and that everyone had kissed her hand as their queen, the people were very surprised at what had happened, much more than at the outset. That was because, previously, though some suspected it, owing to the great and dignified manner which the king adopted towards her, they were uncertain whether she was his wife or not. In their doubts, many thought that he would weary of her and would later get married in a manner that befitted his royal estate. In different groups, they all advanced a variety of arguments on the subject, greatly surprised as they were that the king failed to grasp how much damage he was doing to himself by wanting such a marriage. Some declared that the king would have done better to have kept her with him for a period and then to have married another woman; yet they realized that this was a situation in which very few men, or none, though realizing that such love was harmful to them, later abandoned or renounced it, especially in the years of their early manhood.

Leaving aside the utterances of a number of simpletons who argued in his favour, saying that what the king had done was no surprise, and that a similar mistake had already been made by many others in the great love they had shown for certain women, let us outline what was said by intelligent people who used their common sense.

Their stated views on the matter were that such fond feelings were greatly to be rejected, especially in the case of kings and great lords, who lost stature more than any others by tangling themselves in such love affairs. As the Ancients taught that a king, in respect of a woman whom he was due to marry, should consider in the main the nobility of her lineage, and should consider this more than any other matter, then whosoever did the opposite acted not out of common sense but out of folly (unless the customary practice of men concerning such matters would confer on him the title of ‘wise’).