Long before Shakespeare created Romeo and Juliet, Portugal had its very own romantic tragedy within the royal family in the shape of Pedro and Ines. Their love story has become legend and inspiration for poets and artists throughout the ages. With each telling of the tale, it becomes harder to differentiate between fact and fiction but the elements of forbidden but everlasting love remain at its core.
And what better place to learn about their romance than the place where they met and played out their romance? You can do this on a guided walk through the woods and botanical gardens of ‘Quinta das Lagrimas’ or ‘Farm of Tears’. Nowadays, the ‘Quinta das Lagrimas‘ is a luxury hotel but it was once the site of the royal palace and the backdrop to Pedro and Ines’ affair.
And I do mean affair. At nineteen, Pedro, heir to his father, King Afonso IV, was married off to Constanca of Castille in order to seal an alliance between Portugal and Spain. The problem was that Pedro fell madly in love with Constanca’s lady-in-waiting, Ines de Castro. His feelings were reciprocated and their relationship was an ill-disguised secret.
Constanca tried to discourage them by making Ines godmother to one of her children, thereby making her involvement with the child’s father, Pedro, incestuous but even this wasn’t enough to keep Pedro and Ines apart. They had four children of their own, and by then their relationship had soured Afonso’s alliance with Castile.
Constanca died in 1349 but despite his father’s urgings, Pedro was only prepared to marry Ines. She wasn’t considered worthy of the throne and his father forbade the marriage. Pedro still refused to remarry anyone else and Afonso, at his wits end, took advantage of Pedro’s absence one day in 1355 and sent three assassins after Ines. The place where she is said to have been killed was later dubbed the ‘Fonte das Lagrimas’ or ‘Fountain of Tears’.
There is, indeed a small natural spring here which feeds the farmland through irrigation channels. Here, at it’s mouth, thin grasses sway in the flow of the water, representing Ines’ hair and the stones have a reddish tinge as a result of her blood being shed. A poem is carved into a stone plinth next to it, informing visitors that the fountain and stream symbolise the river of tears cried by Pedro at the death of Ines and with the eternal quality of true love, these tears continue to give sustenance to the flowers and trees in the gardens that bore witness to their passion.
It was Pedro’s grandmother, Saint Queen Isabel, who had ordered the irrigation channels to be made to supply the vegetable gardens of the palace and neighbouring convent. If you eat at the hotel, you could well be feasting on the food of love since its kitchen garden is fed by these channels too.
There is a point along these channels, near one of the secret passageways that Pedro and Ines are said to have used to meet up in the woods, which is known as the ‘Pipe of Love’. Our guide, Branca, invites any loving couples to step forward. As the legend goes, if two people in love simultaneously drink the water as it pours from one channel to a lower one, their love will be everlasting. No one takes her up on the offer and I’m not surprised. It would take some very complicated and undignified positioning to accomplish the task.
Pedro’s love for Ines lived on after her death and he waged war against his father for having killed her. He never forgave his father and when he became king in 1357 he had Ines’ body dug up and crowned as queen, claiming that they had married in secret. So the story goes, after forcing the members of his court to kiss her decomposing hand and swear allegiance to her, he tracked down her assassins and killed them, ripping out their hearts with his bare hands.
To ensure they would be together in the afterlife, he installed her body in the monastery of Alcobaca and had his own sarcophagus placed alongside hers.