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Updated: June 20, 2025
As a sad and pitiful end to it all, Berenguela, a mother though not a wife, was forced to return to her father's court in Castile, leaving the eldest son, Fernando, with the father.
The bride, Eleanor, had been a great favorite with all her people, of both high and low degree, and all were glad to see that the future seemed to smile upon her. A worthy companion to the wise Berenguela is found in the person of Maria de Molina, the wife of Sancho IV., called the Ferocious, King of Castile.
Then he recalled the miraculous stories with which his mother used to lull him to sleep the great miracle wrought upon these waters by a servant of God to flout the hardened sinners. Saint Raymond of Peñafort, a virtuous and austere monk, became indignant with King Jaime of Majorca who was basely enamored of a certain lady, Doña Berenguela, and who remained deaf to holy counsels.
This height has known as well the rustle of the trailing robes of queens, Berenguela, Isabel the Catholic, and Juana, Crazy Jane. It was the prison of the widow of Philip IV. and mother of Charles II. What wonder if her life left much to be desired? With such a husband and such a son, she had no memories nor hopes. The kings have had a long day here. They did some good in their time.
In a former day it had been a woman, Queen Berenguela, who had labored long and successfully for the union of Castile and Leon; and now another woman, this time a girl still in her teens, was laboring for a still greater Spanish unity, which will consolidate the interests of the two kingdoms of Aragon and Castile and give to all Spain the peace which was now such a necessity to the future well-being of the country.
The whole matter was discussed in the most friendly way, and Berenguela was able to carry her point that there should be no attempt to unseat Fernando from the throne of Leon, and at the same time she made a proposition, by way of indemnity, which Teresa, speaking for her daughters, was quite ready to accept.
Berenguela was ever present in the right place, and at the proper time, and her name is associated only with what is good and worthy and noble in an age of violence and wrong and robbery; when good faith was well-nigh unknown, when bad men were all-powerful, when murder was but an incident in family life, and treason the chief feature in politics. The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries
If the domestic tranquillity of Castile during four-and-forty years may not be attributed exclusively to the influence of the English queen, yet the marriage bore fruits in a second generation, of which it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance; for it was the blood of the Plantagenets, that flowed in the veins of Berenguela, their daughter, one of the true heroines of Spain."
This regency, however, was not a time of peace and quiet, for the death of the old king had given opportunity for the turbulent Lords of Lara to break forth again in open revolt, and after a year of ineffectual resistance Berenguela was compelled, in the interests of domestic harmony, to surrender the person of her young brother into the control of Alvaro Nuñez, the leader of the opposition, who at once began to rule the kingdom with a heavy hand.
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