The unconsummated marriage of Jaime of Aragon and Leonor of Castile (October 1319)

The long planned, precipitously celebrated, and never consummated marriage in 1319 of Jaime, heir to the Aragonese crown, and the Castilian Infanta Leonor, was an event that seriously disturbed political and personal relationships in both kingdoms in the early fourteenth century. The ceremony itself, in the village of Gandesa in eastern Aragon, was both an end and a beginning, the culmination of one period of at times violent reactions between Jaime II of Aragon and his son of the same name, as well as the start of another period of growing alienation over which both parent and child would agonize. The surviving documentation provides an unusually rich panorama of human emotion. This consideration of the episode takes up the relationship of Jaime II and his first son, and especially the actions of the Aragonese monarch immediately prior to the October ceremony at Gandesa. Certain facts, such as the age of the bride, that help clarify the episode have been deduced from available documents. An examination of the copious store of private correspondence leads to a reassessment of the aims and motives of Jaime II.