We're very lazy about the historical monsters we like to malign. Richard III, Bluebeard, Jack the Ripper... the population of real-life psychopaths that fills fiction is really rather small and often overworked.

Here's a chap who deserves to be better known. He lived just round the corner from where I'm staying in Seville right now. On the plus side he was responsible for much of the construction of the beautiful royal palace, the Alcazar, one of the splendours of Spain, with its gorgeous Moorish palace and gardens. You can take a quick virtual trip around by browsing my photos of the Alcazar by clicking on the interior image below. It's quite a place. And Pedro the Cruel was quite a monarch.

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=128026&amp;id=538762251&amp;l=36b8b9dd3e" target="_blank"><img src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/rey.jpgwp-content/uploads/2009/11/alcazar.jpg" alt="alcazar.jpg" width="460" height="345" /></a>

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Historically speaking we should call him Peter of Castile though mostly it's as Pedro the Cruel that he's known. He ruled the Spanish kingdom from 1350 to 1369, creating the Alcazar during that time. Though a Christian Pedro clearly liked the Arabic style that preceded him. So much of the work on his palace was carried out by Moslem craftsmen in a style known as mudèjar after the Moslems who stayed in Andalucia when the Christians reconquered the region.

Pedro was a funny chap. He liked to wander round the Alcazar wearing a turban and was greatly loved by the English. Geoffrey Chaucer visited Castile during his reign and laments his death in <em>The Monk's Tale</em>. Edward the Black Prince was one of his strongest military supporters at a time when the Christian factions in Spain were at war with one another. As a reward Pedro gave him a jewel which now sits in the crown of the monarch of England (yes the one the Queen wore to Parliament the other day).

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/rey.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2165" title="rey" src="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/rey-300x297.jpg" alt="rey" width="300" height="297" /></a>I do wonder if she knows how Pedro got it: by killing a visitor in this very Alcazar for little other reason than that he coveted the precious stones he was carrying. Pedro's list of murders in Seville is astonishing. Close to where I'm staying is the street of Calle Cabeza del Rey Don Pedro -- the Street of the Head of King Pedro. Odd name. Here's its origins. One night the king murdered an innocent citizen to whom he took a dislike. The police couldn't find anyone to blame until an old woman came forward as a witness and said the killer had knees that clicked as he walked. Pedro's did. But Pedro was also known as Pedro the Justice Giver. So he couldn't arraign himself. Instead he ordered that an effigy of himself be made, handed over to the authorities for summary execution and that the head be displayed at the scene of the crime. There, in stone, you'll find it today. Here it is. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, would it?

An incorrigible womaniser, Pedro had his wife shot to death by one of his archers. A woman he hated was burned alive. Another disfigured herself with boiling oil to stop his advances. He was fond of pickling his enemies' heads in salt and camphor, another habit he picked up from his Moorish predecessors. One of the many he killed behind these walls was his own half brother.

<a href="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/rey.jpgwp-content/uploads/2009/11/Pedro_Castile_beheading.jpg"><img style="float:right;" src="http://davidhewson.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/rey.jpgwp-content/uploads/2009/11/Pedro_Castile_beheading-tm.jpg" alt="Pedro_Castile_beheading.jpg" width="200" height="210" /></a>Bloody fellow, bloody end. Three years after completing the Alcazar he was defeated in battle by another half- brother Henry and, legend has it, decapitated by him in the tent of Bertrand du Guesclin, the 'Eagle of Brittany' who would, the following year, become the Constable of France, an event depicted on the right.

Peter's severed remains may be found in a casket in the Capilla Real in Seville's vast cathedral. He lies there alongside his favourite lover, Maria de Padilla, who is designated as his wife in the chapel (though most believe she was simply his mistress). Maria's supposed baths are still there in the Alcazar -- you can see a photo of them in my pictures. She allegedly liked men to drink the water from them after she'd bathed though Alonso Lowe, the author of the great <em>Companion Guide to Southern Spain</em>, reckons this tale exists chiefly to offer up the pay-off joke. One wag refused, saying that he feared that if he 'tasted the sauce he'd then want to taste the partridge'.

If Pedro really did marry her then the rightful heir to the throne of Castile would have been John of Gaunt of England, who married one of the daughters of de Padilla by Pedro. But I imagine England had enough wars of its own back then to pursue yet another.

Fascinating, bloody tale. How much is true and how much fiction? Just as with Richard III, it's debatable. Pedro was certainly a very vicious individual. His defenders use what I think of as the Kray brothers defence: 'He only done them what deserved it, guvnor.' Those he murdered may have asked for it. It's true too that the blackest stories come from a single source: Pero López de Ayala, the historian and statesman who set them down in his chronicles. And he was a favourite of Henry, the brother who killed Pedro with his own hands. History, as always, is written by the winners. But Pedro certainly got on with the Jewish community in Seville, which was unusual at a time of anti-semitism, and the merchants seemed to like him as well.

His legacy remains the Alcazar, a beautiful spot, whatever the character of the man who commissioned it. And Chaucer certainly mourned him in <em>The Monk's Tale</em>...
<blockquote>O noble, O worthy PETRO, glorie OF SPAYNE, Whom Fortune heeld so hye in magestee,

Wel oughten men thy pitous death complayne!

Out of thy land thy brother made thee flee,

And after, at a seege, by subtiltee,

Thou were bitraysed and lad unto his tente,

Where as he with his owene hand slow thee,

Succedynge in thy regne and in thy rente.</blockquote>