“See, next that Diniz comes in whom is seen the ‘brave Afonso’s’ offspring true and digne; whereby the mighty boast obscurèd been, the vaunt of lib’eral Alexander’s line: Beneath his sceptre blooms the land serene (already compast golden Peace divine) With constitution, customs, laws and rights, a tranquil country’s best and brightest lights. The first was he who made Coimbra own Pallas-Minerva’s gen’rous exercise; he called the Muses’ choir from Helicon to tread the lea that by Mondego lies: Whate’er of good whilere hath Athens done, here proud Apollo keepeth ev’ery prize: Here gives he garlands wove with golden ray, with perfumed Nard and ever-verdant Bay.”[6] Personally dissolute, as the nature of much of his poetry and his encouragement of the troubadours and their Courts of Love show, the stories told of the Court of Dom Diniz are far from edifying. Yet some of them are full of romantic interest, and exhibit the more constant love of the south instead of the airy fancies of Provence. Of these stories, the most romantic of all is perhaps that of Donna Branca or Blanche, the sister of Diniz and the abbess of Lorvão and Huelgas, who loved a humble carpenter Pedro Esteves, and was the mother of a son, João Nunes do Prado, who became Master of the Order of Calatrava, and was beheaded by Pedro the Cruel of Castile. It is this story which has furnished the plot of one of the most striking of modern Portuguese dramas, Almeida-Garrett’s “Donna Branca.” The king’s favours to his bastards, João Affonso and Affonso Sanches, whom he successively made Mordomo Mor, and Pedro Affonso, whom he made Alferes Mor and Count of Barcellos, involved him towards the end of his reign in bitter disputes with his only legitimate son, Affonso. Open war at last broke out between Dom Diniz and his heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only prevented by S. Isabel riding between the armies in 1323, and making a peace between her husband and her son, which lasted until the death of the great peace monarch, the “Ré Lavrador” in 1325.