From representations to lived female experiences: Sisters Maria and Leonor Teles at the Portuguese Court and chronicles in the Late Middle Ages

Abstract

In the context of the nobility and the Portuguese royal court at the end of the Middle Ages, the gender roles of men and women appeared to be different, in spite of the attempts and possibilities of proximity with the king of both genders. In this context, the female figures of the sisters D. Leonor (1350-1386) and D. Maria (1338-1379) Teles de Meneses enable the understanding of different positions, strategies, roles and values that women of the Iberian nobility could assume in the courtly environment. D. Leonor would conquer king D. Fernando and the position of queen of Portugal (despite having already married and had a son with a nobleman), obtaining a great participation in royal decisions and in increasing the proximity of his lineage with royalty. D. Maria Teles, a widow with considerable wealth, would marry the king's natural brother, the infant D. João de Castro, for whom the union proved to be advantageous in mainly patrimonial terms. The fates of the Teles de Meneses sisters, although linked to the Portuguese royal court, would be different, even if both were unhappy in the end. The sisters and their trajectories would be represented in Fernão Lopes' chronicle in the 15th century from two morally opposed female profiles, in a context linked to the consolidation of an official image of the Avis dynasty. The Royal House and its chronicler start from the reconstruction of the past and of Portuguese characters linked to the context of the dynastic crisis of 1383-1385 to fix and legitimize his accession to the throne.