Isabel de Moctezuma, the last Aztec empress who repudiated her daughter

Doña

is a strong woman, a survivor, a winner in the midst of the perfect storm.

She is a character whose life seems like something out of a movie, a product of fantasy, if we think that in her forty years of life (1510-1551) she lived as an

during the reign of her father Moctezuma II.

After her, at her death, she will be twice

for her successive

.

Twice a widow, she will marry the first Spaniard at the age of 17.

Once again a widow,

, Leonor Cortés, whom Isabel will repudiate, when the conqueror fails to fulfill her commitment.

She will marry two more Spaniards,

, who will give her her eldest son, and

, from Cáceres, by whom she will have five children and who will be the one to survive her and take the children to her hometown, where

mixed with the old nobility of Cáceres.

When Princess Tecuichpo, a noble maiden and first-born legitimate daughter of Moctezuma II Xocoyotl and Empress Teotlacho, was born in 1510, a great party was held in the palace of the beautiful Tenochtitlán, the powerful capital of the Aztec empire.

.

What they did not know is that this destiny was going to be of absolute importance, in the debacle of the Mexica world and the birth of the new society that emerged after the conquest.

Portrait of Hernán Cortés that is preserved in the Hospital de Jesús, in Mexico City. GTRES

His father, Moctezuma II,

the terrible lord, had been elected emperor in 1502 and was enlarging and strengthening the empire inherited from his uncle Ahuitzotl and his personal authority over it, and would continue to do so until the arrival of the Spanish under Hernán Cortés. .

Although he had other children by many concubines,

who was for him a very important dynastic asset, and who was in a very different way than her father had planned for her.

When Cortés, after many adventures, arrives in Tenochtitlán and

Moctezuma, the figure of this girl who was always with her father during captivity, at his side, begins to enter history, because even

.

The death of Moctezuma, on June 29, 1520, followed by

, the rushed and bloody flight of the Spaniards from the Aztec capital, in open armed rebellion, commanded by Cuitlahuac, successor of his brother Moctezuma, catapults Tecuixpo to first line of the story to strengthen his dynastic rights,

.

The very young empress will be at the side of her husband in the defense of the city against the invaders.

Upon the death of Cuitlahuac, due to smallpox, she will marry Cuauhtemoc, his successor on the throne, and will be

on August 13, 1521.

And he marries a Spanish

The twice empress survives the debacle of her world and hates her captors.

Her strength, her intelligence and her prestige among her natives

.

The delivery of the old lordship of Tlacopan to her makes her the

nascent viceroyalty.

The premature death of her husband makes her a

Here the shameful fact of the seduction of Isabel de Moctezuma takes place, Christian name that she had adopted by the conqueror.

Before her, an Augustinian friar promises her marriage and she lives with

.

From his visit to the court he returns with the new

and with a Spanish wife, from the house of the Dukes of Béjar.

The outraged young lady

gives birth to a girl, who is immediately disowned by her.

Cortés will have her relative, Mr. Altamirano, raise her, because her mother never wanted to hear from her again.

It is

, because her father obtained for her an act of nobility, in which only her father appears,

Her

will give her first-born Juan de Andrade Moctezuma and will make her the mother of royal miscegenation.

Isabel will protect her relatives and the survivors of the indigenous nobility,

that allow the integration of the two worlds that had collided so violently, shortly before.

Intelligent, she understands that

and avoids a rebellion that would have been a debacle for the survivors of the Aztec world.

Her husband died, she married again, for the fifth time,

with Juan Cano de Saavedra, a native of Cáceres, who would give her five more children, Pedro, Isabel, Catalina, Gonzalo and Juan.

During the years of her peaceful marriage with him, she consolidated her domains over her mother's enormous lordship and extended it,

, the capital of the new viceroyalty, becoming

by all, including the new viceregal authorities.

Upon his death, his two daughters professed in the convent of the Concepción in Mexico and his widower returned to his native Cáceres, with his two young sons, Gonzalo and Juan.

There, little Juan Cano Moctezuma will marry Doña Elvira de Toledo y Ovando, of the old Cáceres nobility, and will begin the construction of the palace that will be completed by his son Juan de Carvajal Moctezuma, stone proof of

of the emperors of Mexico. , in his new Spanish lot.

José Miguel Carrillo de Albornoz, Viscount of Torre Hidalgo, is a direct descendant of Moctezuma II.

His novel

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

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