Inés de Castro

Inês de Castro (c. 1320–1355) was a Galician noblewoman, natural daughter of Pedro Fernández de Castro. In the household of Constance of Castile, she became the lover of Constance's husband Infante Pedro, heir to Afonso IV of Portugal. After Constance died in 1349 she lived openly with him and bore four children; Pedro refused the new marriages his father proposed.

Her brothers' influence over the prince threatened Portugal's neutrality in the Castilian civil war; Afonso IV ordered her killed. She was beheaded at Coimbra on 7 January 1355. Pedro rebelled but was beaten within a year.

As king from 1357 he hunted her killers, who had fled to Castile, and had two executed; in 1360 he declared that he had married her secretly in 1353. The tale that he crowned her exhumed corpse is probably a myth.