One fine day in 1152, Petronilla, the sixteen-year-old Queen of Aragon, gave birth to the baby boy who was expected to unite Barcelone and Aragon into the most powerful state of northern Al-Andalus, a counterbalance to the recently united kingdoms of Castile and Léon, further south.
Little Pedro had been conceived twelve years earlier by Petronilla’s father, Ramiro, ‘the Monk’, and her husband-to-be, Ramon Berenguer, Comte de Barcelone, ‘the Saint’. All that remained was for Petronilla to grow up and give flesh to their conception.
Bells rang; two kingdoms rejoiced at the birth of the little king, and everybody agreed that Petronilla had fulfilled her destiny. What the midwife said to Petronilla, as she passed the squalling baby to his mother, was a little more practical.