Alfonso VI (before June 1040 –
June 29/
July 1,
1109), nicknamed
the Brave, was King of
León from 1065 to 1109 and King of
Castile from 1072 following
his brother's death. As he was the first Alfonso to be
King of Castile, he is sometimes referred to as
Alfonso I of Castile. In 1077, he proclaimed himself "
Emperor of All Hispania". Much romance has gathered around his name.
As the second and favorite son of King Ferdinand I of Castile and Princess Sancha of León, Alfonso was allotted León, while Castile was given to his eldest brother Sancho, and Galicia to his youngest brother García. Sancho was assassinated in 1072. García was dethroned and imprisoned for life the following year.
In the cantar de gesta The Lay of the Cid, he plays the part attributed by medieval poets to the greatest kings, and to Charlemagne himself. He is alternately the oppressor and the victim of heroic and self-willed nobles — the idealized types of the patrons for whom the jongleurs and troubadours sang. He is the hero of a cantar de gesta which, like all but a very few of the early Spanish songs, like the cantar of Bernardo del Carpio and the Infantes of Lara, exists now only in the fragments incorporated in the chronicle of Alfonso the Wise or in ballad form.
His flight from the monastery of Sahagún, where his brother Sancho endeavoured to imprison him, his chivalrous friendship for his host Almamun of Toledo, caballero aunque moro, "a knight although a Moor", the passionate loyalty of his vassal, Pero (Pedro) Ansúrez, and his brotherly love for his sister Urraca of Zamora, may owe something to the poet who took him as a hero.
