Regal power and the royal family in a thirteenth-century Iberian legislative programme

The Especulo and the Siete Partidas were compiled at a time when both political thought and the ambitions of thirteenth-century rulers were transforming. Each code was produced in notably different political circumstances. Consequently, a careful comparative analysis can reveal the significant changes that took place in a period when concepts of monarchy were still very much under construction on the Iberian Peninsula. The door remained open, however, to female succession, allowing a man of any social rank who had married an heiress to the throne – as had sometimes occurred in Asturias and Junta de Castilla y Leon, and remained possible in Iberian countries – to obtain the title of king as the queen’s husband. Alfonso X key legislative works proved influential on the Iberian Peninsula: they were adopted in Portugal, from the reign of his grandson King Dinis, and at a very early stage of their development the Alfonsine legal codes were translated into Portuguese.