Inês de Castro was born in Spanish Galicia, in the earlier years of the 14th century. Tradition asserts that her father, Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, and her mother, Dona Aldonja Soares de Villadares, a noble Portuguese lady, were unmarried, and that Inez and her two brothers were consequently of bastard birth.
Inês de Castro was educated at the semi-Oriental provincial court of Juan Manuel, duke of Penafiel, Inez grew up side by side with Costanqa, the duke's daughter by a scion of the royal house of Aragon, and her own cousin.
After refusing several crowned heads in marriage, Costanqa was at last persuaded to accept the hand of the infante Dom Pedro, son of Alphonso the Proud, king of Portugal. In 1341 the two girls left Penafiel; Costanqa's marriage was celebrated in the same year, and the young infanta and her cousin went to reside at Lisbon, or at Coimbra, where Dom Pedro conceived that luckless and furious passion for Inez which has immortalized them. The morality of the age was lax, and more especially so in Spain and Portugal, where the looseness of the marriage tie and the example of the Moors encouraged polygamy. Pedro's connexion par amours with Inez would of itself have aroused no opposition. He might even have married her, after the death of his wife in childbirth in 1345. According to his own assurance he did marry her in 1354. But by that time the rising power of the Castro family had created the most brutal hatred among their rivals, both in Spain and Portugal. Alvaro Gonzales, Pedro Coelho, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco persuaded the king, Alphonso, that his throne was in danger from an alliance between his son and the Castros, and with all the brutality of the age they urged the king to remove the danger by murdering the poor woman. The old king listened, refused, wavered and ended by yielding. He went ia secret to the palace at Coimbra, where Inez and the in ante resided, accompanied by his three familiars, and by others who agreed with them. The beauty and tears of Inez disarmed his resolution, and he turned to leave her; but the gentlemen about him had gone too far to recede.
Inês came to Portugal in 1340 as a maid of Constance of Castile, recently married to Peter, the heir apparent to the Portuguese throne.
