Career
The scant Anales castellanos primeros are a primary source for his reign. The kingdom was initially partitioned, with García I receiving the León, Ordoño II Galicia and Fruela II the Asturian heartland. With the successive deaths of García I (914) and Ordoño (924), these were re-consolidated, Fruela ruling the entirety of what would thenceforth be referred to as the Kingdom of León.
His death the next year, 925, again brought about disputed succession and partition.
A younger brother, Ramiro, appears to have married Fruela"s widow and adopted the royal title, but gained no traction. Instead it was the next generation that rose to the forefront.
These brothers again partitioned the portion of the kingdom they controlled: the eldest, Sancho Ordóñez, ruling in Galicia, Alfonso IV in León, and Ramiro II in the newly conquered lands to the south (al-Andalus chronicler Ibn Hayyan located his court at Coimbra). When Sancho died in 929 his kingdom was absorbed by Alfonso IV, but in a quick succession of events taking place in Leon and Zamora, Ramiro forced the abdication of Alfonso IV, and had him and Fruela II"s three sons blinded in order to make them incapable of ruling.
Ramiro stood out as an excellent military commander, and expanded remarkably his territories south (Salamanca, Ledesma,) as well as founding or repopulating frontier strongholds (Osma, Clunia,).
Ramiro masterminded a Pamplona/León coalition that defeated a joint Andalusian counter-offensive in the Battle of Simancas (939). This victory allowed the advance of the Leonese border of the Duero to the Tormes. Still in 950 Ramiro launched an expedition to the valley of the Edge and defeated the Cordovan Umayyads at Talavera.
He figures prominently in the romantic poem, the Miragaia, which tells the apocryphal story of Ramiro bedding Ortega, the daughter of a local Arab lord.
By her he is given a son Alboazar, the progenitor of the Galician/Portuguese Maya family. This Maya tradition was subsequently linked to another legend, that told in the Cantar de los Siete Infantes de Lara by giving Ramiro and Ortega (sometimes called Ortigueda) a daughter Ortega Ramírez, who is made to marry Gustios Gonzalez, grandfather of the legendary hero Mudarra Gonzalez de Lara.
Subsequent elaboration of this legend gave further supposed descendants, but none of these Lara connections are accepted by modern scholars.
