The Children of Adam and Eve

Alfonso was the son of Ferdinand IV and Constance of Portugal, and the grandson of María de Molina, who served as regent since he was one year old until he attained adulthood at 15 in 1325.

As soon as he occupied the throne, he began working hard to strengthen royal power by dividing his enemies. His early displayal of rulership skills included the unhesitant execution of possible opposers (Don Juan el Tuerto in 1326, among others).

He managed to extend the limits of his kingdom to the Strait of Gibraltar after the important victory at the Battle of Salado against the Marinid Dynasty en 1340 and the conquest of the Kingdom of Algeciras in 1344. Once that conflict wasresolved, he redirected all his Reconquista efforts to fighting the Moor king of Granada.

He is variously known among Castilian kings as the Avenger or the Implacable, and as "He of Salado River." The first two names he earned by the ferocity with which he repressed the disorder of the nobles after a long minority; the third by hisvictory in the Battle of Rio Salado over the last formidable Marinid invasion of Iberian Peninsula in 1340.

Alfonso XI never went to the insane lengths of his son Peter of Castile, but he could be bloody in his methods. He killed for reasons of state without form of trial. He openly neglected his wife, Maria of Portugal, and had an ostentatiouspassion for Eleanor of Guzman, who bore him ten children. This set Peter an example which he failed to better. It may be that his early death, during the Great Plague of 1350, at the Siege of Gibraltar, only averted a desperate struggle withPeter, though it was a misfortune in that it removed a ruler of eminent capacity, who understood his subjects well enough not to go too far.