Joseph Puedo

The Path to Nobility Joseph Puedo

It is 1257 and King AlfonsoX rules the kingdom of Castile from Toledo. His kingdom borders the Nasrid caliphate of Granada to the south ruled by Abu Abdallah Muhammad IV, and the Marinid caliphate ruled by Abu Yusef Yacub and his sons. Muslims Jews and Christians populate his lands, and a fragile tolerance between the different cultures and religions endures for a while. When one of the noblemen in his court suffers the unfortunate fate of making one of his Moroccan serving girls pregnant King Alfonso has to deal with the problem without stirring up dissent. But fate has played a strange trick on the nobleman. His own wife is pregnant with her first child. Both women give birth to healthy boys within a month of each other. Alonso has the dark skin of an Arab, whilst Álvero has the lighter skin of the northern lands. The king rules that both boys be brought up and educated in his court as equals, but their lives were destined to be very different. Before Alonso reaches the age of twelve, he gives King Alfonso cause to fear for his kingdom, and before he is twenty he is leading the army of Emir Abu Yusef of Morocco against the Christian king. Alonso adopts a boy who is orphaned in a battle and brings him back to the palace of the emir where he is taught to read and write. His teachers discover that he is a child prodigy and Alonso and the boy become lifelong friends who rise through the powerful Muslim kingdoms of Morocco and those of the Christian kings of Castile.