Alfonso VIII of Castile

Alfonso VIII of Castile lost the worst Christian defeat of the Reconquista and then won its most decisive victory seventeen years later. He came to the throne at three, which meant a long minority of noble factions, and took power in his teens. He married Eleanor, daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine, which tied Castile into the Angevin world and brought Gascony as a disputed dowry. In 1195 he attacked the Almohads at Alarcos without waiting for the king of Leon and was beaten badly enough to lose the Tagus line and to spend the next decade on the defensive against Christian neighbours as much as Muslim ones. What he did afterwards was patient and unusual. He rebuilt, made peace with Leon and Navarre, and had Pope Innocent III proclaim a crusade, so that in 1212 he took the field with the kings of Aragon and Navarre and contingents from beyond the Pyrenees. At Las Navas de Tolosa in July, guided through the Sierra Morena by a shepherd who showed them a pass the Almohads had not blocked, the allied army broke the caliph's camp and his Christian mercenary guard chained around it. The Almohad field army in Spain was destroyed and never reconstituted. Cordoba fell within thirty years and Seville within forty. He also founded the studium at Palencia, the first university in Spain, and he died in 1214 leaving a kingdom his grandson Ferdinand III used to take Andalusia. His daughter Blanche married Louis VIII of France and governed it as regent for Louis IX, so his line ran through both crowns. Las Navas is still commemorated in the province where it was fought.

• Lived: 1155 CE – 1214 CE
• Nationality: Castilian
• Roles: monarch, military_leader