Ordoño II of León
Ordoño II of León was the son of the Asturian king Alfonso the Great who, when his father's kingdom was divided among three brothers, took Galicia, succeeded his brother in León in 914, and moved the court there from Oviedo, giving the kingdom the name it kept for three centuries and the cathedral he built on the site of the Roman baths. He raided the Muslims as far as the Guadiana, won at San Esteban de Gormaz in 917, lost at Valdejunquera in 920 to Abd al-Rahman III in person, and had four counts of Castile who had failed to come to that battle brought to León and executed, which is the first act in the quarrel between Castile and León. He had been brought up as a hostage, or a ward, at the court of the Banu Qasi lords of the Ebro, who were Muslim, and he was, the chronicles say, at ease in both worlds. The old king's sons forced their father to abdicate in 910 and split the inheritance: García had León, Ordoño Galicia, Fruela Asturias. Ordoño's first campaign as king of Galicia took him to Evora in 913, which he sacked. García died childless in 914 and Ordoño took León, and he chose it as his capital because it was on the plain, at the edge of the frontier, where a king who meant to push south should be. The victory at San Esteban de Gormaz on the Duero in 917 killed the Cordoban commander and brought the Navarrese king into alliance, and the two kings were beaten together at Valdejunquera when the caliph-to-be took the field himself. The Castilian counts, Nuno Fernandez among them, were summoned to a meeting on the Carrion and seized, and the hatred of the Castilians for León dates from the day they were killed. He built the first cathedral of León on the palace site his father had given the church, endowed it, and was buried in it in 924, the first of the kings in the pantheon the later cathedral kept. His brother Fruela succeeded for a year and his sons fought over the rest.
- Lived: 873 CE – 924 CE
- Nationality: Leonese
- Roles: king, monarch
