American Demons

The Royal Fifth

A son of the "mad Joan" is King of Castile and Aragon and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. The man's name is Charles. Erasmus of Rotterdam was involved in his education. The Habsburg plays a leading role in the fight against the Reformation. His son will be called the first King of Spain. This explains the colonial positioning of Nueva Castilla. Francisco Pizarro González serves Charles as Capitán general. Diego de Almagro, who had been abandoned by an unmarried mother at an early age and had risen from street urchin to "conqueror", intrigued in the conquistador's circle. He loses out to Gonzalo, Juan, Hernando, Francisco Pizarro and Francisco Martín de Alcántara in a fierce dispute over the Inca treasure. Gonzalo, Juan and Hernando are Francisco's brothers. Francisco Martín de Alcántara takes part as a half-brother. A whole family goes on a robbery spree. Hernando de Soto helps them.

Pizarro sends his king the "royal fifth" of the ransom, which Atahualpa cannot use to buy his freedom after all. The Inca is about to be executed, he has paid a high price for it.

What madness! An army is ready to free him. The fittest men in the empire make their rounds around the scene of the god-king's failure. Atahualpa would only have to raise his hand and a storm would break loose. Women and children would support the warriors with household items. Cooking pots and chamber pots make first-class projectiles.

But nothing! First the king has his people plundered to save his life and then he has himself strangled. In return, Pizarro receives 57,220 pesos in gold and the throne plate. Each horseman receives nine thousand pesos in gold and three hundred in silver, a footman half that amount.

Everything is settled. Robbery and murder by the book. At the level of the captains, I mentioned Hernando de Soto and Francisco Martín de Alcántara, the blood business is a matter of negotiation, a question of skill. In the general staff, greed is expected from the captains as a guarantee of full commitment. Jesus is mentioned in every other sentence, but the true god of the Spaniards is a metal.Run-of-the-mill people make their fortunes through brutality. In their free time, they switch from brutal to burlesque. Bruno Carrera was also a draconically disregarded nobody in the Old World. The son of an unmarried maid, he was born with a deformity. It was believed that the devil had kissed the boy on the mouth, and even the rejects in the subcultures of the ports shunned the child with the wolf's mouth.

In the New World, Bruno enjoys the liberating experience that the original population does not take offense at him. The sight of him does not frighten any "savages". In America, Bruno has become a Casanova.