Sancha, heiress of León

Sancha of León (1191/2 before 1243) was briefly suo jure Queen of León, reigning alongside her younger sister, Dulce. The eldest child and daughter of Alfonso IX of León by his first wife, Teresa of Portugal, Sancha was made co-heiress following the death of one of her younger brothers and the accession to the throne of Castile of the other. Sancha and her sister did not get to reign, as their stepmother succeeded in setting up her own son on the throne.

Biography Sancha was raised at the court of their father, but her younger sister Dulce and her brother Ferdinand were raised with their mother in Portugal after the annulment of their parents' marriage in 1195. Although in Castile it was customary for females to inherit, and Sancha's stepmother became queen, briefly, of Castile, in León female succession was barred, In that same year, Ferdinand's mother, Berengaria, inherited the Kingdom of Castile, but ceded it to her son, who was proclaimed king at Valladolid on 2 July. With his heir out of the kingdom and ruling in another place, Alfonso attempted to make his eldest daughters his joint heirs. In the Treaty of Boronal concluded with Portugal in 1219, Alfonso expressly states that if he should die, Portugal should respect the agreement with his daughters. She was 38 years old at the time. This agreement, negotiated at Valencia de Don Juan by Berengaria and Theresa, with Sancha and Dulce present, is known as the "pact of the mothers". Sancha died there before 1243, when the archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, mentions in his history of the Iberian peninsula, De rebus Hispaniae, that Teresa of Portugal had had three children: Sancha and Ferdinand, who had died childless, and Dulce, who was still living.

Footnotes 1. The ancient monastery of Santa María at Villabuena was destroyed in the 16th-century during a flood, due to its proximity to the river Cúa. Thenceforth, the nuns relocated to the nearby Monastery of San Miguel de las Dueñas.