Pandafilando of the Scowl

Pandafilando of the Scowl is the giant whose threatened invasion drives the central action of Dorothea of Micomicon’s improvised story. He never appears in the supplied scene: his power is established through her account of a prophecy, and his dramatic purpose is to make Don Quixote’s promised journey seem like a quest to save a kingdom.

Identity and Description

Dorothea describes Pandafilando as the lord of a great island near the Kingdom of Micomicon. His name is tied to a deliberately unsettling physical trait: although his eyes are correctly set and straight, he always appears to squint. In her account, this is not a bodily defect but a sign of malice, because he supposedly squints in order to frighten those he looks at.

The story presents him as a prodigious giant with a powerful force at his command. He is not merely a rival suitor: his proposed marriage to Dorothea is backed by the threat that he will conquer her country if she refuses. That combination of personal coercion and military danger makes him the tale’s clear antagonist.

The Prophecy and the Threat

According to Dorothea, her father, Tinacrio the Sapient, was skilled in the magical arts and foresaw the deaths of both himself and Queen Jaramilla, leaving their daughter an orphan. He also foresaw that Pandafilando would learn of her vulnerable position and invade, taking the kingdom so completely that she would not be left even a small village for shelter. Tinacrio’s prediction makes the giant’s attack seem inevitable unless Dorothea acts before it begins.

Her father’s advice was not to defend the kingdom by force. Such resistance, he warned, would bring destruction, while surrendering the country without a fight could spare the loyal subjects from death. Pandafilando’s power is therefore established less through a depicted battle than through the scale of the catastrophe Dorothea says he could cause. His alternative demand is that she marry him, a match she insists she would never accept, however enormous he might be.

Role in Dorothea’s Story

Tinacrio’s supposed final instruction sends Dorothea to Spain to seek a famous knight-errant. She falters over the knight’s name, first recalling it as something like Don Azote or Don Gigote, until Sancho Panza supplies Don Quixote and identifies him as the Knight of the Rueful Countenance. The moment turns the prophecy toward the people gathered around her and makes the invented danger fit the company’s expectations.

Dorothea then claims that Don Quixote has already granted her the favor of accompanying him wherever she leads. Her stated purpose is to bring him face to face with Pandafilando, whom he is to kill and thereby recover her usurped dominions. She adds that Tinacrio left the prediction in writing in characters she cannot read, which she recalls as either Chaldee or Greek; the writing supposedly also directs her to offer herself in marriage if the knight kills the giant. Pandafilando thus supplies both the danger that launches the quest and the promised reward that Sancho immediately sees in the prospect of a kingdom and a queen.