Ricardo—Alfonso

Ricardo’s poisoning of Alfonso and appropriation of his inheritance form the hidden origin of the succession crisis in Otranto. Though Ricardo’s family holds the principality for generations, its claim rests on a false will and political possession rather than the legitimate succession later revealed through Alfonso’s secret marriage and surviving descendants.

The Seizure of Alfonso’s Inheritance

Alfonso, the rightful lord of Otranto, died while away in the Holy Land. In Manfred’s final account, Ricardo is identified as Alfonso’s chamberlain and the author of his death by poison; after Alfonso died, a fictitious will named Ricardo as heir. The apparently orderly transfer of a principality thus conceals both murder and the fabrication of legal authority.

Ricardo’s position as chamberlain gave him proximity to Alfonso, but the account supplies no further circumstances of the poisoning. What it does make clear is that the supposed testament did not express Alfonso’s actual wishes: it served to make Ricardo’s seizure appear inheritable and lawful. The distinction between a document claiming to convey rule and the truth of descent becomes central to the later dispute.

A Dynasty Built on Possession

Ricardo’s son and grandson succeeded him, and Manfred argues that he holds Otranto through his father, Don Manuel, who received it from Don Ricardo. In defending that title, Manfred invokes the family’s long possession, Ricardo’s reputation for piety, and the favor of Saint Nicholas. He also points to the church and two convents Ricardo founded. These claims explain how the usurpation acquired the outward appearance of established rule, but they do not disprove the crime from which it began.

The rival claim survives through Alfonso’s bloodline. Frederic’s herald calls him the nearest blood relation to Alfonso and demands both Isabella, Alfonso’s daughter, and the principality. Manfred knows Frederic’s hereditary claim is well founded, even as he insists that his family has held the territory by inheritance and force. The conflict therefore sets inherited possession against the concealed rights of the displaced line.

Marriage as Political Strategy

Manfred’s arrangements for Isabella expose how the disputed title shapes later marriages. He has arranged for Isabella, Alfonso’s daughter, to marry Conrad, his son, intending the union to bring the claims of the two houses together. After Conrad’s death, Manfred offers to marry Isabella himself, and later seeks Frederic’s consent to that match. In each case, marriage is treated as a means of settling a political claim and securing male heirs, rather than as a private matter alone.

A different marriage reveals the lineage that Ricardo’s seizure had obscured. Alfonso had been driven to Sicily by a storm and remained there for three months, during which he married Victoria before continuing on the Crusade. He left her pregnant, but his reported death and Ricardo’s succession prevented her from publicly establishing her position. Their daughter was eventually given in marriage to Jerome; their son, Theodore, is ultimately identified as Alfonso’s heir. This hidden family line overturns the succession that Ricardo’s false will had imposed.

Confession and the End of Ricardo’s Claim

After Matilda’s death and the supernatural signs accompanying Manfred’s downfall, Manfred publicly acknowledges that Alfonso died by poison and that Ricardo used a fictitious will to take his estates. He interprets the disasters that have overtaken his own family as the consequence of the original usurpation. His confession makes explicit the moral and political debt passed down from Ricardo, though it does not claim that Manfred himself knew every detail of Alfonso’s rightful heirs.

Manfred relinquishes the principality, and Theodore is recognized as its rightful ruler. The resolution replaces the line founded on Ricardo’s fraud with the surviving line of Alfonso, while Manfred and Hippolita withdraw to religious life. Ricardo’s seizure is thus not merely an episode in the dynasty’s past: its concealed crime explains the succession dispute, the political use of marriage, and the eventual restoration of Otranto to Alfonso’s heir.