Rodrigo, prince on eastern Spanish shores

Alejandro de Nuevo Castillo
fallen in Spring Crown Tourney, A.S. XLII

Rodrigo, prince on eastern Spanish shores
Grown long in years remembered former days
Of battles fought and won; those distant wars
Had shaped youth’s fire into El Cid’s great blaze
Now burning low. A liegeman drew his gaze
Who best recalled his younger, fiercer mien
And Diaz sent him questing for a queen.

From northern ward across the central sea
For land and lady Alejandro sought,
For thus had bid his lord; a lonely quay
In Venice was the place at last, where brought
By silver’d wind and moon, came love that wrought
Grown man from reckless core; with lady bold
He rode to win a land his name could hold.

The first he found to challenge for such right,
Sir Dante, clad in steel, strode quickly out
Upon the list; his buckler seemed a mite
Against the Spaniard’s sword and harness stout.
When Dante stumbled, Alejandro’s clout
Was paused ‘til Dante rose, then knocked aside
The targe, but Dante’s blow was not denied.

The Spaniard sought another chance to reign
In Egypt’s fertile lands, but Ashraf ‘s shield
Defended them; though winded by the strain,
The fighters’ blows flew fierce nor would each yield
‘Til Ashraf’s blow bent steel and gained the field.
Both duels lost yet won, for at his side
Sweet love, dessert enough, healed well his pride.

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar is better known to most of us as El Cid, from 11th century Spain.

— Duchess Felinah Memo Hazara Khan-ad-Din

... The daughter of a Khwarazm mercenary and a Persian woman of a minor noble family. Through a series of strange adventures, she married a 14th century English knight (who has memories of a past life as a Norman vavassor). Guillaume and Felinah now tend their estates in Calafia, where she occasionally has manages to wrestle a poem out of her very distractable muse.

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