This website details her life story and the affair that led to her house arrest, finally immured within the walls of her palace prison:
Due to her high position in the courts she had
always maintained a good relationship with Prince Felipe who later went on to
become King Felipe II, and there were various voices that claimed that she was
in fact the King's mistress. Although what indeed was a fact was that once she
was widowed she began an intimate relationship with Antonio Perez who was
secretary to the King. Antonio was six years older than she and it is not known
exactly whether the relationship was purely a question of love, of politics or
whether she was just searching for someone to fill the void that existed since
her husband's death.
The King meanwhile was madly in love with the
Princess of Eboli although he was never able to win her love and when he found
out about the relationship between her and Antonio Perez he was enraged and
invented some reason for her to be imprisoned firstly in the Tower of Pinto in
1579 and later in the Fort Of Santorcaz. Antonio Perez was also imprisoned in
another location. She was deprived of seeing her children and of all her wealths
and finally in 1581 sent to the Palace of Pastrana.
It was often said that the melancholic princess
would spend many hours staring out from her balcony but in 1590 when Antonio
Perez Aragon managed to escape from his prison the King installed bars and
shutters on all the doors and windows of the Palace so that Antonio would not be
able to either reach her or see her. The wrath and cruelty of the scorned King
was supposed to be due to his deep jealousy and even the letters of plea from
the Princess herself did nothing to soften him.
She was attended to by three of her servants and
her youngest daughter Ana de Silva who stayed with her mother until her death
and later went on to become a nun.
After her death in 1592 Ana, the Princess of Eboli,
was finally buried next to her husband Ruy in the township of Pastrana.
Although I have read that it is not that good a movie, I would like to see Olivia de Havilland, in the title role of That Lady, with Paul Scofield as King Philip II, and Gilbert Roland as Antonio Perez. Perhaps Turner Classic Movies will designate Olivia de Havilland as Star of the Month and show it some day! The movie was based upon Kate O"Brien's stage adaptation of the novel; Katharine Cornell played the title role on Broadway in 1949.
Kate O'Brien was an Irish journalist, author, and biographer who was born in 1897 and died in 1974. She wrote several novels--and I went through a Kate O'Brien phase and read them all:
- Without My Cloak (1931)
- The Ante-Room (1934)
- Mary Lavelle (1936)
- Pray for the Wanderer (1938)
- The Land of Spices (1941)
- The Last of Summer (1943)
- That Lady (1946)
- The Flower of May 91953)
- As Music and Splendour (1958)
She also wrote a biography of St. Teresa of Avila and travel books about Ireland and Spain. Her books have gone in and out of style. Virago Modern Classics published many of them in 1980's and Mary Lavelle was made in to a movie in 1998, Talk of Angels, starring Polly Walker (Jane Fairfax in the Gwyneth Paltrow version of Emma). Her books are readily available, although I'm not sure how many are still in publishers' catalogs
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