Love is to blame for everything – The end of the medieval Kingdom of Torres is mainly to be blamed on a young widow in a frenzy of love; and this too falls into the category of errors in our Sardinian history, albeit for a universal feeling limited, here, only to Logudoro.

The beautiful widow Adelasia – Adelasia de Lacon-Massa, half Sardinian and half Ligurian, was only thirteen years old when she married Ubaldo Visconti in the basilica of San Simplicio in Olbia, who, in 1232, became king of Gallura and she queen consort (like Camilla Parker Bowles in Great Britain).

Due to a series of circumstances, which I will not recount here, Ubaldo also became king of Torres, but died soon after in 1238, and she became queen reigning in Logudoro; but a widow.

She was only thirty-one years old and still attractive, for those times. A French troubadour poet, Albertet de Belenoi, who frequented the Sardinian Courts by profession, described her in his Provençal language d'Hoc, in a sweet sirventese: «Oh God! How I see her ruddy and fat, beautiful and fresh as a rose in bloom…» («Deus! Qui la ve com'es vermeill'e grassa / bel'e fresca com roza en pascor...»). Evidently, in those lean times, when hunger gripped three-quarters of the population, fatness was a symptom of beauty: “grassesa fadìa bellesa”.

An unexpected visit – Well, Adelasia was there, macerating in abstinence, seated on a throne in her magnificent castle of Àrdara, in the center of the Kingdom (of which a pathetic piece of wall still stands, having escaped the devastating fury of our modern administrators), when the maiore de camera announced to her the arrival of an important foreigner, all pompous and well-dressed. He was coming in the name of the emperor Frederick II Hohenstaufen of Swabia from distant Palermo. His name was Giacomo da Lentino, and he was an imperial notary auctoritate and also a famous poet, belonging to the Sicilian poetic school, who already expressed himself in a rough Italian vernacular.

The marriage proposal – I'll leave you to imagine the bows, the bows, the greetings and finally the pompous exposition of the princely message: the all-powerful Frederick II, emperor of none other than the Holy Roman Empire, proposed to the noble queen Adelasia of Torres the marriage with his (legitimized) son Enzo, awarded the title of King of Sardinia (according to the Doctrine of "Verus imperator" the pope and the emperor, respectively leaders of the Guelphs and Ghibellines – that is: today's Right and Left – divided up the world, at least in words, which remained simple predicates if they were not transformed into territorial realities. However, for this, armies and wars of conquest were needed).

A sonnet dedicated to her – Adelasia, flattered and languid, immediately accepted, and Giacomo da Lentino returned to Palermo all joyful. He had happily concluded his mission. However, since he did not have a camera, to report to his Lord how Adelasia was, he wrote this beautiful descriptive sonnet: «An angelic figure – and proven / gifted – with care – and greatness / of wisdom and adornments – you are adorned / and born – with refined – gentleness. / You do not seem to me to be an incarnate woman / but made – for the fragrance of beauties / in which all virtue is divided / and given – you are all beauty. / In you is worth, wisdom and knowledge / and suffering – which is the sum of the good / like hope – that blooms and meshes. / As is the name, as is the power / to give sentence - whoever comes against you / as you have - to the Roman City.».

The Young Husband – I jump to the conclusion; otherwise we’ll have to wait until nightfall. After just nine months, in October, Enzo arrived with a whole entourage of courtiers, both male and female, with songs, shouts, musicians and fanfares. “My God!” Adelasia exclaimed in amazement when she saw him. “But he’s only a boy!” In fact, Enzo was half her age. “But he’s handsome,” she had to add to herself, greedily.

Enzo on the run – After the lavish wedding in the splendid cathedral of Nostra Signora del Regno, opposite the castle (fortunately not yet demolished), which made Enzo king of Torres (the Sardinian queens, upon marriage, passed on the title and powers to their husbands), we can imagine what the first night of the wedding must have been like and the following ones because, after only nine months of living together, the young man ran away from home, first settled in Sassari, in a small palace still indicated as his home, and then boarded a ship and returned to the continent to his father. He fought for him against the Emilian Guelphs, was captured at Fossalta, and ended his days as a prisoner for life of the Bolognese. His mausoleum can be seen in the city basilica of San Lorenzo.

End of the Kingdom of Torres – Adelasia, like a lay nun in penance, retired to her remote castle of Burgos, in Gocèano, where she died in 1259. After a series of vicars, the Kingdom of Torres practically ended with her.

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