The King Who Was Commanded
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Morto depois Afonso, lhe sucede Sancho segundo, manso e descuidado, Que tanto em seus descuidos se desmede, Que de outrem, quem mandava, era mandado. De governar o Reino, que outro pede, Por causa dos privados foi privado, Porque, como por eles se regia, Em todos os seus vícios consentia.
After Afonso died, Sancho the Second succeeds him, meek and heedless, who so far oversteps himself in his negligence that he, the one who used to command, was himself commanded by another. From governing the Kingdom, which another man now asks for, he was deprived because of his favorites; for, since he was ruled by them, he consented to all their vices.
The dynastic chronicle continues: Afonso II dies and his son Sancho II inherits a throne he cannot hold. Camões compresses the reign into a single ruinous inversion.
Camões dispatches an entire reign in eight lines. Sancho II inherits, and the chronicle records not a battle or a betrayal but a slow slackening: a king so "meek and heedless" that authority drains out of him. The stanza is built on a single reversal, stated flatly in line 4 — the one who used to command was commanded.
What a first reader misses is that this is a legal fact, not just a moral judgment. "Foi privado" puns on privado: the favorites (os privados) are exactly what got him privado — deprived. Sancho II was formally stripped of governing power by papal decree in 1245, the crown passing to his brother, the "outro" who "asks for" the kingdom in line 5. Camões turns a documented deposition into a lesson about a ruler who let others rule through him.
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