The King They Wanted
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" Porque, se muito os nossos desejaram Quem os danos e ofensas vá vingando Naqueles que tão bem se aproveitaram Do descuido remisso de Fernando, Depois de pouco tempo o alcançaram, Joane, sempre ilustre, alevantando Por Rei, como de Pedro único herdeiro, ( Ainda que bastardo) verdadeiro.
For if our people greatly longed for someone to go avenging the harms and offenses on those who had profited so well from Fernando's slack negligence, after a short time they got it: raising up João, ever illustrious, as King, since he was Pedro's only heir — though a bastard, the true one.
Canto 4 opens after the death of King Fernando, whose weak rule let Castile press its claim on Portugal. This stanza announces the 1383-85 crisis and its outcome: the people raise João, Master of Avis, Pedro's illegitimate son, to the throne.
This stanza is a hinge. Canto 4 has to get from the ruin of King Fernando's reign to the House of Avis, and Camões does it in one sentence: the people wanted a redeemer, and shortly they got him. The verbs stay collective. It is "os nossos" who desire, and an unnamed "they" who obtain and raise up João. The king arrives as the answer to a public wish rather than as a claimant with an army.
The thing under it is the parenthesis. João was the illegitimate son of Pedro I, and by strict descent Castile's claim through Fernando's daughter was the stronger one. Camões does not argue the law; he simply puts "único herdeiro" in the line and "bastardo" in brackets, so the qualification reads as a technicality the sentence has already stepped over. "Verdadeiro" lands last, after the parenthesis closes — true by what the nation wanted, which is exactly the case the poem needs.
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