King Alfonso XI in Lope's Amor, pleito y desafío: A Practical and Just Model of Kingship in a Time of Moral Ambiguity

In his little—studied play Amor, pleito y desafío, Lope de Vega returns to the Spain of Alfonso XI, "El Justiciero," and presents his audiences with a king who eschews absolutist paradigms and embraces a casuistic stance on justice and truth. He and the other characters are set loose in a world that showcases their agency, yet they experience a lingering nostalgia for a more structured existence. Indeed, nostalgia accompanies them on the Renaissance journey from determinism to responsibility and agency. Even as characters choose, negotiate, and judge throughout the play, there is a palpable longing for the external validation of secure ontologies and epistemologies, for an objective source of "truth."