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Prologue
Maria Aloisia was born in the 13th century to the noble Malaspinas. She was expected to marry well, as befitting a woman of her social rank, yet none of the suitors that would please her family pleased Bianca, for she had fallen in love with the castle’s stable hand. Secretly, the two met for romantic liaisons, and with each union, their love grew. Imagine, then, Maria’s horror when one day her father announced that he had promised her hand in marriage to a knight. How she argued, but how that enraged her father. Finally, seeing that he could not persuade her to willingly marry the knight, he banished her to a convent to live a life of chastity.
But Maria would not be so easily thwarted. Her lover tracked her down, and they resumed their secret rendezvous. The result: scandal, when a pregnant Maria was ejected from the convent. TheMalaspina family were horrified by this dent in their otherwise respectable reputation. And so they took action designed to signal to the people of their duchy their might and their ability to be merciless in the face of treachery: they took the lovers to the dungeons of the castle, separated them, and tortured each while the other listened. Maria’s lover did not survive long, but Maria’s father tortured his daughter slowly, determined that she would renounce her love. Perhaps if she had, she would have lived – but Maria stayed true to her heart. Her ultimate punishment was to be buried alive in the underground passageways beneath the castle, along with a dog, a symbol of her loyalty to her lover, and a wild boar, a symbol of her rebellion.
The Legend of The Tortured Lovers of Fosdinovo Castle,
Italian folk story
