Template talk:Counts of Portugal

Counts vs Rulers
There were several issues with the template so I have boldly edited it. First, the rulers of Portugal during most of this period were the Kings of Asturias, Leon, or Galicia. To refer to their vassals as 'rulers' gives the false impression that Portugal was independent. For this reason, I have renamed it to indicate that these were counts (which required the removal of Garcia II). Second, I have removed the Houses, because the concept that the first counts all represent descendants of Vimara Perez was based on the mis-dating of a charter, and can no longer be supported. That means the first counts would have to be divided into multiple entries that then create difficulties with the wives of one house controlling the county between father and son of a different house. Third, I have removed Diogo Fernandes and Oneca, whose inclusion is only based ont he assumption that Portugal must have passed through them to get to Muniadomna. Fourth, I have reversed the order of the other two wives, who seem to have ruled after their husbands' early deaths, presumably as proxies for their young sons, so it makes more sense to name them after their spouses (and putting them before seems to be based on the same type of assumption that the inheritance passed through them and that their husbands only controlled the county jure uxoris). Finally, I have added the missing count, and earlier I removed what appear to be an anachronistic coat of arms - I don't thing there is a single coat of arms in Europe that can be shown to have existed prior to 1128 when the county went out of existence. Agricolae (talk) 23:12, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Is this "first county"/"second county" distinction common academic works? I have never seen it outside of Wikipedia. Srnec (talk) 00:54, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * No, but the distinction is real - the county went out of existence as a distinct entity (by modern usage, reverted to the crown), then was reestablished decades later. Given that we have to call them something and dynastic naming is problematic for the reasons I gave, I was not so much using it as a reflection of academic usage as simple temporal descriptive terminology: first County of Portugal (but capitalized as the first word in the phrase) rather than First County of Portugal, being less wordy than County of Portugal (first creation). Part of the problem with the latter is that I don't know that the granting of the county of Hermenegildo and Muniadomna shouldn't be considered a second creation, and to Alvito Nunes a third.  You are worried about original synthesis with respect to these name - I am worried that the whole concept of a continuous County of Portugal from Vimara Perez down to Nuno Mendes may itself be an unsupportable synthesis. Like with Coimbra, several of the people were counts, and controlled the region around Porto, but they may have been more counts from Porto rather than Counts of Porto.  And outside of Portuguese nationalist works, I don't recall seeing the full range of counts cataloged under any arrangement. I just see this as a lesser evil than what was there before. Agricolae (talk) 03:32, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The Coat of Arms seems to be legitimate. Coat of arms of Portugal indicates it began with Henry of Burgundy, but either way it shouldn't be included on this template since a majority of the counts didn't use the arm and the template is too short to include one.--The Emperor&#39;s New Spy (talk) 05:01, 5 July 2012 (UTC)


 * And yet it is unreferenced there. As I said above, I don't think there is a single documented coat of arms in all of Europe from the 1120s or before. The earliest surviving examples date from more like the 1150s. Henry may be documented as using a cross on a banner, but that is about as far as it might go, and even that may have been assigned to him retroactively.  I am particularly worried that aspects of the account have the appearance of the kind of just-so story that has been invented for other complex royal arms (such as the apocryphal tale that the three lions of England came about when Henry II added one for Aquitaine to the two for Normandy).  I strongly suspect that this is a case of Attributed arms, and it will take a reference to Henry actually using the arms on a seal or described bearing the arms by a contemporary chronicler such as Pelayo of Oviedo to convince me otherwise. Agricolae (talk) 05:24, 5 July 2012 (UTC)