Roderic

Roderic was the Visigothic king who seized or inherited royal authority during a disputed succession near the end of the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania. His brief reign was overtaken by the army that crossed from North Africa under Tariq ibn Ziyad in 711. Roderic was defeated and probably killed during the campaign conventionally associated with the Battle of Guadalete, after which Visigothic political control collapsed rapidly across much of the peninsula.

Later Christian and Arabic traditions transformed the poorly documented king into the central figure of a moral legend. In its best-known form, Roderic violates Florinda la Cava and her father invites the invaders into Spain in revenge. The story supplied medieval and early-modern writers with an explanation for conquest based on sexual misconduct and betrayal, although the personal drama cannot be treated as secure history.

Elizabeth Drayson’s The King and the Whore investigates the legend that made the sexual misconduct of the Visigothic king Roderic and the revenge of Florinda la Cava’s father responsible for the Muslim conquest of Iberia in 711.