Queen’s Skeleton Crowned.
The tradition is to the effect, it is said, that when Pedro came to the throne a few years later, he had the bones of Inez taken from the grave, placed upon a magnificent throne, robed in royal purple, and crowned queen of Portugal. To the skeleton the courtiers did homage, one after another kissing the fleshless hand in which the scepter had been thrust. Then, lying in her rich robes, her crown upon her grinning skull, in a chariot drawn by twenty coal-black mules and with a funeral cortège which extended several miles, the skeleton of Inez was driven to the royal abbey of Alcobaca, where the bones were reinterred.
Even then, however, the dead queen was not to be left in peace. In 1810 the French troops broke into the abbey of Alcobaca, destroyed the magnificent monument which Pedro had erected, and tore open the coffin. The yellow hair of the queen was cut from the skull and preserved in reliquaries.