The Inca Princesses: Tales of the Indies

Stuart Stirling tells the history of the Inca princesses and of their conquistador lovers and descendants. The story begins with the early days of Pizarro's conquest at Cajamarca in the 1530s, when the emperor Atahualpa gifted his young sister wife Quispe Sis Huaylas to Pizarro. This was the beginning of the distribution and rape of the princesses among the conquistadors - a practice which was in many ways a distillation of the tragedy of the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The detailed human stories of the princesses bring to life the world of the Incas and their conquerors and shed new light on the darker corners of colonial history.