Published in New Approaches in the Research on the Crown of Aragon

Keywords: Carmesina, Chivalric novel, Jaume de Vilaragut, Joanot Martorell, Tirant lo Blanc.

This article focuses on the historical Valencian knight and baron Jaume de Vilaragut (+ca. 1464), a friend from chilhood of Joanot Martorell, a devout reader of chivalric and Arthurian literature as well as of romances of materia Trojana. He married a member of the Martorell family, became a corsary and defender of Rhodes, was a prisoner of the Great Caramany and of the sultan of Babylon. He also resided at Naples together with the author of Tirant lo Blanc (1460-1464), and was a frustrated commander of the Crusade to recuperate Constantinople following the plan of Pope Calixtus III (1455). He could have been the inspiration for Tirant himself. This hypothesis is reinforces by the fact that there are three Carmesines from the mid-15th century associated with him: A Carmesina his "servant" and possibly his lover; Carmesina Requesens, his niece, born in the 1450s; and Carmesina de Corella, of whom he was godfather ca. 1452. The first Carmesina could have been the inspiration for the princess Carmesina of the chivalric novel.