Asturian kings commissioned chronicles justifying their rule as restoring Gothic Spain

Evidence

Dulcidius and Sebastian, bishop of Orense, collaborated (at the king’s bidding) to create, in the late 880s, a more nuanced and more frankly royal version of this historical vision in the Chronicle of Alfonso III. Their chronicle purports to be a continuation of Isidore’s Origins of the Goths, and as such its ideological purport is clear: Spain’s marriage with the Goths was not over, it was merely undergoing a temporary separation. The Asturian monarchy would restore Gothic hegemony. The Muslim conquest was the punishment against the moral depravity of a few Gothic kings, notably Witiza, who had practiced polygamy and forced priests to marry. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 561

Categorization

• XREF: State-sponsored historical revisionism to legitimize succession echoes themes in The Namesake’s identity construction and general historiography of invented pasts.