One nephew, Tlacaelel, was an active and successful warrior who made a great name for himself as the Cihuacoatl: the name of a goddess had become a title reserved for the man who was the second-in-command after the tlatoani, the inside chief who governed domestic affairs. Supporters of Huitzilihuitl’s old royal line—many of them Tlacaelel’s own children and grandchildren—liked to say that Itzcoatl really owed everything to Tlacaelel, that he was the one who had defeated the Tepanec villain Maxtla, and that it was his savvy strategizing that helped Itzcoatl govern in the toughest of times.
