His chief qualification, besides his relationship to Archbishop Fonseca, was that he was a Castilian. On that basis, the privileged Cartagena believed he was entitled to share power equally with Magellan. Had Cartagena known the truth, that Magellan was fleeing the Portuguese to save the fleet rather than destroy it, the revelation might have defeated the Castilian’s paranoid logic, but it would not have restrained his unbridled chauvinism and his sense of entitlement.
