Characters
Cortés
- In this version, "Malinche" (from Malintzin, "Marina's captain"), as an indigenous nickname for Cortés, is not used until a resentful Marina brings it herself as something people say behind his back. Otherwise, Moctezuma, Xicohtencatl the Younger and the rest all call him Cortés. In real life, Malinche was basically Cortés' public name among the natives from the point he had Marina in his entourage.
- Cortés' background in the series, having been in love with a Muslim girl who was caught by the Spanish Inquisition, which apparently instigated a certain disdain for Christian authority on him, is pure fantasy. The real Cortés was a fervent Catholic, sometimes to the chagrin of his own religious advisor Friar Bartolomé de Olmedo, who was ironically a more grounded person. The series also has young Cortés fascinated with the Indies, but it doesn't mention that he considered a military career with Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba in Italy first.
- Cortés and Sandoval weren't childhood friends with only a couple of years of age difference. Cortés was 12 whole years his senior, and even called him "my son Sandoval".
- The real Cortés trusted Marina's knowledge of native politics, but by all accounts, he was himself a skilled, charming planner. In contrast, the series makes Cortés a charismatic but erratic rogue with absolutely no sense of diplomacy whose mistakes come often from not listening to her.
- Oddly enough, the series also portrays Cortés as a bit of a fop, wearing rich clothing, constantly doing elegant Contemplative Boss poses, and being followed by a slave with a prim and proper parasol. The real Cortés was reportedly the direct opposite of this, to the point his own lieutenants sometimes had to insist him to take more aristocratic customs in order to get respected by his countrymen after the Conquest.
- Speaking of the slave, in real life Cortés owned slaves, but no source mentions any in his expedition to Mexico. This is likely inspired by some real life paintings of Cortés with a well-dressed black man, but it's debated if the man depicted is meant to be a slave, a free assistant, or even Juan Garrido (a free black conquistador who was a member of his expedition in real life).
Alvarado
- Pedro de Alvarado is portrayed literally as a loose cannon, crashing the first meeting with indigenous ambassadors by shooting a cannon to amuse himself. Joke aside, the series generally paints him as a psychotic drunkard who seems genuinely out of control and begs the question of why Cortés has him as second-in-command. In real life, while most sources agree Alvarado was an volatile, cruel person who wasn't cut out to be on command, they also describe him as an elegant dandy and an Officer and a Gentleman, the opposite of his disheveled, barbarian version from the series.
- Due to this characterization, Alvarado has a troubled relationship with Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who is disgusted by his brutal ways, especially after Alvarado tries to force him to kill a little boy For the Evulz. In real life, while Díaz criticized Alvarado for his lack of strategic finesse during the Tenochtitlan massacre and his further exploits with the Mayans, Bernal doesn't show any special dislike for him in his writings and there was no mentioned incident of this kind.
Olid
- Drawing from the prescient fact that he would later betray Cortés, in this series Cristóbal de Olid appears as a deeply conflicted character, stiff and by-the-book but at the same time very emotional and doubtful, who works directly for Governor Velázquez and only follows Cortés kicking and screaming. Nothing of this echoes the historical figure described by Díaz del Castillo and other sources, where he is an efficient captain, loyal to Cortés to a fault during the campaign, who only betrayed him much later because of his own ambitions. Díaz himself spares him a lot of criticism, lamenting that Olid was ultimately a too proud man who just let himself be ensnared by bad people giving him the wrong advice.
- Olid's wife was named Felipa, not Juana, and they didn't marry until after the Conquest. In addition, Felipa was Portuguese, which is not mentioned in the case Juana is still meant to be her. He had been previously in an indigenous marriage with a Tlaxcaltec princess, Zacuancozcatl.
Díaz del Castillo
- A flashback shows Bernal Díaz del Castillo and his father as rude shepherds who hunt wolves to protect their livestock. In real life, while their family was not outrageously wealthy, Díaz's father was a city councilor, one who was even nicknamed El Galán ("The Dandy") among his peers, meaning it would have been exceedingly unlikely for them to have such lowly occupations. Furthermore, Bernal himself received a basic education and was a huge bookworm, things that would have not been available to a shepherd boy in any case.
- Like Sandoval, this version of Díaz is close in age to Cortés, when in real life he was 11 years younger.
- We don't know when Díaz started writing his memories, but it was likely well after the Conquest, if not well into old age, as he admits in a couple of occasions that there are things of the expedition he honestly cannot remember anymore. In any case, although it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he kept a diary during the campaign, he wasn't treated as the expedition's official chronicler as portrayed in the series, or at least he doesn't make it look so in his chronicle.
- During their stay in Tenochtitlan, the real Bernal Díaz del Castillo married Francisca, a Mexica noblewoman gifted by Moctezuma, but this doesn't happen in the series.
Other Spaniards
- Gonzalo de Sandoval claims not to believe in God, when in real life he was a devout Christian. Moreover, any real atheist would be very wary of casually stating it among Spaniards of the period.
- The real Blas Botello was an astrologer and obtained prophecies through arithmancy, and Díaz describes him as an immensely cultured and refined man who had studied in Rome. His version in the series, on the other hand, seems to be rather a mentally ill person who suffers from terrible visions and seems barely functional at all, with Wild Hair and a shaggy appearance.
- The series' portrayal of Pánfilo de Narváez is an undistinct, average-looking guy with dark hair. The real Narváez was a big, tall dude with blond hair and a very characteristic deep voice, ironically more similar to how Alvarado is portrayed here.
Natives
- In the series, Xicohtencatl the Elder seems to be the supreme lord of Tlaxcala, with Maxixcatzin subordinated to him. In real life, as tlatoanis of two of the four domains composing Tlaxcala, they were more or less equal, and there is some evidence that Maxixcazin was the most influential of the two (he housed Cortés in his palace, while Xicohtencatl housed Alvarado). If Xicohtencatl ended up being the most politically relevant of the two might have been mostly because he had several sons heavily involved in the war (not just Xicohtencatl the Younger) and obviously because Maxixcatzin died of smallpox during the siege of Tenochtitlan.
- The portrayal of Xicohtencatl the Elder also goes for the creepiest outlook possible, with a deadly serenity and asymmetric blind eyes, and he has no interaction with the Spaniards other than giving away daughters in marriage and looking bitter in the process. In real life, although very old and blind, Xicohtencatl was seen by the Spaniards as a Cool Old Guy, charming and funny (he was also the first tlatoani to convert to Christianity). For instance, after they had signed their alliance, he had his throne placed next to Cortés' and passed the feast constantly feeling the Spaniard's face and beard.
- The series has Xicohtencatl the Younger acting with full approval from the lords of Tlaxcala in the battles against Cortés, who only gets the Tlaxcaltecs open to negotiate by sheer insistence. In real life, the lords of Tlaxcala became open to diplomacy very early, but Xicohtencatl disobeyed their orders and kept warring until the lords became personally involved (at least they claimed so, and later events make the claim believable).
- In the series, the only Tlaxcaltec princess given in marriage to the Spaniards is Tecuelhuetzin, who is baptized as María Luisa and marries Alvarado (other women baptized appear to be servants). Tolquequetzaltzin, the princess that married Gonzalo de Sandoval, is Adapted Out, and he remains single and ends in a Love Triangle with Marina and Cortés. Cristóbal de Olid's wife Zacuancozcatl is also excised.
- In real life, Xicohtencatl the Younger wasn't part of Cortés' entourage and didn't go with him to Tenochtitlan due to his opposition to the Hispano-Tlaxcaltec alliance. His role in the Conquest was very small, only returning to the frontlines during the siege of Tenochtitlan before being executed for running away in a supposed coup attempt.
- Moctezuma is played by Dagoberto Gama, who is much stockier than the real Moctezuma was described to be. In contrast, Xicomecoatl was morbidly obese in real life, to the point he could barely walk, but is played by the merely heavyset Silverio Palacios.
Culture
Fashion
- As with many other productions set in the 16th century, the series has the Spaniards wearing unrealistic amounts of leather, including big kneeboots more proper of cold northern Europe than the light Mediterranean alpargatas everybody should be wearing.
- The series also gives the characters an odd choice of swords, with Cortés himself carrying a medieval longsword that seems directly inspired by Andúril from The Lord of the Rings.
- Many Spaniards wear the iconic morrión helmet associated with conquistadors in pop culture, which is anachronistic. Contrary to popular belief, Cortés and his people never used it, as the model only came in use decades after the Conquest of Mexico.
- The Spaniards are portrayed as dirty-looking, with unkempt hair and such, even civilians who don't have the excuse of being away on a military campaign. This is a common cliché about Europeans in Mexico that has no basis in reality.
Society and Religion
- Alvarado is initially portrayed as a racist who refuses to take a native woman or to mingle with the natives in any way, and other conquistadors use racial slurs against the Aztecs, calling them monkeys. Portraying conquistadors as racists is popular in media because it fits with modern conceptions of colonialism, but it is actually an enormous anachronism as such beliefs would not become popular until the Enlightenment (even by then, mestizaje or inter-marrying was well established in the Spanish Empire, meaning the issue became more related to social class and place of birth than racial differences). In real life, Alvarado had been living for a decade in Cuba and Hispaniola before embarking with Cortés, so it would have been definitely odd for a ladies man like him to shun native women.
- The series perpetuates the myth that the Aztecs believed Cortés to be the returning god Quetzalcoatl. The line from Bernal Díaz del Castillo's chronicle where Moctezuma states they are all men, and thus he knows perfectly that the foreign teules are of flesh and blood, is given here to Cortés himself, as a way to clear out the misunderstanding.
- The Spanish Inquisition appears in pop culture's favorite incarnation, gleefully torturing Aisha and her family into confessing their secret adherence to Islam, and it takes a young, idealistic Hernán to say that "nobody gets closer to God by torture". In real life, the torture used by the Inquisition was a remnant from lay justice, and it was used in relatively few cases, with the extra limitation that solely confessing under torture was not enough "proof" by itself (this last point is at least implicitly acknowledged, with Gonzalo telling the priest how and where to find evidence of the misdeeds). The case seen in the series would be very unlikely to include torture: if it was the first time the family was tried, which is strongly implied, they would not be threatened with a death sentence or any other harsh punishment, and would be simply advised to confess, take the imposed penance and fines, and call it a day.
- When Cortés asks Moctezuma to pledge loyalty to Charles V, Moctezuma counters by asking how would his soldiers feel if asked to become slaves, apparently meant to be an Armor-Piercing Question given the Spaniard's reaction. In real life, the comparison would have been quite tone-deaf given that the Aztec Empire was composed of plenty of vassal peoples that were not slaves, so Moctezuma should be well aware of the difference. Anyway, going by the chronicles, the real Moctezuma was not vocally oppossed to pledging loyalty to Charles, although posterior developments (namely that Moctezuma secretly negotiated with Narváez to dispose of Cortés) imply he might have been just playing along when he signed the treaty.
Events
Events
- In the series, the expedition has at least one big, angry dog that scares the natives. In real life, although war dogs were commonly used in the Spanish Conquest of the Americas, the Cortés Expedition didn't have one. There was only a female whippet from a previous expedition that was found by Cortés on his way to México.
- In the series, Cortés and company force the Totonacs to rise against Moctezuma by ambushing the Mexica tax collectors and imprisoning them. In real life, Cortés directed the Totonacs into capturing the collectors themselves, and then played a double game with the Mexicas by secretly freeing the collectors and pretending to be on their side. In the series, it's not even clear how exactly does Cortés justify the capture of the collectors to Moctezuma when they meet.
- The founding of Veracruz and the rebellion against Velázquez are portrayed as a con, even Played for Laughs, with Cortés and Alvarado obviously making up laws on the fly and babbling about King Alfonso X with confidence that nobody in camp has enough knowledge to contradict them. In real life, although sketchy, the expeditioners were exploiting an existent loophole, which eventually got their move officially sanctioned by King Charles V. There were several people versed in laws in the expedition, and trying to dupe all would have been difficult at least.
- Cortés has the ships scuttled and sunk, when in real life they were beached and dismantled to recycle their woodwork.
- The duel between Cortés and Xicohtencatl the Younger, in which the former gets captured after sparing his rival and has his precious horse beheaded to spite him, followed by a timely eclipse that saves the Spaniards, is entirely fictional. No eclipse happened during the Conquest or beforehand. This cliché, which keeps popping in depictions of early Spanish-Native American contact, is rather based on an incident between Columbus and Jamaican natives.
- In the series, Cortés orders all Tlaxcaltec hostages to be gruesomely mutilated, with their noses and hands cut off, before sending them home as a warning to stop hostilities. In reality, he did this to spies of Xicohtencatl the Younger in a later time, and solely cut hands or thumbs. The sources say that Cortés' good treatment of Tlaxcaltec hostages, constantly sending them home fed and unharmed, was in fact one of the reasons that convinced Tlaxcala that he was not their enemy.
- In the series, Cortés wants to go to Tenochtitlan by way of Huejotzingo, but Xicohtencatl the Younger convinces him to go by way of Cholula so they can strategically conquer it. In real life, it was the opposite: the lords of Tlaxcala wanted Cortés to go through the allied state of Huejotzingo so they could supply and cover him, while Cortés wanted to see Cholula so they could probe Moctezuma's forces. Xicohtencatl the Younger was not involved and didn't go with Cortés. The line about not letting Moctezuma believe they are cowards was Cortés' own, not his.
- The series inflates the importance of the Massacre of Cholula, which is portrayed as a disastrous decision, initially conceived as a countertrap to a Cholultec ambush, where the Spaniards end up butchering women and children because yolo and ultimately leave Cortés, Díaz, Olid and everybody traumatized by their own actions. All of this drama is fictional; contrary to popular belief, the massacre remained relatively surgical on the part of the Spaniards, who took great effort to kill only combatants (their Tlaxcaltec allies were another story, as they did engage in a lot of Rape, Pillage, and Burn, although Cortés prevented and undid what he could), and the city remained operational enough to be recruited in Cortés' anti-Aztec coalition. Díaz himself mentions that while cold-hearted the attack was controlled, adding that the Cholultecs themselves accepted their fault and never made a big fuss about it.
- It's also strange that Moctezuma calls out Cortés for Cholula, considering that Bernal and the Spaniards find proof that the Cholultecs were going to do the same to them, which presumably reflects the real life notion that Moctezuma had secretly ordered Cholula to kill the foreigners. Either this version of Moctezuma is a massive cynic, which is not suggested by the scene's framing, or he didn't order the ambush and the Cholultecs were acting on their own, an insubordination that goes entirely unexplained.
- In the series, one of the reasons factoring into Moctezuma's reluctance to let Cortés into Tenochtitlan is that Cortés has Tlaxcaltecs among his men, a danger to Moctezuma's eyes. In real life, this would have been unlikely, as Cortés had brought only around 2,000 Tlaxcaltec warriors to a city where the Mexica could easily deploy twenty times that number. The recorded talks between Moctezuma and Cortés also have the former amused, and even a bit derisive, of Cortés befriending the Tlaxcaltecs, whom the Aztecs considered worthless people.
- The series has Tlaxcallan allies led by Xicohtencatl II supporting Cortés and company when they storm Narváez's camp. In real life, Tlaxcala refused to send reinforcements for the mission because they were afraid of meddling in Spanish politics. As a consequence, Cortés indigenous allies at the battle were Chinantecs, not Tlaxcaltecs.
- Cortés arrests Moctezuma with the excuse that two soldiers were killed by Mexica warriors while flirting with native women. In real life, he did it because the Mexica had attacked the Totonacs and killed Juan de Escalante, the mayor of Veracruz, and he was pressed by his captains into doing it.
- Cortés asks Moctezuma to marry his daughter, having Friar Bartolomé's help to nullify his own marriage so he can do it by the Christian rites, but the marriage never happens due to the combination of Narváez's arrival and the revolt of Tenochtitlan, where they lose the girl. In real life, it was Moctezuma who offered Cortés one of his daughters in marriage, but Cortés declined with the pretext of his existing marriage. Reasons behind Cortés' rationale remain unknown, as the notion that he was in a massively unhappy marriage was not invented for this series, but it's possible that he simply didn't want to offend his Tlaxcaltec backers or make King Charles V afraid that a conquistador entangling with native royalty might want to appoint himself king of the Indies.
- Moctezuma here seems not to have any contact with Narváez: he only learns about the conflict because his daughter Ana is told by a jealous Marina.
- In the series, Cortés and company storm Narváez's tent and find him surrendering, only for it to be a trap and an attempt on Cortés' life, after which the Cortesians gouge one of Narváez's eyes in revenge with a dagger. In real life, Cortés wasn't present when Narváez was captured and there were no theatrics or traps involved; Narváez lost the eye to a pike wound.
- Cristóbal de Olid zealously proposes to execute Alvarado to appease the Mexica, even calling to garrote him as a vulgar thief. There is no evidence that Olid or any other captain proposed this or anything similar.
- In real life, the Cortesians didn't remain as much time in the Axayacatl Palace as to completely run out of food and gunpowder, and they didn't sacrifice time to escape to melt the gold.
- The portrayal of Moctezuma's death seems to be a mix of historical versions with some original details added. Moctezuma is stoned by his people (like in most versions, including Díaz del Castillo), but he also falls off the wall (which is original to this series), and after some days, he states he wants to die (echoing Díaz's writings, where Friar Bartolomé de Olmedo speculates Moctezuma committed suicide with poison) and later asks Cortés to stab him so he can die the death of a warrior (which is also fictional, but echoes a Mexica claim recorded by Bernardino de Sahagún that the Spaniards stabbed Moctezuma to death). Also, in this version, Moctezuma comes out to the wall alone, when in real life he was accompanied by rodeleros that tried unsuccessfully to shield him from the stones.
- Moctezuma's daughter is hidden by Marina so she would not be executed, and it's there where Cuitlahuac's forces find her. In real life, his daughers were captured (or recovered) much earlier by the Mexica, who intercepted the soldiers that were trying to extract her and others from Tacuba.
- In the series, Cortés orders callously the Tlaxcaltecs to be the last section in their column to exit Tenochtitlan, clearly not caring about them as much as the rest of his people. In real life, there was no such difference, and Spaniards and Tlaxcaltecs went out mixed up in several sections. Cortés valued the Tlaxcaltecs so much that he put them in charge of guarding the hostages and protecting the women, and in turn, after escaping the city, he had the Spaniards of Díaz del Castillo march around the wounded Tlaxcaltecs to protect them.
- Oddly, the Noche Triste ends literally Behind the Black: Cortés falls unconscious during the scuffle and when he wakes up next morning, the survivors are all waking up at the same time in the lake shore, with no explanation to how they survived or why the Aztecs didn't chase them. In real life the battle continued on the beach after crossing the bridge, and Cortesians only escaped because the Tlaxcaltecs guided them away from the Mexica roads.
Other
Other
- For budgetary reasons, the number of people in the historical events portrayed are seriously scaled down, to the point we never see more than maybe twenty extras together in any side of any battle. In-universe logistics are occasionally adjusted to this change (the most poignant example being when the Spaniards learn that a single brigantine in Tenochtitlan contains enough gunpowder and food to sustain them for a long time), but not always (you can count eleven ships in the harbor of Veracruz, when one would have been enough for the diminutive Spanish expedition in the series).
- The Tenochtitlan of the series has low, ford-like dirt roads instead of tall stone bridges, presumably for similar budgetary reasons.
- Huejotzingo is mentioned by Xicomecoatl as a tributary of the Mexicas. Historically, this used to be true in earlier times and it's unclear when it stopped being so, but by the time Cortés arrived, Huejotzingo had broken ties with the Mexicas and was allied to Tlaxcala instead.
