He was part of the first generation of Peruvian mestizos, his father being Sebastián Garcilaso de la Vega y Vargas, lieutenant to Francisco Pizarro, while his mother was Palla Chimpu Ocllo, baptized Suárez Yupanqui, from the Inca royal family.note The young Gómez received an extensive education in Cusco, not only in European arts and sciences but also in Inca ancestral knowledge, and was classmates with the Pizarro clan's own mestizo children. This part of his life, however, was shaken by political infighting, which forced his parents to separate and later put them all in the target of the rebellion of Gonzalo Pizarro and Francisco de Carvajal. Sebastián essentially saved his family by joining Gonzalo's party and betraying him to the crown at the first chance, but this move still ruined his reputation (he was derisively nicknamed the "Three-Hour Loyalist"), leading his son to embark for Spain in the search of greener pastures.
The shadow of his father pursued the young mestizo even after arriving in Spain, but he decided to start from anew and joined the military, already using the moniker of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Soon he was a captain and was serving honorably under John of Austria against the Moorish Rebellion of the Alpujarras, during which, in a curious encounter, he served along with fellow mestizo Martín Cortés, son of Hernán Cortés and La Malinche. Afterwards, after inheriting a lot of money from his father and aunt, he retired and started his literary career, debuting with a translation of Judah Leon Abravanel's main work that got enough credit to be read by Miguel de Cervantes himself, whom the Inca got to know (he might have also be acquainted with Luis de Góngora). By this point, he wrote full time, becoming quite a sensation as an ambassador of Indiano culture, until his death. His ashes were buried in the great Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba, and were gifted by Spain to Perú many centuries later, in 1978.
El Inca wrote especially about history, chief of which was an ambitious project about the Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire, of which he had first hand experience and access to both Spanish and native sources, but also wrote another about the conquest of Florida by Hernando de Soto, whose colleagues he knew. Naturally, he also wrote works about pre-Hispanic Andean cultures and the Inca civilization in particular. His vision of history could be described as imperialistic, presenting his Inca ancestors as a force of good that civilized their savage Peruvian subjects before the Christians arrived and finished the job; sometimes goes a bit too far, such as claiming that the Inca didn't celebrate Human Sacrifice (we today know they did it a bit, although it's unknown whether he actually knew) or that their empire was such a happy place that there were no poor people (needlessly to say, not the case), but nonetheless records a ton of absolutely valuable info about the ancient history of Peru. He was a strong Catholic and very much endorsed the Christianization of America, although he was always proud of being a son of both Spanish and indigenous cultures.
He never married, although left two illegitimate sons, one of which helped publish his work. His eldest son might have been Lope de Vega (no, not the famous Lope de Vega), who went missing in action in the expedition of Álvaro de Mendaña that discovered the Solomon and Marquesas Islands.
