of captivity in the worst conditions, Ferdinand died on June 5, 1443, aged 41. Several of the remaining members of Ferdinand's entourage, including the secretary Frei João Álvares, were ransomed back to Portugal in subsequent years. In his official chronicle, Ruy de Pina makes no mention of the noble or the escape plan, and suggests the negotiations broke down simply because Abu Zakariya had little interest in recovering Ceuta, that the Portuguese presence in Ceuta served Abu Zakariya as a useful political distraction for the Moroccan population, allowing the Wattasid vizier to consolidate his power domestically. Legacy Portugal The debacle at Tangier and the captivity and death of Prince Ferdinand have loomed large in popular Portuguese memory, albeit inconsistently. It was a tremendous blow to the reputation of Prince Henry the Navigator. However, Henry managed to deflect attention from his role by encouraging the popular saintly cult of Ferdinand as a national martyr, a 'Saint Prince' or 'Holy Prince' (Infante Santo, although he was never beatified by the Catholic Church) who 'voluntarily' submitted to scourge and death for Portugal's imperial mission rather than a victim of Henry's military pretensions and blunders. Henry commissioned Frei João Álvares to compose the chronicle of Ferdinand's imprisonment as a piece of Christian hagiography (although Álvares does not quite endorse the Henrican interpretation of events). Nonetheless, Henry's interpretation gained currency in later years, particularly as Henry's reputation ascended retrospectively with the glorification of the Age of Discovery, and the blemish of Tangier needed to be scrubbed. It was known, from the Leiria Cortes, where blame for the debacle at Tangier lay, and what Ferdinand's hopes had been. Henry's opposition to the fulfillment of the treaty was also well-known. Henry's dubious role in the 1438 regency crisis and the later 1449 Battle of Alfarrobeira fostered a significant popular feeling in Portugal at the time that Henry was something of a dynastic traitor, with a pattern of betraying his brothers for personal gain, for which Tangier and its aftermath were cited as early examples. The Saint Vincent Panels, painted by Nuno Gonçalves around this time, is believed by some art historians to represent such a political statement, a funerary homage to Ferdinand the Holy Prince, pointing an accusatory finger at Henry the Navigator. Morocco The victory of Tangier dramatically changed the political fortunes of the unpopular Abu Zakariya Yahya al-Wattasi, vizier of the Marinid palace of Fez