even referred to by name, and only Urgell is referred to by his titlethe fortunes of their followers mirror those of their princes. Thus, with his military success, Ferdinand's side has the upper hand in the war and is effectively the Royalist party, with the backing of much of the nobility and the Dowager Queen, and he also has Di Luna as his chief henchman (Luna's own connection to the royal family is not mentioned, being not necessary to the drama): while Urgel, losing the war and on the back foot, is forced to recruit among outlaws and the dispossessed, effectively taking the part of a rebel despite having some legal right to his case. Thus the fact that the forces of Urgel, in the opera as in real life, lose every pitched battle: and on the single occasion that they capture a castle (named in the opera as "Castellor", a fairly generic name for a castle, there being many Castellars in the region), it proves a handicap to them because their only hope in battle lies in speed, mobility, surprise and ambush, all of which are lost when defending a fortress. Thus it is that the fictitious troubadour Manrico can gain his rags-to-riches background, having risen from the obscurity of a Biscayan gypsy camp to become Urgel's chief general, a knight and a master swordsman in his own right, good enough to defeat Di Luna himself in a personal duel, or win a knightly tournament: only to lose it again on the military battlefield, where the odds are perpetually against him, and he is damned as an outlaw even before the opera begins, for no deed of his own but because his master is the rebel. And yet he gets to be a heroic, popular outlaw, who might just escape with his life in return for a vow of future loyalty, if put on trial in front of the Prince himself: a chance that Luna does not want to risk, given that his rivalry with Manrico is personal as well as political. Hence the challenge to the duel over the personal rivalry, instead of calling the guards and making the arrest political, in act 1: and hence also the decision to execute without trial in act 4 even though Luna knows he is abusing his position. Leonora and Azucena are, of course, as fictitious as Manrico, as is the