Dominic Sandbrook

And they put them in a special leather chest.

And Pedro said, I asked why they kept all this.

They told me it was in order to burn it.

Anything touched by the ruler, the son of the sun, was reduced to ashes and thrown to the winds since no one else was allowed to touch it.

I mean, even by the standards of Spanish royalty, he thought that was excessive.

But it goes to a very important point, something that's very useful to the Spaniards, the absolute authority of the Sapa Inca.

Because by becoming Sapa Inca, you effectively become a god.

You're kind of adjacent to a god, I suppose.

To coin a phrase exactly like the great speaker of Tenochtitlan, Montezuma, had been in exactly the same position.

There's no other real source of authority.

And this means that basically the Spaniards now control the only source of authority, unless you're one of the Huascar faction, the only source of authority between Ecuador and northern Chile.

And it means it's very hard for somebody else to challenge them.

Effectively, the Incas, 12 million people maybe, are completely leaderless.

with Atahualpa as a prisoner.

And the Spanish use this to their advantage.

So as they did in Mexico, they allow him to receive, as you mentioned, to receive messengers, to receive tribute.

They let his advisors come and go.

So these blokes turn up with these massive ear spools in their ears and, you know, all of this.

Dominic, I mean, we're not the rest is ants, are we?

Yes, to the sound of the panpipes, surely.