Dominic Sandbrook

He'd point at what he wanted and then they would feed him with their bare hands.

And if he wanted to spit afterwards, he would spit into their hands and they would kind of, you know, hold out their cupped hands.

I mean, I think he's a kind of model for relaxed lifestyle.

He has these lovely soft tunics and robes made from the skin of vampire bats.

And you do wonder whether Spanish is slightly exaggerated here, but then there's this nice detail.

So when he's worn anything or when he's eaten anything, they gather everything up.

And this includes basically the stuff that he spat out and also even the sort of rushes that have been placed on the floor under his feet.

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.