When kings are portrayed in medieval Castilian history writing from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as mourning the loss of sons to war or illness, grief is represented as debilitating and dangerous, if not moderated. Hence, the historiographical response to grief and sorrow demonstrates that not all displays of emotion by kings can be interpreted as intentional political acts or ritual display. Rather, the chronicles reveal instances of ideological use of emotions within history writing to disseminate certain ideas about kingship, gender, and emotions, which also contributed to forming lay noble emotional habitus. Chroniclers reveal an ideal that valued the transformation of sorrow into just anger and religious zeal, emotions whose functions were apparent in the ideological and military context of the Christian conquest of Muslim Spain.