The Paper Crown

The Paper Crown is an epic historical saga that begins in 1490 Spain and spans four generations, following a Jewish merchant family's transformation into Catholic nobility and their evolution into powerful players in the Spanish colonial world. But what makes their story unique is how they turn instruments of oppression—noble titles, colonial documentation, Catholic ritual—into shields protecting the very traditions these systems sought to destroy.

What starts as a tale of survival becomes something far more complex. After Gonzalo Palencia and Leonor’s conversion and promotion into nobility, their daughter Mariana is married to Luis del Toro, a Catholic merchant whose family’s financial troubles will be saved by the Mariana’s dowry. By the story's third generation, Juan del Toro has transformed his parents' desperate skills into colonial power, establishing himself in the silver-rich mountains of Nueva Granada (modern-day Colombia).

The saga reaches its most complex phase with Juan and Catalina’s son Cristóbal, the fourth generation, who manages an empire built on three parallel systems of truth: Spanish colonial records, converted Jewish family books, and indigenous oral traditions. The novel explores questions that resonate across centuries: How do people preserve their identity under oppression? What price do families pay for survival? How do the moral compromises of one generation shape the choices of the next?

Through rich historical detail—from the document requirements of Spanish nobility to the secret marks of colonial silversmiths, from indigenous mining traditions to the hidden messages in colonial church art—The Paper Crown brings to life a world where truth lives in the spaces between official records