Love is free and brings happiness. But many of us already know that the Happy End rarely escapes stories. That three is a crowd is a quite popular saying, therefore, love triangles usually end badly, in tragedy. This is how the beautiful Mexican legend of Princess Sac-Nicté and Prince Canek reminds us, where although love will triumph, it will bring destruction to a town and its city. But let’s not get ahead of the facts and start by introducing our protagonists.
The love story of Sac-Nicté and Canek (Mexico)
- This story takes us to the ancient Mayab, when Chichén-Itzá, Uxmal and Mayapán had achieved peace and were three prosperous towns that enjoyed authentic splendor. And it was during those times when, respectively, in each city their princes were born: Canek or Black Serpent (as it would be known in History), Ulil and Sac-Nicté or Blanca Flor, daughter of King Hunac-Ceel, who soon promised the hand from her little girl to the young prince of Uxmal, Ulil.
- However, the wishes of a father do not always coincide with the written destiny of his children. And it is that, when the princess of Mayapán, Sac-Nicté, when she was only 15 years old, saw Prince Canek, then 21 years old, on the day of his coronation as King of the town of Chichén-Itzá, she knew that her heart had already it did not belong to him. The gods, who are always playful and even more when they deal with themes of love, covered the thoughts of the new young King Canek with shadows, since he, who had also noticed the beauty of Sac-Nicté and had been imprisoned in it, knew that in Just 37 days, his love would marry Ulil, prince of Uxmal.
- The wedding bells rang closer and closer and soon messengers arrived with the corresponding invitation for the lord of the Itzáes. With a sore heart, the last thing Canek wanted was to celebrate a wedding and consolidate an alliance when in Ulil he only saw the enemy who would steal his beloved from him.
- Restlessness, hopelessness, pain, anguish… covered Canek’s day to day. To do? How to find a solution? The answers to these questions came to him one sleepless night: “The White Flower is waiting among the dry leaves, should you let someone else pluck it for him?” an old man told him in whispers as if it were a prophecy. Nobody knew what happened under the moonlight, everything happened so fast that even Canek himself didn’t know if he had even dreamed it. But the plan was already devised.
Happy ending or tragedy for Sac-Nicté and Canek?
- Meanwhile, in Uxmal, the preparations for the great wedding continued under the motto “from this union will come the greatness of the Mayad, and in them peace and abundance of the earth will settle.” And finally the big day came.
- King Hunac-Ceel, lord of the cocomes, led the delegation from Mayapán to deliver his daughter Sac-Nicté. Everything was music and joy. The lord of Uxmal and his future husband, Ulil, came out to meet them. The party was starting. People from all the nearby towns had come to the celebration to witness the link. All but one: Canek, the lord of the Itzáes. As they were times of peace and harmony, they waited for him for three long days. No one knew that he was not willing to celebrate anything.
- Finally, the betrothal had to take place. And when the ceremony started, suddenly, Canek made his entrance escorted by 60 warriors, who without giving explanations broke into the altar of the temple to snatch by force his beloved Sac-Nicté from the hands of his father and fiancé. Without anyone having time to react and do something, the Itzáes and the lovers fled.
- Uxmal was wrapped in confusion. The town had been left without a party and Ulil without a wife. Peace, which had cost so much in the past to achieve, was broken. Ulil, together with the one who had almost been her father-in-law, gathered a large army to hunt down and kill Canek.
- The desire for revenge led them to the city of Chichén-Itzá to start the battle. But when they arrived, they found that the city had been abandoned. Fury and rage broke out everywhere. They looted, burned and destroyed beautiful buildings and temples. And the legend tells that since then the city remains as the destruction of unrequited love left it.
- But what was the fate of our lovers? Canek together with Sac-Nicté guided the Itzí people through the jungle and, after crossing the south of the peninsula, they settled on the island of Tayasal. Canek had given up the rich city of Chichén-Itzá for love, but he had not let his people die or suffer.