Editing Vasco da Gama (section)

== Rewards ==
[[File:Vasco da Gama signature almirante.svg|thumb|Vasco da Gama's signature (reads Ho Comde Almirante, "The Count Admiral")]]

In December 1499, King Manuel I of Portugal rewarded Vasco da Gama with the town of Sines as a hereditary fief (the town his father, Estêvão, had once held as a {{Lang|pt|comenda}}). This turned out to be a complicated affair, for Sines still belonged to the Order of Santiago. The master of the Order, [[Jorge de Lencastre]], might have endorsed the reward – after all, da Gama was a Santiago knight, one of their own, and a close associate of Lencastre himself. But the fact that Sines was awarded by the king provoked Lencastre to refuse out of principle, lest it encourage the king to make other donations of the Order's properties.<ref>Subrahmanyam, 1997, p. 168.</ref> Da Gama would spend the next few years attempting to take hold of Sines, an effort that would estrange him from Lencastre and eventually prompt da Gama to abandon his beloved Order of Santiago, switching over to the rival [[Order of Christ (Portugal)|Order of Christ]] in 1507.

In the meantime, da Gama made do with a substantial hereditary royal pension of 300,000 {{Lang|pt|[[Portuguese real|reis]]}}. He was awarded the noble title of {{Lang|pt|Dom}} (lord) in perpetuity for himself, his siblings and their descendants. On 30 January 1502, da Gama was awarded the title of {{Lang|pt|Almirante dos mares de Arabia, Persia, India e de todo o Oriente}} ("Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia, India and all the Orient") – an overwrought title reminiscent of the ornate Castilian title borne by [[Christopher Columbus]].<ref>João de Barros (1552, [https://books.google.com/books?id=BJ42AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA23 pp. 23–24]) dates this appointment in January 1502, just before da Gama's departure on his second voyage. But Subrahmanyan (1997, p. 169), following Braancamp Freire, conjectures this award may have been made as early as January 1500.</ref> Another royal letter, dated October 1501, gave da Gama the personal right to intervene and exercise a determining role on ''any'' future India-bound fleet.

Around 1501, Vasco da Gama married Catarina de Ataíde, daughter of Álvaro de Ataíde, the ''{{Lang|pt|alcaide-mór}}'' of [[Alvor Parish|Alvor]] ([[Algarve]]), and a prominent nobleman connected by kinship with the powerful [[Count of Abrantes|Almeida]] family (Catarina was a first cousin of Dom [[Francisco de Almeida]]).<ref>Catarina de Ataíde's mother, Maria da Silva, was the sister of Beatriz da Silva, mother of Francisco de Almeida. The Almeidas provided a substantial part of Catarina's dowry (Subrahmanyan, 1997, p. 174).</ref>