You may marvel along with me, if you too had no idea that the descendants of Montezuma Xocoyotzin, the last Aztec emperor, exist today as a European aristocratic family

They bear the title of Dukes of Montezuma de Tultengo.

In all, Montezuma II had between 19 and 150 children by various women; it is known that some of them were executed and that two, Isabella and Pedro de Moctezuma, were baptised.

The present head of the ducal house of Moctezuma is the 65-year-old lawyer and businessman in digital marketing and communications Juan José Marsilla de Teruel-Moctezuma y Valcárcel. A little over a hundred years after the death of Montezuma II, his great-grandson, Don Pedro Tesifón Moctezuma de la Cueva Valenzuela y Bocanegra, received the title of count. The family have been Grandees of Spain since 1776, and dukes since 1865, by which time the comital title had reached its 11th iteration. To obtain their titles, however, the descendants of Montezuma II had to renounce their claims to the crown of Mexico.

While the countries of Mesoamerica search for their roots and do all they can to revive the culture of the Aztecs and the Maya, the descendants of the last Aztec ruler, crowned as emperor of the world, marry daughters of European princely houses and prosper under the cosy canopy of the Spanish monarchy.

The surreal nature of this state of affairs is only heightened by the realisation that Napoleon III chose some random German for the role of Emperor of Mexico, when he had a genuine descendant of Montezuma close at hand.

As far as I know, there is at present no political faction in Mexico promoting the idea of a Third Mexican Empire, which might quite readily be imagined as a restoration of the Moctezumids. Still, if we are to indulge our fancy, it would be more interesting yet to see the descendants of Montezuma II on the throne of Spain.

If one studies the genealogy of 99% of today's Latin American elites, it will invariably turn out to be linked to the nobility of pre-Columbian America. In Mexico alone there is more than one family descending from Montezuma; it is simply that the nobility was officially abolished there, and the handsome titles are no more.