Francisco Solano López, born in 1826, becomes…

Francisco Solano López, born in 1826, becomes the second and final ruler of the López dynasty.

He had had a pampered childhood.

His father had raised him to inherit his mantle and made him a brigadier general at the age of eighteen.

He is an insatiable womanizer, and stories abound of the cruel excesses he resorta to when a woman has the courage to turn him down.

His 1853 trip to Europe to buy arms is undoubtedly the most important experience of his life; his stay in Paris proves to be a turning point for him.

There, Solano López admires the trappings and pretensions of the French empire of Napoleon III.

He falls in love with an Irish woman named Elisa Alicia Lynch, whom he makes his mistress

"La Lynch," as she becomes known in Paraguay, is a strong-willed, charming, witty, intelligent woman who becomes a person of enormous influence in Paraguay because of her relationship with Solano López.

Lynch's Parisian manners soon make her a trendsetter in the Paraguayan capital, and she makes enemies as quickly as she makes friends.

Lynch will bear Solano López five sons, although the two will never marry.

She will become the largest landowner in Paraguay after Solano López transfers most of the country and portions of Brazil to her name during the war, yet she will retain practically nothing when the war ends.

She will bury Solano López with her own hands after the last battle in 1870 and die penniless some years later in Europe.