He was the King of Luzon in 1570 when his nephew, the heir apparent (raja muda) Sulayman together with Bunao, Lakandula, the lord of Tondo,[2] engaged in a battle with the Martin de Goiti naval detachment to Luzon augmented by Cebuano military volunteers and part of the Legaspi expedition of Spain commissioned from New Spain to find the Maluku Islands.

During this time, the "young prince" Ache realized that his mother was being "slyly" taken advantage of by his cousin, the ruler of Tondo, who was encroaching on territory belonging to Maynila.

[5] Ache could not accept this, and thus left Maynila with some of his late father's trusted men to see his "grandfather", the Sultan of Brunei, and request assistance.

[2] (Luciano PR Santiago notes that this practice helps explain the close interrelationships among the ruling houses in Manila, Brunei and Sulu.

)[1] Dery notes that Ache's decision to attack must have been influenced by a desire to bring Elcano's ship back to Manila bay,[1] for use as leverage against his cousin, the ruler of Tondo.

[2] By the late 1560s, Miguel López de Legazpi was already searching for a more suitable place to establish the Spanish colonial capital, having found first Cebu and then Iloilo undesirable because insufficient food supplies and attacks by Portuguese pirates.

He was in Cebu when he first heard about a well-supplied, fortified settlement to the north, and sent messages of friendship to its ruler, Rajah Matanda, whom he addressed as "King of Luzon.

"[2] In 1570, Legazpi put Martín de Goiti in command of an expedition north to Manila and tasked him with negotiating the establishment of a Spanish fort there.

[8] Outnumbered and fearing that a shift in seasonal winds would trap him in Manila, de Goiti decided to sail back to Legazpi instead of pressing his advantage.

The unnamed author of the "Anonymous 1572 Relacion" (translated in Volume 3 of Blair and Robertson)[8] explains that this was in keeping with indigenous laws, which allowed inheritances to be passed on to "legitimate" children.

Their appointments to said positions forced them to shoulder numerous expenses for and in behalf of the colonial government which the latter failed or conveniently forgot to recompense.

The passage of time eventually found the descendants [...] so destitute that they could not even pay the media anata (title fee to be paid before the recipient could enjoy colonial exemption).

These accounts describe how Ache, then serving as commander of naval forces for the Sultan of Brunei, was captured by the men of Sebastian Elcano.