Despite its provenance having been questioned by Isabelo de los Reyes when he first published a copy of the will in the first volume of his seminal compilation "El Folklore Filipino",[2] and more recently by Philippine scholars such as William Henry Scott,[3] this "Will of Pansomun" is still popularly used as a reference for tracing the genealogies of the kings and lakans who ruled Manila and Tondo until the fall of these dominions to Spanish rule in the 1570s.
[2][3] De los Reyes immediately questioned the provenance of these two "very curious unpublished documents about the Rulers of the Philippines and Moluccas at the time of the Conquest,[2]" noting that they had "certain facts which contradict those which are accepted as historic truths".
Scott notes that these historical inconsistencies: "... may be simple mistakes on the part of a senile illiterate on his deathbed, but similar details in an official death certificate appended to the will cannot be dismissed so lightly.
[4] Although the provenance of the Will of Fernando Malang Balagtas is in question, there are a number of other historical documents containing similar information about the genealogies of the royal houses of Maynila and Tondo.
[1][3] These include the notarized Spanish era wills held by the Philippine National Archives, collectively known as the "Lakandula Documents" because they are mostly documents executed by direct descendants of Lakandula;[1] and other miscellaneous genealogies, such as another genealogy printed in Volume 2 of El Folklore Filipino, which both de los Reyes and Scott considered more authoritative than the supposed Will of Pansomun.
[5] "Ladiamora" which is the Malay title raja muda, meaning "crown prince" or "heir apparent", could refer to a successor to the royal line in the house of Matanda and Sulayman.