Who Was Beatrice?

Dante's literary works glorify a character named Beatrice--and she's not entirely fictional. In his early lyric poetry (The New Life), he writes love songs to her. Beatrice is the one who sends Dante help when he is traveling through Hell and Purgatory, and in the third canticle of The Divine Comedy, she serves as Dante's guide through Paradise. This mysterious character is thought to be based on a real figure from history, Beatrice Portinari, a Florentine noble. According to history, Dante first saw Beatrice at the age of nine, immediately fell in love, and devoted his works ultimately to praising her beauty and kindness. In my opinion, it is a little creepy that Dante kept his nine-year-old crush for the rest of his life, especially considering that she was married. (To put it in perspective, they were the same age, but Dante took it a little too far.) Dante eventually married another noblewoman in an arranged setup organized by his family and had three children; however, he never stopped writing about his true love, Beatrice. I wonder if his wife ever got annoyed with his writing--her husband kept writing about another woman!

Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Beatrice-Italian-noble
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri