Dom Pedro's itinerary, while wide-ranging, was... nothing extraordinary. Pedro himself, however, acquired a remarkable reputation in the later years of his life and afterward, becoming a symbol in Europe of fifteenth-century dynamism and brilliance. He was an active internationalist, maintaining contacts and serving, in a sense, as POrtugal's foreign minister during the closing years of his father's reign and in the reign of King Duarte, who succeeded in 1433. He provided encouragement and financial support for Prince Henry's explorations and worked with the Navigator toward the great portuguese goals of attaining the Indies and making contact with the legendary Christian monarch in Africa.

Dom Pedro is the subject of the extremely popular Spanish Book of the Infante Dom Pedro of Portugal, Who Traveled Over the Four Parts of the World, originally published in 1515 in Seville.