Through the nearly 800 years in which Portugal was a monarchy, the kings held various other titles and pretensions. Two kings of Portugal, Ferdinand I and Afonso V, claimed the crown of Castile and waged wars in order to enforce their respective claims. Ferdinand I managed to be recognized as King of Galiza in 1369, although his dominance of the region was short-lived. When the House of Habsburg came into power, the kings of Spain, Naples, and Sicily also became kings of Portugal. The House of Braganza brought numerous titles to the Portuguese Crown some honorary, such as the attribution of the title of Rex Fidelissimus (His Most Faithful Majesty), and royal titles, such as King of Brazil and then de jureEmperor of Brazil.
After the demise of the Portuguese monarchy, in 1910, Portugal almost restored its monarchy in a revolution known as the Monarchy of the North, though the attempted restoration only lasted a month before destruction. With Manuel II's death, the Miguelist branch of the house of Braganza became the pretenders to the throne of Portugal. They have all been acclaimed king of Portugal by their monarchist groups.
The monarchs of Portugal all came from a single ancestor, Afonso I of Portugal, but direct lines have sometimes ended. This has led to a variety of royal houses coming to rule Portugal, though all having Portuguese royal lineage. These houses are:
The Portuguese House of Burgundy, known as the Afonsine Dynasty, was the founding house of the Kingdom of Portugal. Prior to the independence of Portugal, the house ruled the feudal County of Portugal, of the Kingdom of Galicia. When Afonso Henriques declared the independence of Portugal, he turned the family from a comital house to a royal house which would rule Portugal for over two centuries. During the Reconquista, the Afonsine Dynasty expanded the country southwards until the definitive conquest of Algarve with Sancho II and the establishment of the Kingdom of Algarve, in 1249, under Afonso III. When Ferdinand I died, a succession crisis occurred between 1383 and 1385. Ferdinand's daughter Beatrice of Portugal was proclaimed queen and her husband John I of Castile proclaimed king by the right of his wife. Her legitimacy as a monarch is disputed.[1][2]
The House of Habsburg, known as the Philippine dynasty, was the house that ruled Portugal from 1581 to 1640. The dynasty began with the acclamation of Philip II of Spain as Philip I of Portugal in 1580, officially recognized in 1581 by the Portuguese Cortes of Tomar. Philip I swore to rule Portugal as a kingdom separate from his Spanish domains, under the personal union known as the Iberian Union.
The House of Braganza, also known as the Brigantine Dynasty, came to power in 1640, when John II, Duke of Braganza, claimed to be the rightful heir of the defunct House of Aviz, as he was the great-great-grandson of King Manuel I. John was proclaimed King John IV, and he deposed the House of Habsburg in 1640 during the Portuguese Restoration War. The Habsburgs continued to claim the throne of Portugal until the end of the war in the Treaty of Lisbon (1668).
The descendants of Queen Maria II and her consort, King Ferdinand II (a German prince of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), came to rule in 1853. Portuguese law and custom treated them as members of the House of Braganza, though they were still Saxe-Coburg and Gotha dynasts. This has led some to classify these last four monarchs of Portugal as members of a new royal family, called the House of Braganza-Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, though this view is not widely held.
^Some historians consider that Manuel II was preceded by his elder brother Luís Filipe, not by his father Carlos. In fact, while king Carlos died instantly under the bullets of the anarchists on 1 February 1908, his son Luís Filipe, the crown prince, survived for at least twenty-five minutes, enough to allow governmental officials to name him king. This act is, however, usually considered as historically irrelevant, given that the crown prince never recovered from his coma. His younger brother Manuel (who was also injured, though not seriously) is therefore considered to have been the direct successor of the murdered King Carlos I.
Bibliography
Sousa, D. António Caetano de[in Portuguese] (1946) [1735–49]. História Genealógica da Casa Real Portuguesa (in Portuguese). Coimbra: Atlântida-Livraria Eds. OCLC20210378.
Jiří Louda & Michael Maclagan (1981), "Portugal", in Lines of Succession. Heraldry of the Royal families of Europe, London, Orbis Publishing, pp. 228–237. ISBN0-85613-672-7. (revised and updated edition by Prentice Hall College Div – November 1991. ISBN0-02-897255-4.)
Luís Amaral & Marcos Soromenho Santos (2002), Costados do Duque de Bragança, Lisboa, Guarda-Mor Edições.
Afonso Eduardo Martins Zuquete (dir.)(1989), Nobreza de Portugal e Brasil, vol. I, Lisboa, Editorial Enciclopédia.
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