Manuel II of Portugal
Manuel II was the last king of Portugal and reigned for two years and eight months. Born in Lisbon in 1889, he was a second son and was being trained as a naval officer, with no expectation of the throne. On 1 February 1908 the royal family returned to Lisbon by carriage from Vila Viçosa. As it crossed the Terreiro do Paço, two republican activists opened fire. His father Carlos I was killed immediately and his elder brother Luís Filipe died within minutes; Manuel was hit in the arm. He became king at eighteen, in a carriage carrying two bodies. He was known as the Patriot and, less kindly, as the Unfortunate. He dismissed the dictatorship of João Franco that his father had installed, restored constitutional government, and appointed seven cabinets in under three years as the parties fragmented and the republican movement grew. The monarchy's underlying problems were older than he was: the humiliation of the 1890 British Ultimatum, the state bankruptcy of 1892, the rotativismo system's exhaustion, and a republican press that had been campaigning for decades. On 5 October 1910 a revolt of army and navy units and civilians in Lisbon proclaimed the republic. Manuel left from Ericeira on the royal yacht, reportedly expecting to return. He settled at Twickenham outside London and lived there for the rest of his life. He became a serious bibliographer, assembling a major collection of early Portuguese books and publishing a three-volume catalogue of them, and he supported the Allies during the First World War. He died suddenly in 1932 at forty-two, childless.
- Lived: 1889 CE – 1932 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: king, head_of_state
