On November 15, 1889 two major royal events occurred and led to two men with unhappy endings


 In Brazil Pedro II who had been Emperor since he was five years old was deposed in a military coup.


He didn’t resist the coup and went into exile in Paris where he died two years later three days after his sixty-sixth birthday.


In Portugal a prince named Manuel, Duke of Beja was born as the son of Pedro II’s great-nephew Carlos I of Portugal who had just became King a month prior to his second son’s birth.


Manuel unexpectedly became King in 1908 after his father and his older brother were both murdered from being shot at in their carriage.


Manuel II himself was deposed in 1910 and lived in Twickenham childless until his sudden death in 1932 at the age of forty-two from asphyxia of the throat.


Now Portugal is a republic but the claimant to the Portuguese throne is Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza who’s a great-great grandson of Pedro II through his mother.


Brazil is a republic now too but unlike Portugal there are two claimants: Duarte Pio’s first cousin Prince Pedro

 Carlos of Orlèans-Braganza (Petrópolis) and Prince Bertrand of Orlèans-Braganza (Vassouras)... Continue reading 

Bertrand unfortunately is more well-known in monarchist circles, is also a huge fogey and who doesn’t share the ideals of the beloved Emperor... Continue reading 

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