Portugal's King Luís turned down Spain's crown and translated Hamlet instead
In 1869 Spain went shopping for a new monarch and looked hard at Portugal's King Luís. He refused in print: born Portuguese, he declared, and Portuguese he would die. Accepting might have merged the two kingdoms. Instead he stayed home, played cello, funded ocean research and produced Portugal's best-known version of Hamlet.
Luís was never meant to reign. Born on 31 October 1838 as the second son of Queen Maria II and Ferdinand II, he was steered toward the navy, enrolled at eight and captain of a corvette by his late teens, carrying royal brides and grooms around Europe and sailing to Madeira, the Azores and Angola. When his elder brother Pedro V died childless in November 1861, followed swiftly by two younger brothers, the Braganza line was suddenly perilously thin. Luís took the throne and married Maria Pia of Savoy, daughter of Italy's king, in 1862.
The Spanish offer arose after a revolution toppled Isabel II in 1868. Taking it would have meant abdicating in favour of his six-year-old son Carlos, with the real possibility of an Iberian union later on. After his refusal, the crown went to his brother-in-law Amadeu of Savoy.
Nicknamed the Popular, Luís was a calm constitutional monarch who respected civil liberties. His reign saw new ports at Lisbon and Leixões, expanding railways, Porto's Crystal Palace, the end of the death penalty for civil crimes, the abolition of slavery across the empire and the first Civil Code. Politics was turbulent: a tax riot in 1867, a military revolt led by the Duke of Saldanha in 1870, and accusations that he favoured one party, which fed a growing republican movement. Abroad, Portugal kept Delagoa Bay but could not link Angola and Mozambique.
Privately he painted, composed, wrote poetry and translated Shakespeare, including Othello and Richard III. He spent heavily on oceanographic vessels and practised photography. His personal life was less admirable, with many affairs that caused Maria Pia great unhappiness. He died on 19 October 1889 after a long illness, and his son Carlos succeeded him.
Source: Luís I of Portugal
