Infante Sebastian of Portugal and Spain
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Sebastian Gabriel de Borbon y de Braganza, Infante of Portugal and Spain, was a royal of the 19th century and progenitor of the ducal lines of Hernani, Ansola, Durcal and Marchena.
Intrinsically an insignificant personality, Sebastian had a high position in the independent kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, holding offices in both.
He was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1813 as the only child of Infanta Teresa, Princess of Beira and Infante Pedro Carlos of Spain and Portugal. His mother was the eldest daughter of King John VI of Portugal (and also a granddaughter of King Charles IV of Spain); and his father, who died before Sebastian was born, was a male-line grandson of King Charles III of Spain as well as a female-line grandson of the Queen regnant Maria I of Portugal and Brazil. Sebastian was soon granted the title of Infante of Portugal and Brazil. However, because he was quite a distant descendant (great-grandson) in male line of any Spanish monarch, he was not Infante of Spain from birth.
However in 1824 he was granted also the style of Infante of Spain by his maternal granduncle King Ferdinand VII of Spain.
In Portugal, the country was in effective civil war since 1826, when "usurper-king" Miguel I of Portugal and his elder brother Pedro IV of Portugal (both were uncles to Sebastian) battled, until 1834.
Sebastian's mother remarried two decades later, in 1838, her uncle, Infante Carlos, Count of Molina, the first Carlist pretender of Spain. Teresa had been Carlist supporter since the succession dispute started in 1833, and spent her time in Carlist camp, usually in northern Spain.
Firstly Sebastian was married to his cousin Princess Maria Cristina of the Two Sicilies but the marriage, which lasted several decades, remained childless.
On 15 January 1837, in midst of the First Carlist War, the then 23-year-old Sebastian was excluded, by law of the Cortes, ratified by royal decree of Regent Maria Christina, from the Spanish succession, on grounds of him being rebel against Isabella II of Spain with don Carlos' rebellion. Sebastian was also declared to be stripped from his Spanish titles and status as a dynast.
The same exclusion was legislated also to don Carlos, Carlos' sons, and Sebastian's uncle the deposed Miguel I of Portugal, as well as to Sebastian's mother Teresa.
Much later, in 1859, Sebastian was restored to his Spanish titles, in conjunction with his second marriage.
When widowed at the age of 50, he remarried on 19 November 1860, this time to his cousin Infanta Maria Cristina of Spain, decades his junior. They produced three surviving sons, who were granted own dukedoms each.
The last head one of these branches, the duke of Hernani, adopted in 1970's their distant cousin, Infanta Margarita of Spain, Duchess of Soria who thus became the next and current Duchess of Hernani.
