Manuel, Hereditary Prince of Portugal (1568-22 June 1638) was the illegitimate son of the Prior of Crato and a pretender to the throne of Portugal during the 1580 succession crisis.
Biography[]
Manuel de Aviz was born in Tangier, Morocco in 1568, the son of the Prior of Crato and Anna Barbosa. After the death of King Henry of Portugal in 1580, Manuel chose to become a prince under his father, who was deposed by Philip II of Spain in the ensuing War of the Portuguese Succession. Manuel's 6,000 Portuguese troops were defeated by the Spanish, and Manuel and the rest of his family fled to France after an English army sent to assist the Prior of Crato was killed off by the plague before it could arrive in Spain. In 1597, Manuel married Countess Emilia of Nassau, the daughter of the late William the Silent and sister of Maurice of Nassau, and he served as a general of the United Provinces during the Dutch Revolt before discovering that the Spanish were willing to give him more titles than the Dutch. Manuel moved to Brussels, while his wife moved to Geneva in Switzerland, refusing to live in a realm that was responsible for her father's death. Manuel died in Brussels in 1638.