The Monarchs of Santos Rivera

Here is the list of all the monarchs of the Kingdom of Santos Rivera, from it's declaration of independance on August 19, 1806 to the coup d'état that took away the monarchial powers of Queen Remedios on April 21, 1940.

House of León

Manuel I

On the day of Santos Rivera's independance, the King of Spain, Charles IV, as his final act before handing over the nation it's independance, appointed Manuel Rodrigo de León as the new king. Manuel I, as he chose as his regnal name, was a wealthy Spanish noble whose ancestor was the original founder of the colony of Santos Rivera. He and his family was appointed as the royal family and he reigned for 18 years. The most important part of his reign was the introduction of foreigners, who would eventually become a prominent force in the kingdom in the decades to come. He formed a relationship with the foreigners and they did trading with each other. He died in 1825 and his son, the Laurel Juan Felipe, reigned as Manuel II on his death.

Manuel II

He took over the throne after his father's death in 1825. In his reign, he began trading with the countries of Europe and brought the people of Santos Rivera much prosperity. He also was the first monarch to travel to other countries. In 1828, he and his queen consort, Isabella de Borbón traveled to the Middle East to Catholic Europe to meet the Pope. Unfortunately, both contracted measles there and died within days of each other. As they had no children, his brother Carlos suceeded him as Manuel III.

Manuel III

His reign saw many changes among the people of Santos Rivera. He made it common custom to have people name their cildren with English baptismal names (including his son William Ricardo) and introduced the masses to Western education. He also signed the Constitutions of 1837 and 1860, which changed the country form an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarch. He died in 1868 of tuberculosis and his only child, William Ricardo, suceeded him as Manuel IV. His reign of 40 years was the longest of any of the León monarchs.

Manuel IV

He was a controversial ruler, as he had married his first cousin Emilia (taboo in those days) and the fact that people thought that he wasn't competent enough to be a ruler. In his reign, he was concerned for the healthcare of his people because of the diseases that killed them that were curable. So, he and his wife opened the León-Hernandez Medical Center in 1882, which today is the largest and most important hospital in the nation. He also changed some rules in the previous constitution that allowed the royal family members to marry anyone of their choosing (Riverian nobility or not). He had one daughter and two sons and upon his death in 1887, only surviving son (his eldest and the Laurel, Joseph Eduardo, died in 1880) John Jaime became Manuel V.

Manuel V

He wrote the Constitution of 1889, which gave back the powers of the King that was lost from the earlier constitutions. As king, his famiily was in the center of the spotlight and the birth of his son Charles Luis in 1887 was celebrated throughout the Kingdom. Unfortunately, his son died in January 1895 from the flu. King Manuel V blamed himself for this because a couple of weeks before, he bathed his son in cold water to cool him off from a temper tantrum. The king and queen were told to have more children, but at the years end the king died from the declining health he had ever since his son died, being the last monarch of the House of León. During his last year of life, many people asked him about his heir. As his elder brother David Eduardo died in 1883 and his sister María Victoria, under her marriage to King David II of Sareli gave up her and her descendants rights to the throne, that left only two descendants of Manuel I, Elizabeth Sofía de León and Emilio José Castillo to the throne, along with other members of high Riverian nobility He died without claiming an heir and an election was set up to bring a rightful heir to the throne. The winner, Emilio J. Castillo, would take over as Emilio I of Santos Rivera.

House of Castillo

Emilio

A candidate for the throne after Manuel V died, Emilio was a first cousin of Manuel V through Manuel's mother Emilia (who was the first cousin of Manuel IV) and a third cousin of Manuel V through Renata, Manuel I's wife. Because of that, people thought the throne rightfully belonged to him because he was more closely related to Manuel V, but Emilio wanted the people to vote anyway to see who was the rightful king. He gained 83% of the votes, while José Víctor Montero, another candidate, garnered 15% and Elizabeth Sofía de León de Vargas, granddaughter of Manuel I had 2% of the votes. His landslide victory caused him to be named "The People's King". During his short reign, he tried to give the Riverian people a greater voice in the goverment by amending the constitution of 1889, which was to be called the Constitution of 1897, or the People's Constitution. Unfortunately, the constitution was not promulgated because a year after his election, he was assasinated by Colonel Lorenzo Buendía at one of his speeches because the colonel felt that he wasn't doing enough for the Riverian people. He died without an heir, and the Legislature voted on José Víctor Montero as his successor as José Víctor I. He was buried at La Guarda de los Santos Cemetery, unlike the other monarchs (who were buried at the Monarch Memorial tomb) and the draft of the 1897 constitution has not been found.

House of Montero

José Víctor I

The descendant of Riverian nobility through his father Don Ricardo de Montero (who's first wife was Mercedes de León, the granddaughter of Manuel I), José Víctor was a high ranking governor that was one of the primary candidates in the 1895 election that gave Emilio Castillo the throne. He was a conservative, wanting the Riverian subjects to control more of the government rather than the foreign majority. It was because of this he lost in the 1895 election. After the assasination of King Emilio in 1897, he was elected by the government to reign. He immediately appointed succession line to put an end to the elected monarchs. His reign saw to it that Riverian nobility made up the majority of the Legislature and that the economy was to prosper by admitting certain goods to Santos Rivera tax-free, like bananas and wheat. He wanted to study how other rulers ruled and improve foreign relations so he traveled to other nations and met many high-ranking officials. His goal to make the nation be like how it was in the past shocked the foreign party and in 1920, under the threat of lethal force, he signed the Constitution of 1920, which stripped the powers of the king and the voting powers of the native Riverian people. The constitution made it so that laws written by the king could not be approved without a two-thirds majority of acceptance with the Legislature, the ministers of the King's Cabinet could not be dismissed without approval of the Legislature, and that foreign residents have the right to vote without being a Riverian citizen. This caused a decline in health of the king, and in 1925, he died. His son Charles Umberto succeeded him as José Víctor II.

José Víctor II

His reign of 10 years was greatly controlled by the foreign ministers in the Legislature. Unlike his sister Remedios, who believed that something should be done to give the people of Santos Rivera the power they deserve, Charles greatly abided to the Constitution of 1920. He felt that the foreigners had won and he did absolutely nothing to stop them from getting what they want. He was considered by many, including his own family, to be a weak and incapable king and that he did not deserve to be his father's successor. He used his relatively small power as an advocate for environmental causes, by being active in the cause to preserve the natural look of the nation. Many of the Riverian people wanted him to abdicate in favor of his sister Remedios, whom they believed would be stronger and take action against the foreigners but the foreign ministers convinced him not to in order to avoid a full blown war against the native Riverian people. In 1936, Queen Belén was dying of breast cancer and her last words to the king was "For the sake of our people, do what is right and let your sister take the reigns". Their love for each other made the queen his greatest support system through all the insults, but the king knew that his wife also wanted the people to have the power they had before, and so he respected her wishes and abdicated the throne a month later to his sister Remedios. He lived his last years greatly withdrawn from public life and died in March 1940 of a heart attack, four years after his abdication and a couple of weeks before the monarchy came to an end.

Remedios

The first queen of Santos Rivera and last monarch, she spent most of her reign fixing the mistakes of her father and brother and restoring the monarch's power. Queen Remedios was quite popular among the people and the people felt that had she rose to power 10 years ago, the foreigners would be packing their bags home. Her first acts was to start a petition to make a new constitution that would fix the problems caused by the Constitution of 1920. Her constitution was drafted in 1939 and called for an end to the foreigners businesses in Santos Rivera and the monopoly that the government had on the queen. Around this time, the world was in a war and Santos Rivera was needed as a military base for the foreign troops. The queen did not like this, and threatened the Legislature by promulgating her constitution (which was kept secret at the time). The Legislature counteracted by employing foreign military troops to take over the government and the capital city of Trastamára and depose Queen Remedios of power. Fearing for the safety of her people in such a hostile situation, she renounced her powers and the monarchy came to an end on April 21, 1940. This caused the formation of The Republic of Santos Rivera and put General Fernando Villanuevos (1895-1977) as the de facto head of state from 1940 to 1977. She lived the rest of her life as a citizen of Santos Rivera and became an spokesperson for the reformation of the Riverian monarchy which would put her cousin William Gabriel Cortez as the king of the "Reformed Kingdom of Santos Rivera". She died in 1960 of pneumonia and was given a state funeral on the orders of General Villanuevos.

Descendants

The León monarchy line ended with the death of Princess María Victoria (renamed Hannah, Herder of Sareli) and all collateral branches descending from Manuel I himself had died out, coincidentally, before the Election of 1895 that elected Emilio de Castillo (who himself was a descendant of Manuel I maternally) as king. But, a direct line to King Manuel I exists in María Victoria's children from the marriage of King David II, and those descendants are now the current royal family of the Reborn Jewish Kingdom of Sareli.

As neither José Víctor II or Remedios had children and Princess Isabel's daughter Renata died without any issue, the Montero line survives in a collateral branch, The House of Cortez, started when José Víctor I's sister Lydia Trinidad married Lieutenant Jonathan Cortez. The current head of the Cortez family is Luke Emmanuel Cortez, the great-grandson of Trinidad, born in 1935 and the line is extant in his five children, 15 grandchildren, and 4 great-grandchildren.