History UsefulNotes / FerdinandVII

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War - all of which got turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent despot]] absolutely unworthy of support. Napoleon reportedly regretted deposing him because leaving him on the throne would have probably weakened Spain more than anything Napoleon himself could have done. Under Ferdinand's mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny, while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties fell into revolt, their independence struggles led by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his compatriots.[[note]]Fun fact: Bolívar had spent some time at the court in Madrid, where he met both Charles IV and Ferdinand VII personally (making him one of the few New World independence leaders to have met the European monarchs they were declaring independence from), and even played tennis against Ferdinand. The whole experience left Bolívar with a bad taste because of the stupidity and arrogance of the royals, particularly Ferdinand, and despite being a ''criollo'' (i.e. someone whose both parents are Spanish settlers), instilled in him a dislike of the Spanish and intense pride of being born in the New World[[/note]] After his death, what little was left of the empire fell into a new civil war and succession crisis.

The son of Charles IV and Mary of Parma, Ferdinand grew up as a promising heir apparent educated by the best of the Spanish Enlightenment, but his ascent soon found an apparent obstacle in Manuel Godoy, the prime minister and ''eminence gris'' of Spain, as Godoy's enemies (including Ferdinand's own wife María Antonia) convinced the prince that the minister was planning to snatch the throne from him. Ferdinand was also supported by Napoleon, who considered the shrewd Godoy an obstacle to control the Spanish Empire, and not without reason, as it was known that Godoy mistrusted Napoleon and was preparing Spain to switch sides in a possible turn of the tide during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars. Many Spaniards were already regretful of having supported Napoleon in the first place, a decision based on the principle of allying with the strongest side that had backfired on them from the very start due to the dubious competence of their French liaisons (the Battle of Trafalgar being an example). Ferdinand and his supporters waged a large-scale smear campaign against the already polarizing Godoy, pitting the Spanish population against him, and this ultimately concluded in the 1808 Tumult of Aranjuez, where Godoy was ousted and the overwhelmed Charles was forced to abdicate the throne on Ferdinand.

Everything seemed to be going great for the new king, who enjoyed not only his royal position, but also the support of the people and the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap by Napoleon: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained there by the French general, who claimed the succession to be invalid and, by installing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, effectively hijacked the Spanish Empire. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John VI of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, from where they could remotely manage the warring effort against a possible French betrayal, but the chance had been destroyed by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that, even before Napoleon unveiled his real intentions to them in Bayonna, she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him for having put them in such a obvious position.

Napoleon's plan to secure the untrustworthy Spain, however, backfired not any less than the Spaniards' soiled alliance to him. With their royal family imprisoned in France, and with themselves subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, the Spaniards rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared total war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who remained happily in his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken.[[note]]Tragically, retrospective analysis stated that Joseph Bonaparte proved to be a decent ruler in his short stint and could have come to be a great King of Spain. It's just that, due among other things to the treacherous way he was enthroned and the lack of awareness of Ferdinand's true nature, there was zero hope for the Spaniards to ever accept him (to the point he was nicknamed "''Pepe Botella''", roughly "Joe Bottle", alleging him to be alcoholic, when he was a teetotaler in real life). There is a certain saying in modern Spain, though not without discussion, that the country unknowingly fought for the wrong side in this war.[[/note]] This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future [[UsefulNotes/TheDukeOfWellington Duke of Wellington]], helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where his absence had handed the leadership to the Cortes of Cádiz, formed by [[CosmopolitanCouncil Iberian, American and Asian subjects of the empire]]. Those had established the revolutionary Constitution of 1812 or ''la Pepa'', one of the most liberal codified constitutions of the time, entailing separation of powers, freedom of press, parlamentary system, representation for the American territories and etcaetera, and Ferdinand was obviously required to comply with it. He initially accepted, with smiles for everybody, [[ILied only for this acquiescence to be revealed as the biggest betrayal yet]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist sectors endowed with military forces, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself absolute monarch. Ferdinand started this reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede. Ferdinand initially showed sympathy towards those, but when they obviously didn't buy it, he just sent in the best general he had left, the brilliant but ruthless Pablo Morillo, to help the American royalists.

In 1820, a grand army meant to decisively reinforce Morillo and the royalists suddenly turned on Ferdinand and forced him to abandon his aspirations and obey the damn constitution. [[HopeSpot For a time]], things seemed to be again on the way of working, but the overjoyed liberals, [[WonTheWarLostThePeace logically unexperienced on the job of running the country]], were soon [[DividedWeFall locked in infighting]] about how to do it. As a proof of this, feeling the liberal environment was the perfect chance, Bolívar's diplomat Francisco Antonio Zea arrived to propose both Ferdinand and the government to solve the wars of independence by turning the Spanish Empire into a democratic Hispanic Confederacy, but the king [[RedemptionRejection told him to get lost]], while the courts, still entangled in the problems Ferdinand had caused, declined on the naive belief they would soon make their new liberal empire work well enough that the revolutions would die off by themselves. At the same time, Ferdinand also received a different offer came from fellow secesionist Agustín de Iturbide, who suggested Ferdinand to exile himself as emperor of Iturbide's newly independent Mexico, or at least send a relative to form a dynastic union, but Ferdinand again noped. The former Desired had his own ideas: he called for help from French monarch Louis XVIII, who sent an army to invade Spain and restore his absolute power, and soon he was again in the absolute throne.

Ferdinand then unloaded such a reign of terror, the so-called Ominous Decade, that [[EveryoneHasStandards his French cronies themselves had to ask him to tone things down]]. With the liberals destroyed again, whether they could have solved the topic of the American independences was now irrelevant, so the wars of independence ended and the Spanish Empire disintegrated once for all. Ferdinand reacted little to this, as he was too busy oppressing the Spaniards and there were no royalists to support this time. He was also apparently convinced that the American republics were unpopular enough that their people would eventually revolve against their liberal overlords and return triumphantly to his royal arms, maybe with some future Spanish military impulse here and there; and if they did not, Ferdinand was still the kind of person [[DickDastardlyStopsToCheat who saw better to reign absolutely over a small peninsula rather than obey any law in a great empire]]. Now, delusional as it may sound about the republics, he was not entirely wrong in that Bolívar and company were far from enjoying an unanimous popular support in their realms, but it goes without saying that by this point neither Spaniards nor Latin Americans desired Ferdinand any more than they desired the moon to crash into the Earth.

His repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly ''not'' a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform forced Ferdinand and his court try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things,[[note]]Notably, UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition, which had been abolished by Napoleon and the Spanish rebels (amusingly, they both agreed in this) only to be reinstated by Ferdinand during his first takeover, was not reinstated this time. This was less relevant than it sounds, though, as by the point of the 19th century, the inquisition was almost completely a [[TheArtifact vestigial organ]]. Moreover, Ferdinand allowed the appearance of the ''Juntas de Fe'', a set of localized mini-inquisitions that tried to replace the old tribunal with new vigor.[[/note]] but they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile those who supported Ferdinand's ways and those who actually wanted him to dial back the clock even more. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was still not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to invade Mexico were undergone from the remnant Spanish overseas territory of Cuba, alternated with liberal revolts within Spain that tried to undo Ferdinand's regime, but this time nothing seemed able to work out for anybody. Only years later, with Ferdinand's health declining, liberal hope started sparkling with the figure of his niece and regent queen, Maria Christina, a BigBeautifulWoman who sympathized with their cause. Eventually, Ferdinand died without a male heir, having been forced to recover the Spanish tradition of reigning queens by declaring a law through which his daughter Isabella would inherit the throne, and therefore screw Carlos María. Spain's banes did not end there, though, as this brought a civil war of succession we call the First Carlist War.

As stated above, Ferdinand went into history as a horseman of apocalypse for Spanish history, with plenty of anecdotes more or less amusing about his lack of virtue (including his ugliness, obesity and health problems, as well as a mocked case of genital hipertrophy that, in an aversion of BiggerIsBetterInBed, left him almost impotent throughout his life). Even the most charitable revisions have only managed to bring out that he was just an exceptionally egotistical human being and not TheAntichrist incarnate. Under his lifelong campaign of hedonistic power-grabbing, Spain deeply transformed in both positive and negative ways, usually against his will in the former case and to his great indifference and/or delight in the latter, but the final result was that it [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen would never be again a Top 5 nation or remotely able to compete with one]]. The global empire built almost by accident three centuries before, still the largest in the world at the moment of its disappearance, died of unhealed wounds from both inside and outside, ironically in a time where other, traditionally less globalized European countries were starting to pump up their own colonial empires, and its death lasted still one more century before concluding with the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar. The only consolation would be that Spain and Latin America would be left with enough inner troubles not to care too much about the rest of the world.

Ferdinand VII of Spain (14 October 1784 – 29 September 1833), first praised as ''El Deseado'' ("The Desired") and later reviled as ''El Rey Felón'' ("The Criminal King"), was king of Spain during the early 19th century, effectively the last monarch of the Spanish Empire as a global power, as well as [[SpannerInTheWorks the final cause of its whole fall]].

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War - all of which got turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent despot]] absolutely unworthy of support. Napoleon reportedly regretted deposing him because leaving him on the throne would have probably weakened Spain even more than anything Napoleon himself could have done. Under Ferdinand's mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny, while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties fell into revolt, there independence struggles led by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his compatriots.[[note]]Fun fact: Bolívar had spent some time at the court in Madrid, where he met both Charles IV and Ferdinand VII personally (making him one of the few New World independence leaders to have met the European monarchs they were declaring independence from), and even played tennis against Ferdinand. The whole experience left Bolívar with a bad taste because of the stupidity and arrogance of the royals, particularly Ferdinand, and despite being a ''criollo'' (i.e. someone whose both parents are Spanish settlers), instilled in him a dislike of the Spanish and intense pride of being born in the New World[[/note]] After his death, what little was left of the empire fell into a new civil war and succession crisis.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all respects]]. His status is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just about every existing political faction in Spain (to say nothing of Spanish America), but in practice he was the monarch who, due to his flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag, destroyed not only the first empire on which the sun never set, but also the political progress and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from selling out Spain multiple times (both unintentionally and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide (after proclaiming himself Emperor of Mexico) to link Mexico back to Spain via a dynastic union, refused a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a worldwide Hispanic Confederacy, and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from ever reaching a peaceful agreement with their overseas counterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current issues troubling the modern Hispanosphere can be traced directly back to him, and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not very far from reality.

The son of Charles IV and Mary of Parma, Ferdinand grew up as a promising heir apparent educated by the best of the Spanish Enlightenment, but his ascent soon found an apparent obstacle in Manuel Godoy, the prime minister and ''eminence gris'' of Spain, as Godoy's enemies (including Ferdinand's own wife María Antonia) convinced the prince that the minister was planning to snatch the throne from him. Ferdinand was also supported by Napoleon, who considered the shrewd Godoy an obstacle to control the Spanish Empire, and not without reason, as it was known that Godoy mistrusted Napoleon and was preparing Spain to switch sides in a possible turn of the tide during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars. Many Spaniards were already regretful of having supported Napoleon in the first place, a decision based on the principle of allying with the strongest side that had backfired on them from the very start. Ferdinand and his supporters waged a large-scale smear campaign against the already polarizing Godoy, pitting the Spanish population against him, and this ultimately concluded in the 1808 Tumult of Aranjuez, where Godoy was ousted and the overwhelmed Charles was forced to abdicate the throne on Ferdinand.

Everything seemed to be going great for the new king, who enjoyed not only his royal position, but also the support of the people and the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap by Napoleon: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained there by the French general, who claimed the succession to be invalid and, by installing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, effectively hijacked the Spanish Empire. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John VI of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, from where they could remotely manage the warring effort against a possible French betrayal, but the chance had been destroyed by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that, even before Napoleon unveiled his move to them in Bayonna, she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him for having put them in such a obvious position.

Napoleon's plan to secure the untrustworthy Spain, however, backfired not any less than the Spaniards' soiled alliance to him. With their royal family imprisoned in France, and with themselves subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, the Spaniards rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared total war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who remained happily in his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken.[[note]]Tragically, retrospective analysis stated that Joseph Bonaparte proved to be a decent ruler in his short stint and could have come to be a great King of Spain. It's just that, due among other things to the treacherous way he was enthroned and the lack of awareness of Ferdinand's true nature, there was zero hope for the Spaniards to ever accept him (to the point he was nicknamed "''Pepe Botellas''", roughly "Joe Bottles", alleging him to be alcoholic, when he was a teetotaler in real life). There is a certain saying in modern Spain, though not without discussion, that the country unknowingly fought for the wrong side in this war.[[/note]] This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future [[UsefulNotes/TheDukeOfWellington Duke of Wellington]], helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where his absence had handed the leadership to the Cortes of Cádiz, formed by [[CosmopolitanCouncil Iberian, American and Asian subjects of the empire]]. Those had established the revolutionary Constitution of 1812 or ''la Pepa'', one of the most liberal codified constitutions of the time, entailing separation of powers, freedom of press, parlamentary system, representation for the American territories and etcaetera, and Ferdinand was obviously required to comply with it. He initially accepted, with smiles for everybody, [[ILied only for his acquiescence to be revealed to be just the biggest betrayal yet]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist sectors endowed with military forces, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself absolute monarch. Ferdinand started this reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede. Ferdinand initially showed sympathy towards those, but when they obviously didn't buy it, he just sent in the best general he had left, the brilliant but ruthless Pablo Morillo, to help the American royalists.

His repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly ''not'' a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform forced Ferdinand and his court try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things,[[note]]Notably, UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition, which had been abolished by Napoleon and the Spanish rebels (they both agreed in this) only to be reinstated by Ferdinand during his first takeover, was not reinstated this time. This was less relevant than it sounds, though, as by the point of the 19th century, the inquisition was almost completely a [[TheArtifact vestigial organ]]. Moreover, Ferdinand allowed the appearance of the ''Juntas de Fe'', a set of localized mini-inquisitions that tried to replace the old tribunal.[[/note]] but they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile those who supported Ferdinand's ways and those who actually wanted him to dial back the clock even more. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was still not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to invade Mexico were undergone from the remnant Spanish overseas territory of Cuba, alternated with liberal revolts within Spain that tried to undo Ferdinand's regime, but this time nothing seemed able to work out for anybody. Only years later, with Ferdinand's health declining, liberal hope started sparkling with the figure of his niece and regent queen, Maria Christina, a BigBeautifulWoman who sympathized with their cause. Eventually, Ferdinand died without a male heir, having been forced to recover the Spanish tradition of reigning queens by declaring a law through which his daughter Isabella would inherit the throne, and therefore screw Carlos María. Spain's banes did not end there, though, as this brought a civil war of succession we call the First Carlist War.

As stated above, Ferdinand went into history as a horseman of apocalypse for Spanish history, with plenty of anecdotes more or less amusing about his lack of virtue (including his ugliness, obesity and health problems, as well as a mocked case of genital hipertrophy that, in an aversion of BiggerIsBetterInBed, left him almost impotent throughout his life). Even the most charitable revisions have only managed to bring out that he was just an exceptionally egotistical human being and not TheAntichrist incarnate. Under his lifelong campaign of hedonistic power-grabbing, Spain deeply transformed in both positive and negative ways, usually against his will in the former case and to his great indifference and/or delight in the latter, but the final result was that it [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen would never be again a Top 5 nation or remotely able to compete with one]]. The global empire built almost by accident three centuries before, still the largest in the world at the moment of its disappearance, died of unhealed wounds from both inside and outside, ironically in a time where other, traditionally less globalized European countries were starting to pump up their own colonial empires, and its death lasted still one more century before concluding with the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar. The only consolation would be that Spain would be left with enough inner troubles not to care too much about the rest of the world.

Napoleon's plan to secure the untrustworthy Spain, however, backfired not any less than the Spaniards' soiled alliance to him. With their royal family imprisoned in France, and with themselves subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, the Spaniards rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared total war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who remained happily in his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken.[[note]]Tragically, Joseph Bonaparte proved to be a decent ruler in his short stint and could have come to be a great King of Spain. It's just that, due among other things to the treacherous way he was enthroned and the lack of awareness of Ferdinand's true nature, there was zero hope for the Spaniards to ever accept him. There is a certain saying in modern Spain, though not without discussion, that the country unknowingly fought for the wrong side in this war.[[/note]] This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future [[UsefulNotes/TheDukeOfWellington Duke of Wellington]], helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all respects]]. His status is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just about every existing political faction in Spain (to say nothing of Spanish America), but in practice he was the monarch who, due to his flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag, destroyed not only the first empire on which the sun never set, but also the political progress and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from selling out Spain multiple times (both unintentionally and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link México back to Spain via a dynastic union, refused a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a worldwide Hispanic Confederacy, and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from ever reaching a peaceful agreement with their overseas counterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current issues troubling the modern Hispanosphere can be traced directly back to him, and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not very far from reality.

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War - all of which got turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent despot]] absolutely unworthy of support. Napoleon reportedly regretted deposing him because leaving him on the throne would have probably weakened Spain even more than anything Napoleon himself could have done. Under Ferdinand's mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny, while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties fell into revolt, there independence struggles led by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his compatriots.[[note]]Fun fact: Bolívar had spent some time at the court in Madrid, where he met both Charles IV and Ferdinand VII personally (making him one of the few New World independence leaders to have met the European monarchs they were declaring independence from). Bolívar even played tennis against Ferdinand. The whole experience gave Bolívar a bad taste in his mouth because of the stupidity and arrogance of the royals, particularly Ferdinand.[[/note]] After his death, what little was left of the empire fell into a new civil war and succession crisis.

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War - all of which got turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent and despot]] absolutely unworthy of the support, to the point Napoleon reportedly [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone repented deposing him]] upon the realization that leaving him in the throne would have been the right move to keep Spain out of his way. Under Ferdinand's mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny without hope to really work in any direction, while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties were dismantled into independence by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his partners.[[note]]Fun fact: Bolívar had spent some time at the court in Madrid, where he met both Charles IV and Ferdinand VII personally (making him one of the few New World independence leaders to have met the European monarchs they were declaring independence from). Bolívar even played tennis against Ferdinand. The whole experience gave Bolívar a bad taste in his mouth because of the stupidity and arrogance of the royals, particularly Ferdinand.[[/note]] Even after his death, what little was left of the empire fell in a new civil war and succession crisis.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain (to say nothing of the Spanish America), but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his [[BreadEggsMilkSquick human flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag]], destroyed not only the first empire on which the sun never set, but also the political progress and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from selling out Spain multiple times (both unintentional and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link México back to Spain in a [[ThickerThanWater dynastic union]], double-tapped a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]], and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from [[AbortedArc ever reaching a peaceful agreement]] with their overseas counterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere [[ForWantOfANail trace directly back to him]], and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not very far from reality.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain (to say nothing of the Spanish America), but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his [[BreadEggsMilkSquick human flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag]], destroyed not only the first empire on which the sun never set, but also the political progress and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from selling out Spain multiple times (both unintentional and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link México back to Spain in a [[ThickerThanWater dynastic union]], double-tapped a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]], and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from [[AbortedArc ever reaching a peaceful agreement]] with their overseas counterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere [[ForWantOfANail trace directly back to him]], and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not far from reality.

The son of Charles IV and Mary of Parma, Ferdinand grew up as a promising heir apparent educated by the best of the Spanish Enlightenment, but his ascent soon found an apparent obstacle in Manuel Godoy, the prime minister and ''eminence gris'' of Spain, as Godoy's enemies (including Ferdinand's own wife María Antonia) convinced the young king that the minister was planning to snatch the throne from him. Ferdinand was also supported by Napoleon, who considered the shrewd Godoy an obstacle to control the Spanish Empire, and not without reason, as it was known that Godoy mistrusted Napoleon and was preparing Spain to switch sides in a possible turn of the tide during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars. Many Spaniards were already regretful of having supported Napoleon in the first place, a decision based on the principle of allying with the strongest side that had backfired on them from the very start. Ferdinand and his supporters waged a large-scale smear campaign against the already polarizing Godoy, pitting the Spanish population against him, and this ultimately concluded in the 1808 Tumult of Aranjuez, where Godoy was ousted and the overwhelmed Charles was forced to abdicate the throne on Ferdinand.

Everything seemed to be going great for the new king, who enjoyed not only his royal position, but also the support of the people and the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap by Naopoleon: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained there by the French general, who claimed the succession to be invalid and, by installing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, effectively hijacked the Spanish Empire. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John VI of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, from where they could remotely manage the warring effort against a possible French betrayal, but the chance had been destroyed by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that, even before Napoleon unveiled his move to them in Bayonna, she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him for having put them in such a obvious position.

Napoleon's plan to secure the untrustworthy Spain, however, backfired not any less than the Spaniards' soiled alliance to him. With their royal family imprisoned in France, and with themselves subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, the Spaniards rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared total war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who remained happily in his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken.[[note]]Tragically, Joseph Bonaparte proved to be a decent ruler in his short stint and could have come to be a great King of Spain. It's just that, due among other things to the treacherous way he was enthroned and the lack of awareness of Ferdinand's true nature, there was zero hope for the Spaniards to ever accept him. There is a certain saying in modern Spain, though not without discussion, that the country unknowingly fought for the wrong side in this war.[[/note]] This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where his absence had handed the leadership to the Cortes of Cádiz, formed by [[CosmopolitanCouncil Iberian, American and Asian subjects of the empire]]. Those had established the revolutionary Constitution of 1812 or ''la Pepa'', one of the most liberal codified constitutions of the time, entailing separation of powers, freedom of press, parlamentary system, representation for the American territories and etcaetera, and Ferdinand was obviously required to comply with it. He initially accepted, with smiles for everybody, [[ILied only for his acquiescence to be revealed to be just the biggest betrayal]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist sectors endowed with military forces, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself absolute monarch. Ferdinand started this reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede. Ferdinand initially showed sympathy towards those, but when they obviously didn't buy it, he just sent in the best general he had left, the brilliant and ruthless Pablo Morillo, to help the American royalists.

His repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly ''not'' a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform forced Ferdinand and his court try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things,[[note]]Notably, UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition, which had been abolished by Napoleon and the Spanish rebels (they both agreed in this) only to be reinstated by Ferdinand during his first takeover, was not reinstated this time. This was less relevant than it sounds, though, as by the point of the 19th century, the inquisition was almost completely a [[TheArtifact vestigial organ]]. Moreover, Ferdinand allowed the appearance of the ''Juntas de Fe'', a set of localized mini-inquisitions that tried to replace the old tribunal.[[/note]] but they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile those who supported Ferdinand and those who actually wanted him to dial back the clock even more. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was still not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to invade Mexico were undergone from the remnant Spanish overseas territory of Cuba, alternated with liberal revolts within Spain that tried to undo Ferdinand's regime, but this time nothing seemed able to work out for anybody. Only years later, with Ferdinand's health declining, liberal hope started sparkling with the figure of his niece and regent queen, Maria Christina, a BigBeautifulWoman who sympathized with their cause. Eventually, Ferdinand died without a male heir, having been forced to recover the Spanish tradition of reigning queens by declaring a law through which his daughter Isabella would inherit the throne, and therefore screw Carlos María. Spain's banes did not end there, though, as this brought a civil war of succession we call the First Carlist War.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain (to say nothing of the Spanish America), but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his [[BreadEggsMilkSquick human flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag]], destroyed not only the first empire on which the sun never set, but also the political progress and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from essentially selling out Spain multiple times (both unintentional and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link México back to Spain in a [[ThickerThanWater dynastic union]], double-tapped a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]], and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from [[AbortedArc ever reaching a peaceful agreement]] with their overseas counterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere [[ForWantOfANail trace directly back to him]], and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not far from reality.

Everything seemed to be going great for the new king, who enjoyed not only his royal position, but also the support of the people and the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained there by Napoleon, who claimed the succession to be invalid and, by installing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, effectively hijacked the Spanish Empire. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John VI of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, from where they could remotely manage the warring effort against a possible French betrayal, but the chance had been destroyed by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that, even before Napoleon unveiled his move to them in Bayonna, she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him for having put them in such a obvious position.

Napoleon's plan to secure the untrustworthy Spain, however, backfired not any less than the Spaniards' soiled alliance to him. With their royal family imprisoned in France, and with themselves subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, the Spaniards rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared total war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who enjoyed his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken. This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where his absence had handed the leadership to the Cortes of Cádiz, formed by [[CosmopolitanCouncil Iberian, American and Asian subjects of the empire]]. Those had established the revolutionary Constitution of 1812 or ''la Pepa'', one of the most liberal codified constitutions of the time, entailing separation of powers, freedom of press, parlamentary system, representation for the American territories and etcaetera, and Ferdinand was obviously required to comply with it. He initially accepted, with smiles for everybody, [[ILied only for his acquiescence to be revealed to be just the biggest betrayal]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist sectors endowed with military forces, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself absolute monarch. Ferdinand started this reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede. Ferdinand initially showed sympathy towards those, but when they obviously didn't buy it, he just sent in the best general he had left, the genial but ruthless Pablo Morillo, to help the American royalists.

Ferdinand then unloaded such a reign of terror, the so-called Ominous Decade, that [[EveryoneHasStandards his French cronies themselves had to ask him to tone things down]]. With the liberals destroyed again, whether they could have solved the topic of the American independences was now irrelevant, so the wars of independece virtually finished and the Spanish Empire disintegrated once for all. Ferdinand reacted little to this, as he was too busy oppressing the Spaniards and there was no royalists to support this time. He was also apparently convinced that the American republics were nonetheless unpopular enough that their people would eventually revolve against their liberal overlords and return triumphantly to his royal arms, maybe with some future Spanish military impulse here and there. Delusional as it may sound, he was not entirely wrong in that Bolívar and company were far from enjoying an unanimous popular support in their realms, but needlessly to say, by this point neither peninsulars nor Americans desired Ferdinand any more than they desired the moon to crash into the Earth.

His repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly ''not'' a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform forced Ferdinand and his court try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things, but they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile those who supported Ferdinand and those who actually wanted him to dial back the clock even more. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was still not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to invade Mexico were undergone from the remnant Spanish overseas territory of Cuba, alternated with liberal revolts within Spain that tried to undo Ferdinand's regime, but this time nothing seemed able to work out for anybody. Only years later, with Ferdinand's health declining, liberal hope started sparkling with the figure of his niece and regent queen, Maria Christina, a BigBeautifulWoman who sympathized with their cause. Eventually, Ferdinand died without a male heir, having been forced to recover the Spanish tradition of reigning queens by declaring a law through which his daughter Isabella would inherit the throne, and therefore screw Carlos María. Spain's banes did not end there, though, as this brought a civil war of succession we call the First Carlist War.

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War - all of which got turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent and despot]] absolutely unworthy of the support, to the point Napoleon reportedly [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone repented deposing him]] upon the realization that leaving him in the throne would have been the right move to keep Spain out of his way. Under Ferdinand's mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny without hope to really work in any direction, while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties were dismantled into independence by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his partners. Even after his death, what little was left of the empire fell in a new civil war and succession crisis.

The son of Charles IV and Mary of Parma, Ferdinand grew up as a promising heir apparent educated by the best of the Spanish Enlightening, but his ascent soon found an apparent obstacle in Manuel Godoy, the primer minister and ''eminence gris'' of Spain, as Godoy's enemies (including Ferdinand's own wife María Antonia) convinced the young king that the minister was planning to snatch the throne from him. Ferdinand was also supported by Napoleon, who considered the shrewd Godoy an obstacle to control the Spanish Empire, and not without reason, as it was known that Godoy mistrusted Napoleon and was preparing Spain to switch sides in a possible turn of the tide during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars. Many Spaniards were already regretful of having supported Napoleon in the first place, a decision based on the principle of allying with the strongest side that had backfired on them from the very start. Ferdinand and his supporters waged a large-scale smear campaign against the already polarizing Godoy, pitting the Spanish population against him, and this ultimately concluded in the 1808 Tumult of Aranjuez, where Godoy was ousted and the overwhelmed Charles was forced to abdicate the throne on Ferdinand.

[[caption-width-right:250:¡Carajo! Tengo más cojones que Dios.[[note]]"Dammit! I have got more balls than God." Yes, this is a real quote of his.[[/note]]]]

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain (to say nothing of Spain's colonies), but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his [[BreadEggsMilkSquick human flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag]], destroyed not only the first empire on which the sun never set, but also the political progress and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from essentially selling out Spain multiple times (both unintentional and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link México back to Spain in a [[ThickerThanWater dynastic union]], double-tapped a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]], and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from [[AbortedArc ever reaching a peaceful agreement]] with their overseas counterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere [[ForWantOfANail trace directly back to him]], and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not far from reality.

Everything seemed to be going great for the new king, who enjoyed not only his royal position, but also the support of the people and the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained there by Napoleon, who claimed the succession to be invalid and, by installing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, effectively hijacked the Spanish Empire. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John VI of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, from where they could remotely manage the warring effort against a possible French betrayal, but the chance had been destroyed ironically by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that, even before Napoleon unveiled his move to them in Bayonna, she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him for having put them in such a obvious position.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where his absence had handed the leadership to the Cortes of Cádiz, formed by [[CosmopolitanCouncil Iberian, American and Asian subjects of the empire]]. Those had established the revolutionary Constitution of 1812 or ''la Pepa'', one of the most liberal codified constitutions of the time, entailing separation of powers, freedom of press, parlamentary system, representation for the American territories and etcaetera, and Ferdinand was obviously required to comply with it. He initially accepted, with smiles for everybody, [[ILied only for his acquiescence to be revealed to be just the biggest betrayal]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist sectors endowed with military forces, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself absolute monarch. Ferdinand started this reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede.

In 1820, an army meant to reinforce the American royalists suddenly turned on Ferdinand and [[HopeSpot forced him to abandon his aspirations]] and obey the damn constitution, and for a time things seemed to be again on the way of working, although the overjoyed liberals, [[WonTheWarLostThePeace logically unexperienced on the job]], were soon [[DividedWeFall locked in infighting]] about how to administrate the country. Still, feeling the liberal environment was the perfect chance to do things the easy way, Bolívar's diplomat Francisco Antonio Zea arrived to propose both Ferdinand and the government to solve the wars of independence by turning the Spanish Empire into a democratic Hispanic Confederacy, but the king [[RedemptionRejection told him to get lost]], while the courts, still entangled in the problems Ferdinand had caused, declined on the naive belief they would soon make the new liberal empire work well enough that the revolutions would die off by themselves. At the same time, Ferdinand also received a different offer came from fellow secesionist Agustín de Iturbide, who suggested Ferdinand to exile himself as emperor of Iturbide's newly independent Mexico, or at least send a relative in order to share the dynasty, but Ferdinand again noped. The former Desired had his own ideas: he called for help from French monarch Louis XVIII, who sent an army to invade Spain and restore his absolute power, and soon he was again in the absolute throne.

Ferdinand then unloaded such a reign of terror, the so-called Ominous Decade, that [[EveryoneHasStandards his French cronies themselves had to ask him to tone things down]]. With the liberals destroyed again, whether they could have peacefully solved the topic of the American independences was now irrelevant, so the secesionists succeeded and the Spanish Empire disintegrated once for all. Ferdinand's repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly ''not'' a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform forced Ferdinand and his court try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things, but they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile those who supported Ferdinand and those who actually wanted him to dial back the clock even more. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was still not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to re-conquer Mexico were undergone from the remnant Spanish overseas territory in Cuba, alternated with liberal revolts within Spain that tried to undo Ferdinand's regime, but nothing seemed able to work out for anybody.

Only years later, with Ferdinand's health declining, liberal hope started sparkling with the figure of his niece and regent queen, Maria Christina, a BigBeautifulWoman who sympathized with their cause. Eventually, Ferdinand died without a male heir, having been forced to recover the Spanish tradition of reigning queens by declaring a law through which his daughter Isabella would inherit the throne, and therefore screw Carlos María. Spain's banes did not end there, though, as this brought a civil war of succession we call the First Carlist War.

As stated above, Ferdinand went into history as a horseman of apocalypse for Spanish history, with plenty of anecdotes more or less amusing about his lack of virtue (including his ugliness, obesity and health problems, as well as a mocked case of genital hipertrophy that, in an aversion of BiggerIsBetterInBed, left him almost impotent throughout his life). Even the most charitable revisions have only managed to bring out that he was just an exceptionally egotistical human being and not TheAntichrist incarnate. Under his lifelong campaign of hedonistic power-grabbing, Spain deeply transformed in both positive and negative ways, usually against his will in the former case and to his great indifference and/or delight in the latter, but the final result was that it [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen would never be again a Top 5 nation or remotely able to compete with one]]. The global empire built by accident three centuries before, still the largest in the world at the moment of its disappearance, died of unattended wounds from both inside and outside, ironically in a time where other, traditionally less globalized European countries were starting to pump up their own colonial empires, and its death lasted still one more century before concluding with the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar. The only consolation would be that Spain would be left with enough inner troubles not to care too much about the rest of the world.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain, but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his [[BreadEggsMilkSquick human flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag]], destroyed not only the first empire on which the sun never set, but also the political progress and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from essentially selling out Spain multiple times (both unintentional and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link México back to Spain in a [[ThickerThanWater dynastic union]], double-tapped a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]], and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from [[AbortedArc ever reaching a peaceful agreement]] with their overseas counterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere [[ForWantOfANail trace directly back to him]], and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not far from reality.

Ferdinand VII of Spain (14 October 1784 – 29 September 1833), first praised as ''El Deseado'' ("The Desired") and later reviled as ''El Rey Felón'' ("The Criminal King"), was king of Spain during the early 19th century, effectively the last monarch of the Spanish Empire as a global power, as well as the final cause of its whole fall.

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War - all of which became turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[TheWrongfulHeirToTheThrone revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent and despot]], to the point Napoleon reportedly repented deposing him, finding out that leaving him in the throne would have been the right move to keep Spain nullified. Under his mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny without hope to really work, while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties were dismantled into independence by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his partners, and even after his death, what little was left of the empire fell in a new civil war and succession crisis.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst King of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain, but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his [[BreadEggsMilkSquick human flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag]], destroyed not only the empire on which the sun never sets, but also the political advance and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from essentially selling out Spain (both unintentional and intentionally depending on the moment) and setting it back by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link Spain and México in a [[ThickerThanWater dynastic union]], double-tapped a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]], and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from [[AbortedArc ever reaching a peaceful agreement]] with their overseas conterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere trace directly back to him, and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not terribly far from reality.

Everything seemed to be going great for the new king, who enjoyed not only his royal position, but also the support of the people and the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained there by Napoleon, who claimed the succession to be invalid and, by installing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, effectively hijacked the Spanish Empire. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John VI of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, from where they could remotely manage the warring effort against a possible French betrayal, but the chance had been destroyed ironically by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that, even before Napoleon unveiled his move to them in Bayonna, she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him for having put them in such obvious position.

Napoleon's plan to secure the untrustworthy Spain, however, backfired not any less than the Spaniards' soiled alliance to him. With their royal family imprisoned in France, and with themselves subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, the Spaniards rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who enjoyed his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken. This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where his absence had handed the leadership to the Cortes of Cádiz, formed by Iberian, American and Asian subjects of the empire. Those had established the revolutionary Constitution of 1812 or ''la Pepa'', one of the most liberal codified constitutions of the time, entailing separation of powers, freedom of press, parlamentary system, representation for the American territories and etcaetera, and Ferdinand was obviously required to comply with it. He initially accepted, with smiles for everybody, [[ILied only for his acquiescence to be revealed to be just the biggest betrayal]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist sectors endowed with military forces, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself absolute monarch. Ferdinand started this reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede.

Ferdinand then unloaded such a reign of terror, the so-called Ominous Decade, that [[EveryoneHasStandards his French cronies themselves had to ask him to tone things down]]. With the liberals destroyed again, whether they could have peacefully solved the topic of the American independences was now irrelevant, so the secesionists succeeded and the Spanish Empire disintegrated once for all. Ferdinand's repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly ''not'' a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform made Ferdinand and his court to try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things, but they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile those who supported Ferdinand and those who actually wanted him to dial back the clock even more. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was still not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to re-conquer Mexico were undergone from the remnant Spanish overseas territory in Cuba, alternated with liberal revolts within Spain that tried to undo Ferdinand's regime, but nothing seemed able to work out for anybody.

As stated above, Ferdinand went into history as a horseman of apocalypse for Spanish history, with plenty of anecdotes more or less amusing about his lack of virtue (including his ugliness, obesity and health problems, as well as a mocked case of genital hipertrophy that, in an aversion of BiggerIsBetterInBed, left him almost impotent throughout his life). Even the most charitable revisions have only managed to bring out that he was just an exceptionally egotistical human being and not TheAntichrist incarnate. Under his lifelong campaign of hedonistic power-grabbing, Spain deeply transformed in both positive and negative ways, usually against his will in the former case and to his great indifference and/or delight in the latter, but the final result was that it [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen would never be again a Top 5 nation or remotely able to compete with one]]. The global empire built by accident three centuries before, still the largest in the world at the moment of its disappearance, died of unattended wounds from both inside and outside, ironically in a time where other, traditionally less globalized European countries were starting to pump up their own colonial empires, and its death lasted still one more century before concluding with the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar. The only consolation would be that Spain would be left with enough inner troubles not to care too much about this.

Everything seemed to be going great for the new king, who enjoyed not only his royal position, but also the support of the people and the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained there by Napoleon, who claimed the succession to be invalid and, by installing his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain, effectively hijacked the Spanish Empire. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John IV of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, from where they could remotely manage the warring effort against a possible French betrayal, but the chance had been destroyed ironically by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that, even before Napoleon unveiled his move to them in Bayonna, she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him for having put them in such obvious position.

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War - all of which became turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[FaceHeelTurn revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent and despot]], to the point Napoleon reportedly repented deposing him, finding out that leaving him in the throne would have been the right move to keep Spain nullified. Under his mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny without hope to really work, while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties were dismantled into independence by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his partners, and even after his death, what little was left of the empire fell in a new civil war and succession crisis.

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War, all of which became turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[FaceHeelTurn revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent and despot]] - to the point Napoleon reportedly repented deposing him, finding out that leaving him in the throne would have been the right move to keep Spain nullified. Under his mismanagement, Spain turned into a bloody absolutist tyranny without hope to work while the majority of its unattended overseas viceroyalties were dismantled into independence by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his partners, and even after his death, what little was left of the empire fell in a new civil war and succession crisis.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst king of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain, but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his [[BreadEggsMilkSquick human flaws, unwise decisions and generally being a certified scumbag]], destroyed not only the empire on which the sun never sets, but also the political advance and unity of all the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world. Aside from setting back Spain by decades, he rejected an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link Spain and México in a [[ThickerThanWater dynastic union]], double-tapped a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]], and ultimately impeded the Spanish liberals themselves from [[AbortedArc ever reaching a peaceful agreement]] with their overseas conterparts. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere trace directly back to him, and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not terribly far from reality.

The son of Charles IV and Mary of Parma, Ferdinand grew up as a promising heir apparent educated by the best of the Spanish Enlightening, but his ascent clashed with Manuel Godoy, the primer minister and ''eminence gris'' of Spain, apparently because his partisans (and his wife María Antonia) convinced him that Godoy was planning to snatch the throne from him. Ferdinand was supported by Napoleon, who considered the shrewd Godoy an obstacle to control the Spanish Empire, and not without reason, as it was known that Godoy mistruted Napoleon and was preparing Spain to switch sides in a possible turn of the tide during UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars. Ferdinand and his supporters waged a large-scale smear campaign against the already polarizing Godoy, pitting the Spanish population against him, and this ultimately concluded in the 1808 Tumult of Aranjuez, where Godoy was ousted and the overwhelmed Charles was forced to abdicate the throne on Ferdinand.

Everything seemed great for the new king, who put himself under the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained by Napoleon, who put his own brother Joseph as King of Spain and called it a day. Ironically, Godoy had originally planned to [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere pull a John IV of Portugal]] and strategically move the Spanish royal family to the safety of their American territories, but the chance had been destroyed ironically by Ferdinand's own actions. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him.

With their royal family imprisoned in France, and subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, the Spaniards rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who enjoyed his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken. This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where he was required to comply with the revolutionary, liberal Spanish Constitution of the same year, and he initially accepted... [[ILied only for his acquiescence to be revealed to be just the biggest of the betrayal]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist armies, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself the absolute monarch. Ferdinand started this reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede.

In 1820, an army meant to reinforce the American royalists suddenly turned on Ferdinand and [[HopeSpot forced him to abandon his aspirations]], and for a time things seemed to be again on the way of working, although the overjoyed liberals, [[WonTheWarLostThePeace logically unexperienced on the job]], were soon [[DividedWeFall locked in infighting]] about how to administrate the country. Seeing the chance, Bolívar's diplomat Francisco Antonio Zea arrived to propose both Ferdinand and the government to solve the wars of independence by turning the Spanish Empire into a democratic Hispanic Confederacy, but the king [[RedemptionRejection told him to get lost]], while the courts, still entangled in the problems Ferdinand had caused, declined on the naive belief they would soon make the new liberal empire work well enough that the revolutions would die off themselves. At the same time, Ferdinand also received a different offer came from fellow secesionist Agustín de Iturbide, who suggested Ferdinand to exile himself as emperor of Iturbide's newly independent Mexico or at least send a relative to share the dynasty, but Ferdinand again noped. The former Desired had his own ideas: he called for help from French monarch Louis XVIII, who sent an army to invade Spain and restore his absolute power, and soon he was again in the absolute throne.

Ferdinand then unloaded such a reign of terror, the so-called Ominous Decade, that [[EveryoneHasStandards his French cronies themselves had to ask him to tone things down]]. With the liberals destroyed again, whether they could have peacefully solved the topic of the American independences was now irrelevant, so the secesionists succeeded and the Spanish Empire disintegrated once for all. Ferdinand's repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly ''not'' a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform made Ferdinand and his court to try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things, but they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile those who supported Ferdinand and those who wanted him to dial back the clock even more. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was still not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to re-conquer Mexico were undergone from the remnant Spanish overseas territory in Cuba, alternated with liberal revolts within Spain that tried to undo Ferdinand's regime, but nothing of this was fruitful.

As stated above, Ferdinand went into history as a horseman of apocalypse for Spanish history, with plenty of anecdotes more or less amusing about his lack of virtue (including his ugliness, obesity and health problems, as well as a mocked case of genital hipertrophy that, in an aversion of BiggerIsBetterInBed, left him almost impotent throughout his life). Even the most charitable revisions have only managed to bring out that he was just an exceptionally egotistical human being and not TheAntichrist incarnate. Under his lifelong campaign of hedonistic power-grabbing, Spain deeply transformed in both positive and negative ways, usually against his will in the former case and to his great indifference and/or delight in the latter, but the final result was that it [[HowTheMightyHaveFallen would never be again a Top 5 nation or seriously able to compete with one]]. The global empire built by accident in the 15th century, still the largest in the world at the moment of its disappearance, died of unattended wounds from both inside and outside, ironically in a time where other, traditionally less globalized European countries were starting to pump up their own colonial empires, and its death lasted still one more century before concluding with the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar. The only consolation would be that Spain would be left with enough inner troubles not to care too much about this.

* ''Los desastres de la guerra'' cast Francisco Cecilio as him.

[[caption-width-right:250:¡Carajo! Tengo más cojones que Dios.[[note]]"Dammit! I have got more balls than God." Yes, this is a completely real quote of his.[[/note]]]]

Ferdinand VII of Spain (14 October 1784 – 29 September 1833), first praised as ''El Deseado'' ("The Desired") and later reviled as ''El Rey Felón'' ("The Criminal King"), was king of Spain during the early 19th century, effectively the last monarch of Spanish Empire as a global power, as well as the final cause of its whole fall.

He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War, all of which became turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand [[FaceHeelTurn revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent and despot]] - to the point Napoleon reportedly repented deposing him, judging that leaving him in place would have been the right move to keep Spain nullified. Under his mismanagement, the majority of Spain's overseas viceroyalties were dismantled into independence by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his partners, and after his death, what little was left of the empire fell in a new civil war and succession crisis.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as [[TheCaligula the worst king of Spain in all senses]]. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain, but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his human flaws, awful decisions and generally being a certified douchebag, destroyed not only the empire on which the sun never sets, but also the unity of the Spanish-speaking peoples in the world, having rejected both an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link Spain to México and a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a [[TheAlliance democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy]]. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the Hispanosphere trace directly back to him, and regardless of additional factors, which are not few, this impression is not terribly far from reality.

With the royal family imprisoned in France, and subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, Spain rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfillingProphecy for the French. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who enjoyed his gold cage in France and [[TheElitesJumpShip pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will]], to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken. This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back.

The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where he was required to comply with the revolutionary, liberal Spanish Constitution of the same year, and he initially accepted... [[ILied only for it to be revealed to be only a new betrayal]]: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist armies, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself the absolute monarch.

Ferdinand started his reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he was incapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by [[YesMan sycophants and various yes-men]], and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede. In 1820, an army meant to reinforce the American royalists suddenly turned on Ferdinand and [[HopeSpot forced him to abandon his absolutism]], but the overjoyed liberals [[DividedWeFall soon got lost to infighting]] about how to administrate the country. Bolívar's diplomat Francisco Antonio Zea arrived to propose Ferdinand to solve the wars of independence by turning the Spanish Empire into a democratic Hispanic Confederacy, but the king [[RedemptionRejection told him to get lost]], and he also rejected a different offer came from fellow secesionist Agustín de Iturbide, who offered Ferdinand to exile himself as emperor of Iturbide's newly independent Mexico. Nah, Ferdinand had his own ideas: he instead called for help from French monarch Louis XVIII, who sent him military help to restore his absolute power, and soon Ferdinand was again in the absolute throne.

He then unloaded such a reign of terror that [[EveryoneHasStandards his French cronies themselves had to ask him to tone things down]], and by this point, the secesionists succeeded and the Spanish Empire disintegrated once for all. Ferdinand's repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly not a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform made Ferdinand and his court to try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things, although they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile with those who wanted Ferdinand to dial back the clock rather than the opposite. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was ''still'' not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to re-conquer Mexico, from of their remnant overseas territories in Cuba, were alternated with liberal revolts within Spain, although nothing of this was fruitful.

Only years later, with Ferdinand's health declining, liberal hope started sparkling with the figure of his niece and regent queen, Maria Christina, a BigBeautifulWoman who sympathized with their cause. Eventually, Ferdinand died without a male heir, having previously recovered the Spanish tradition of reigning queens by declaring a law through which his daughter Isabella would inherit the throne and therefore screw Carlos María. Spain's banes did not end there, though, as this brought a civil war of succession we call the First Carlist War.

As stated above, Ferdinand went into history as a horseman of apocalypse for Spanish history, with plenty of anecdotes more or less amusing about his lack of virtues (including his ugliness, obesity and health problems, which include a mocked case of genital hipertrophy that, in an aversion of BiggerIsBetterInBed, left him almost impotent throughout his life). Even the most charitable revisions have only managed to being out that he was just an exceptionally egotistical human being and not TheAntichrist incarnate. Under his lifelong campaign of hedonistic power-grabbing, Spain deeply transformed in both positive and negative ways, against his will in the former case and to his great indifference and/or delight in the latter, but it would never be again a Top 5 nation or seriously able to compete with one. The global empire built by accident in the 15th century, still the largest in the world at the moment of its disappearance, died of unattended attacks from both inside and outside, ironically in a time where other, traditionally less globalized European countries were starting to pump up their own colonial empires, in a death that lasted still one more century and concluded with the UsefulNotes/SpanishAmericanWar - the only consolation being that Spain would be left with enough inner troubles not to care too much about this.

Ferdinand VII of Spain (14 October 1784 – 29 September 1833), first praised as ''El Deseado'' ("The Desired") and later reviled as ''El Rey Felón'' ("The Criminal King"), was king of Spain during the early 19th century, effectively the last monarch of Spanish Empire as a global power, as well as the final cause of its whole fall. He was briefly imprisoned and deposed by UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, which turned him into a beacon of Spanish resistance during the Peninsular War, all of which became turned on its head during his triumphal reinstatement, when Ferdinand revealed himself as a bona fide incompetent and despot - to the point Napoleon reportedly repented deposing him, judging that leaving him in place would have been the right move to keep Spain nullified. Under his mismanagement, the majority of Spain's overseas viceroyalties were dismantled by UsefulNotes/SimonBolivar and his partners, and after his death, what little was left of Spain fell in a new civil war and succession crisis.

Ferdinand has a convoluted biography, but it can be quickly summed up by acknowledging his immortal place in history as the worst king of Spain in all senses. His figure is still revised and reinterpreted by historians, as wholly objective accounts are hard to find due to Ferdinand having achieved the odd feat of enraging just every existent political faction in Spain, but in practice, he was the monarch who, due to his human flaws, awful decisions and generally being a certified douchebag, destroyed not only the empire on which the sun never sets, but also the unity of the posterior Spanish-speaking countries in the world, having rejected both an offer by Agustín de Iturbide to link Spain to the Mexican Empire and a proposition from Bolívar's inner circle to form a democratic, worldwide Hispanic Confederacy. A reader might get the impression that many of the current troubles of the modern Hispanosphere trace directly back to him, and regardless of additional factors, which are not few frankly speaking, this impression is not terribly far from reality.

The son of Charles IV and Mary of Parma, Ferdinand grew up as a promising heir apparent educated by the best of the Spanish Enlightening, but his ascent clashed with Manuel Godoy, the primer minister and ''eminence gris'' of Spain, apparently because his partisans (and his wife María Antonia) convinced him that Godoy was planning to snatch the throne from him. Ferdinand was supported by Napoleon, who considered the shrewd Godoy an obstacle to control the Spanish Empire, and not without reason, as it was known that Godoy mistruted Napoleon and was preparing Spain to switch sides in a possible turn of the tide during the UsefulNotes/NapoleonicWars. Ferdinand and his supporters waged a large-scale smear campaign against the already polarizing Godoy, pitting the Spanish population against him, and this ultimately concluded in the 1808 Tumult of Aranjuez, where Godoy was ousted and the overwhelmed Charles was forced to abdicate the throne on Ferdinand. Everything seemed great for the new king, who put himself under the apparent protection of the French army stationed in the peninsula... but it all turned to be a trap: Ferdinand and his parents were lured to Bayonne and retained by Napoleon, who put his own brother Joseph as King of Spain and called it a day. Mary of Parma was so enraged with Ferdinand and his naivety that she reportedly asked Napoleon to declare her son officially TooDumbToLive and execute him.

With the royal family imprisoned in France, and subjected to a foreign, forcefully imposed king with better intentions than capabilities, Spain rose against the Bonapartist rule and declared war on them, ultimately making the whole thing a SelfFulfilledProphecy. Nothing of this was remotely important for Ferdinand, who enjoyed his gold cage in France and pledged himself fully to Napoleon's good will, to the point he even intended to be legally adopted by him, all while urging Spain to do the same as him and just surrender to France. In the Spanish Empire, however, this came across as fruit of blackmail, so Ferdinand became ironically idealized as a sort of BigGood [[SealedGoodInACan Sealed in a Can]] who would return to reign as the legitimate king and fix everything that was broken. This finally realized in 1812, when the Anglo-Portuguese army of Arthur Wellesley, future Duke of Wellington, helped the Spanish guerrillas to kick the French out and force Napoleon to give Ferdinand back. The king returned to a very changed Spanish Empire, where he was required to comply with the revolutionary, liberal Spanish Constitution of the same year, and he initially accepted... only for it to be revealed to be only a new betrayal: capitalizing on all the unstability, and with the support of Spanish monarchist armies, Ferdinand declared the Constitution to be liberal garbage and appointed himself the absolute monarch.

Ferdinand started his reign trying to refloat Spain from the ravages of war, but he wasincapable of the admittedly Herculean task, not helped by the fact that as an absolute king, most of his court was composed by sycophants and various yes-men, and everything was further muddled by the American viceroyalties's attempts to capitalize on the situation themselves to secede. In 1820, an army meant to reinforce the American royalists suddenly turned on Ferdinand and forced him to abandon his absolutism, but the overjoyed liberals soon got lost to infighting about how to administrate the country. Bolívar's diplomat Francisco Antonio Zea arrived to propose Ferdinand to solve the wars of independence by turning the Spanish Empire into a democratic Hispanic Confederacy, but the king [[RedemptionRejection told him to get lost]], and he also rejected a different offer came from fellow secesionist Agustín de Iturbide, who offered Ferdinand to exile himself as king of Iturbide's newly independent Mexico. Nah, Ferdinand had his own ideas: he instead called for help from French monarch Louis XVIII, who sent him military help to restore his absolute power, and soon Ferdinand was again in the absolute throne. He then unloaded such a reign of terror that Louis XVIII himself had to ask him to tone things down, and by this point, the secesionists succeeded and the Spanish Empire disintegrated once for all.

Ferdinand's repression over what was left of Spain was surprisingly not a total disaster all the time, as the sore need for reform made Ferdinand and his court to try to improve the country's structures with moderate measures in a late attempt to fix things, although they found the same problem of infighting as the liberals, namely the inability to reconcile with those who wanted Ferdinand to dial back the clock rather than the opposite. The latter even eyed Ferdinand's brother Carlos María Isidro as a potential replacement for a king that was ''still'' not absolute enough for their liking. Token efforts to re-conquer Mexico, from of their remnant overseas territories in Cuba, were alternated with liberal revolts within Spain, although nothing of this was fruitful. Only years later, with Ferdinand's health declining, liberal hope started sparkling with the figure of his niece and regent queen, Maria Christina, a BigBeautifulLady who sympathized with their cause. Eventually, Ferdinand died without a male heir, having previously recovered the Spanish tradition of reigning queens by declaring a law through which his daughter Isabella would inherit the throne and therefore screw Carlos María. Spain's banes did not end there, though, as this brought a civil war of succession we call the First Carlist War.