D. Duarte asked the cable History Channel to prepare a couple of documentaries: one about D. Nuno Álvares Pereira and another about the period when the Portuguese court was moved to Brazil. The suggestions were made last Tuesday, in Lisbon, during the presentation of D. Manuel II, Rei Traído (a documentary that the cable channel will air next February 25 and which had D. Duarte's participation.
Jornal de Notícias - Último rei de Portugal renasce no Canal de História
"D. Manuel II, betrayed king" is more than a mere biographical report; it drafts a historical portrait of the socio-economic and political context that surrounded the life of an 18-year-old man, a lover of music and literature, who was thrown to a throne, which he had not been prepared for, after the violent murders of his father and brother, and who suddendly died in 1932, without any descendant.
Through videos and photographs (two of the king's passions), as well as his private journal (which accompanies his whole life and where he describes with detail the 1908 regicide), this 55-minute-long documentary rescues one of the most unknown Portuguese kings.
Aired last Monday, it was directed by Rui Pinto de Almeida and counted on Prof. Mendo Castro Henriques' historical consult and included, among others, the testimonies of D. Duarte de Bragança and of Doris Bligh, a contemporary neighbour of Twickenham (London), where D. Manuel II and his wife, D.ª Augusta Vitória, lived the exhile and who still remembers the monarchs.
"That locality still gathers a collective memory of D. Manuel II. Between 1914 and 1932, the king became the godfather of 300 British children, which prooves his charisma and afectuon", says the producer Rui Pinto de Almeida.