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Er war das einzige Kind der spanischen Prinzessin Johanna (1535-1573) und ihres Gatten, des portugiesischen Prinzen Johann Manuel (1537-1554).
Dom Sebastian, der seinen Vater Johann Manuel (1537-1554) nicht kannte, da jener 15 Tage vor seiner Geburt gestorben war, verlor seinen Großvater, den portugiesichen König Johann III., am 11. Juni 1557. Durch dessen Tod wurde er im Alter von nur drei Jahren der nächste König von Portugal. Bis zu seiner Mündigkeit sollte sein Königreich von seiner Großmutter Katharina von Burgund, Österreich und Spanien als seiner Regentin regiert werden. "On the death of John III. in 1557, his queen, Donna Catherine … assumed the regency in the name of her grandson [his grandmother was Spanish to the core, and loved Spain more than Portugal]. From the very first, the Portuguese people, from the highest to the lowest, disapproved of her rule; she was aggressively Spanish in speech, bearing, and appearance, and had so persistently refused to identify herself with her adopted country, in spite of her long residence there, that every one believed her to be plotting to secure the eventual succession of her favourite nephew, Philip II. of Spain, to the crown of Portugal. Her bigotry and encouragement of the Inquisition did not tend to make her popular … Yet she was not a bad ruler; she maintained the old servants of John III., and the machinery of administration though in many places clogged by corruption, went on smoothly, and she even managed to despatch a sufficiently powerful army to relieve Mazagon, when it was besieged by the Moors. Yet throughout her five years’ tenure of power the queen-regent found herself hampered by the intrigues of the Cardinal Henry [ihrem Schwager], who, as heir to the throne, thought he ought to be in her place, and at last she decided to give up the struggle and in 1562 she retired to Spain. ... during his [des Kardinals und Großinquisitors Heinrichs] rule the government of the country fell entirely into the hands of two brothers … the elder, Luis Gonçalves da Camara, was an able Jesuit, who had been appointed confessor and tutor of the young king, while the younger, Martim, was prime minister, and carried on the work of administration during the regency of the Cardinal Henry. … In 1568 Dom Sebastian was declared of age by the Camaras, though only in his fifteenth year, and from that time they excluded their former master, the Cardinal, from even a semblance of power. This behaviour did not ensure their continuance in office, for as soon as the young king began to take an active interest in affairs, he dismissed the brothers, and placed the chief power in the hands of an upright nobleman, Dom Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro." (in: H. Morse Stephens: The Story of Portugal, id., pp. 238-241).
"The young king [Dom Sebastian] was rather German than Portuguese in appearance, with his blue eyes and fair hair, and his face disfigured by the Hapsburg lip … He was fond of solitude, and building up castles in the air, in which he always appeared as a Christian hero exterminating the Mohammedans. … His tutor, Luis Gonçalves da Camara, made him a bigot, and his governor, Dom Aleixo or Alexis de Menezes, taught him to look upon warlike enterprise as the chief aim of a monarch’s career, and the double teaching had inspired him with crusading ardour. … To fanaticism and warlike ambition he added an obstinacy and imperiousness of character, which made him a tyrant. ... he united a spirit of profoundest melancholy … Though paying no attention to the slaves in Portugal, and regarding negroes as a race made for slavery, he yet under the influence of the Jesuits issued a decree of the greatest importance for the colony of Brazil, by which it was ordered that for the future none of the aboriginal Brazilians should be publicly sold or sent as slaves to work in the plantations …" (in: H. Morse Stephens: The Story of Portugal, id., pp. 242-243).
Im Jahr 1570 wurde an eine Heirat zwischen Dom Sebastian und der jüngsten Schwester des französischen Königs Karl IX., der hübschen und sehr resoluten Marguerite von Valois (1553-1615), gedacht. Aber aus diesem interessanten Heiratsprojekt wurde leider nichts.
"Yet Dom Sebastian persisted; he would be crusader rather than politician, and he was determined to fight the Mohammedans. …The king spoke only of a visit to Tangier, and started off suddenly with his guards and courtiers from a hunting excursion, ordering the Duke of Aveiro to follow with a force of four hundred cavalry and one thousand two hundred infantry. With these troops Dom Sebastian made a few raids, and exhibited his personal courage by uselessly exposing his person, and he returned more bent than ever on a great war in Africa … As the country [Portugal] was nearly drained of men the king had to hire mercenaries belonging to different nations, who were not properly equipped. ... The preparations made for the campaign were ridiculous in the extreme; all the most experienced generals and most tried Portuguese soldiers were in India, and the Portuguese troops who were enlisted consisted of a few old veterans whose time had expired in Asia, and of youthful raw recruits. These latter were not in the least disciplined … On the 24th of June, 1578, King Sebastian set sail with a fleet of fifty ships of war and about nine hundred transports … carrying fifteen thousand infantry, two thousand four hundred cavalry, and thirty-six guns. Of this army only about ten thousand were Portuguese, the rest consisting of Spanish and German volunteers and mercenaries, and of nine hundred Italians, under the command of a gallant Englishman, Sir Thomas Stukeley." (in: H. Morse Stephens: The Story of Portugal, id., pp. 244-245/251-252).
"The slaughter was terrible; more than nine thousand Christians were killed, and the rest, except about fifty, were taken prisoners. … Dom Sebastian throughout the battle behaved himself as a gallant knight, though he had not been a prudent general, and when the fortunes of the day went against him he determined to lose his life also. ... Many account are given to his death. One tradition says that he was taken prisoner by some Moors, who stripped him of his arms, and began to quarrel about him, and that a Mohammedan general rode in against them and shouting out, 'What, you dogs, when God has given you so glorious a victory, would you cut each other’s throats about a prisoner,' immediately struck the King of Portugal down in ignorance of his rank. Another story is that the king met Dom Luis de Brito with the consecrated banner wrapped around him, and said, 'Hold it fast, let us die upon it;' and that when, after fierce fighting, Brito was taken prisoner with the banner, he saw the king riding away unpursued. Dom Luis de Lima also asserted that he saw the king making his way towards the river unhurt. ... According to the most trustworthy account, Christovão de Tavora, the king’s equerry, showed a flag of truce, and offered to surrender with the fifty horsemen, who still remained about the king, when Sebastian suddenly dashed on the Moorish cavalry, who, irritated at this breach of faith, instantly slew him, as well as the brave equerry, who followed his master. Anyhow, it is certain that the new Sherïf Ahmed ibn Mohammed sent out Sebastião de Resende, a gentleman of the bedchamber, to discover the corpse of the king, and that a naked body was brought in covered with wounds, which the Portuguese prisoners at once recognized as that of the ill-fated Dom Sebastian. The body was temporarily buried in the palace at Alcacer Quibir, and removed in the following September to Ceuta, at the request of Cardinal Henry. It was eventually taken to Portugal in 1582, by the orders of Philip II., and buried with great pomp in the church of St. Jerome at Belem. … for many years the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that their sovereign was dead, a belief encouraged by the stratagem of a wounded noble on the evening of the fatal battle to gain admission into the city of Tangier by asserting that he was the king. It was this belief which led to the acceptance of the successive false Dom Sebastians, who played a part in the ensuing half century ... That the … Hidden Prince would appear again became a religion, and the sect of the Sebastianistas became a powerful body of fanatics. … the remark of Lord Tyrawley, in the English House of Lords in 1763: "What can one possibly do with a nation, one half of which expect the Messiah, and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian, who has been dead two hundred years?" (in: H. Morse Stephens: The Story of Portugal, id., pp. 255-257).
Dom Sebastian starb am 4. August 1578 in seinem Kreuzzug gegen die "Ungläubigen" in Marokko in der Schlacht von Alcazarquivir. Für seinen Onkel, den spanischen König Philipp II., kam sein Tod nicht überraschend: "Philip had celebrated Christmas 1576 with his nephew [Dom Sebastian] at the monastery of Guadalupe and discussed Sebastian's plan to conquer Morocco, and he had promised to supply fifty galleys and up to 5,000 soldiers for the expedition." Aber in der Zwischenzeit hatte sich einiges geändert. Philipp II., dem es an Geld fehlte, den Krieg gegen die Niederlande weiterführen zu können, und der einen Angriff der Türken befürchtete, erhielt schließlich im Jahr 1578 von Letzteren ein Angebot eines Waffenstillstandes. Die Herrscher von Marokko waren ebenfalls bereit, die Waffen beiseitezulegen für bis zu 20 Jahren. In dieser Situation bat Philipp II. seinen Neffen Sebastian, den Kreuzzug zu verschieben. Er hatte hiermit allerdings keinen Erfolg: "He [Philipp II.] was wasting his time: the following month Sebastian left Lisbon with a fleet carrying almost all of Portugal's nobles and some 17,000 troops." (in: Geoffrey Parker: Imprudent King – A new life of Philip II., id., pp. 264-265). Sebastian von Portugal war unverheiratet und hinterließ daher keine legitimen Kinder. Sein Erbe und Nachfolger war sein Großonkel, Kardinal Heinrich von Portugal, der mittlerweile 66 Jahre alt war. Es gab sonst keine männlichen Erben mehr in Portugal, jedoch noch einige Enkel/innen des portugiesischen Königs Manuel I.: sein Enkelsohn, der spanische König Philipp II., der einzige Sohn seiner ältesten Tochter Isabella von Portugal (1503-1539), sein Enkel Emanuel Philibert, Herzog von Savoyen, der einzige Sohn seiner Tochter Beatrix (1504-1538), und die Enkeltöchter Maria und Katharina von seinem Sohn Eduard (oder Duarte (1515-1540), dem vierten Herzog von Guimarães. Dessen erste Tochter Maria (1538-1577) weilte im Jahr 1578 bereits ebenfalls nicht mehr unter den Lebenden, aber sie hinterließ zwei Söhne. Der Älteste war der Herzog Ranuccio I. Farnese von Parma. Eduards zweite Tochter Katharina lebte noch und war mit einem hohen portugiesischen Adligen, dem Herzog Johann von Braganza, dessen Urgroßmutter eine Schwester des portugiesischen Königs Manuel I. war, verheiratet. Es gab also für den spanischen König Philipp II. einige Konkurrenten um den portugiesischen Thron. Letztendlich wurde Philipp II. nach dem Tod von Heinrich von Portugal am 4. Februar 1480 mit seiner Armee unter der Führung des Herzogs von Alba im April 1581 der nächste König von Portugal.
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