He carried a copy of Thomas Aquinas on a belt at his waist and was constantly accompanied by two clerics of the Theatine Order who were intent on preserving the king's innocence.

Sebastian himself, however, put an end to that plan, declaring that he was unimpressed by the mild suppression of the Huguenot Protestants in France, and that he would not bind himself to the House of Valois until he had seen how the situation would develop.

Sebastian himself made a proposal in 1577 to his first cousin Isabella Clara Eugenia, daughter of his maternal uncle Philip II of Spain.

During Sebastian's short personal reign, he strengthened ties with the Holy Roman Empire, England and France through diplomatic efforts.

In 1572, the poet Luís de Camões presented his masterpiece Os Lusíadas and dedicated a poem to Sebastian that won him a royal pension.

After attaining his majority in 1568, Sebastian dreamed of a great crusade against the kingdom of Morocco, where over the preceding generation several Portuguese way stations on the route to India had been lost.

A Moroccan succession struggle gave him the opportunity, when Abu Abdallah Mohammed II Saadi lost his throne in 1576 and fled to Portugal.

After arriving, he asked for King Sebastian's assistance in defeating his Turkish-backed uncle and rival, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik I Saadi.

Philip refused to be party to the crusade as he was negotiating a truce with the Ottoman Empire, though he promised a contingent of Spanish volunteers.

The Portuguese army of 17,000 men, including a significant number of foreign mercenaries hired from the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Spain, and the Italian States,[18] and almost all of the country's nobility, sailed at the beginning of June from Lisbon.

At Arzila, Sebastian joined his ally Abu Abdullah Mohammed II, who had around 6,000 Moorish soldiers and, against the advice of his commanders, marched into the interior.

Whether his body was ever found is uncertain, but Philip II of Spain claimed to have received his remains from Morocco and buried them in the Jerónimos Monastery in Belém, Lisbon, after he ascended to the Portuguese throne in 1580.

His insistence on continuing the reconquista (the Christian reconquest of Iberia from its Islamic rulers) into Morocco led not only to his death but ultimately to the end of the House of Aviz.

[22]Anthony R. Disney, one of the foremost recent scholars of Portuguese history in English commented on the other hand that: Sebastião was one of the most extraordinary monarchs that Portugal ever produced.

Ascending the throne in an atmosphere of great emotion, he was widely acclaimed as the answer to his subjects’ prayers and a prince who would save his country’s independence.

Two decades later, he achieved precisely the opposite, dying heroically but unnecessarily on the distant North African battlefield of Al-Ksar al-Kabir on 4 August 1578, leaving no heir to succeed him.

These legends were vigorously promoted through the massive circulation of popular rhymes (trovas) written by António Gonçalves de Bandarra.

While on an archeological journey through the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco in 1923, the renown Portuguese archeologist, heraldist, and geneologist Afonso de Dornellas was informed by the minister of finance El Hach Abd Selam Ben El Arbi Benuna that "there were Portuguese here of such breadth that for many leagues in distance they were spoken of with respect and admiration by the Arabs.

If there were ancestors of mine with names recorded in history as worthy warriors it's because they fought those Portuguese" and that "for a king to leave his greatness, his life of luxury, of glamour and to embark en masse with his people to fight here for their faith" had set a high example at a time when Morocco had just reunifed after a long period of violent internal conflict over petty disputes, though Benuna was surprised to learn that the Portuguese are unsure whether the bones in Belém are his.