Isabella II of Spain

Isabella inherited the Spanish crown a month before her third birthday in 1833 after her father Ferdinand VII issued the Pragmatic Sanction to overturn male-only succession. Her uncle Carlos rejected a female sovereign outright, triggering the Carlist Wars that shadowed her childhood regency. She took personal rule at thirteen in 1843, presiding over a constitutional monarchy riddled with palace intrigue, military coups, and barracks conspiracies. Her marriage to Francisco de Asís was miserable, her rumored affairs a persistent scandal. In September 1868 a naval mutiny in Cádiz sparked the Glorious Revolution; her forces fell to Marshal Serrano and she fled to France. She abdicated formally in 1870 for her son Alfonso, who reclaimed the throne in 1874 after a republic collapsed. She returned briefly to Spain but spent her final decades in France, dying in Paris in 1904.