This is the 23rd instalment of #deanehistory.

“Don’t pub quiz me,” Emily Thornberry once famously declared to an interviewer who had the temerity to ask her about a statistic.

Unusually for someone renowned for being so closely in tune with the British public, this was an off note from Thornberry, as we love a pub quiz.

Today’s quiz question is: what’s the only city to have been a European capital, that isn’t in Europe?

The answer is Rio de Janeiro, & the explanation continues our occasional Portuguese #deanehistory theme.

Napoleon’s push into Iberia in what became known as the Peninsular War (and gave us the Die Hards) was going worryingly well (if you were Portuguese nobility, anyway). In 1807 the Portuguese monarchy, fearing the worst, decamped from Lisbon to Brazil.

They made Rio de Janeiro, some 5,000 miles away, capital of Portugal. Poor old Rio isn’t even capital of Brazil any longer (another pub quiz favourite – it’s Brasilia of course, which I *always* typo as Brazilia as that was the name of the “nightclub” in my home town).

But for a time Rio was capital to both Portugal & Portuguese America.

When the war was over, there were understandable calls for the monarchy to return home. Surely the realm could permanently not be run from a colony!

The problem was that everyone at Court… rather liked Rio.

John VI therefore promptly upgraded Brazil to a Kingdom. So there! It wasn’t a monarchy running things from another colony after all! Long live the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil & the Algarve! What a holiday destination sweep title.

Unsurprisingly, nobody bought this. You’ve got to come back, John. We’re Portugal. You run Portugal. That’s how it works. John dragged it out, but in the end, facing a potential revolution at home no less, a mere 7 years after the end of hostilities, Court returned to Lisbon.

John left his son Prince Pedro to tend to Brazil's interests as Regent. He took this responsibility for Brazil’s future rather more seriously than his father might have expected.

A year after John left, Pedro declared Brazil independent, renamed himself Emperor, established his capital at… Rio, & generally waved two fingers towards faraway Europe & faraway father.

Today’s lesson is that Daddy issues play an often underestimated part in the fates of nations.

(Lest I be accused of twisting facts for a punchline, I acknowledge that history shows that Pedro to have hated his mother far more.)