What conflicting info The shortest reign is believed to be that of Luis Filipe of Portugal who was assassinated at the same time as his father on 1 February 1908 He could thus be claimed to have been King of Portugal for 20 minutes 1 However the Portuguese monarchy lacked automatic succession and so any claim that he was de facto king does not hold up to scrutiny This appears to be a case where someone has corrected something without realising how dumb it ends up sounding If I m reading it correctly it s saying Luis Filipe was the shortest serving head of state Actually we kid he was never the head of state so he can t have been the shortest serving The article then gives no hint as to who was the shortest serving head of state who actually served