Short answers, pulled from the story.
Ferdinand VII was called el Deseado, meaning the Desired One, before 1813, when Spaniards longed for his return from French captivity. After his restoration to power he became known as el Rey Felón, the Criminal King, because of his suppression of liberal reforms, his persecution of editors and writers, and his repeated betrayals of constitutional promises.
Ferdinand VII abdicated on the 6th of May 1808 after Napoleon pressured him, and Napoleon then installed his own brother Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain. Ferdinand was kept under guard for six years at the Château de Valençay in France, a property belonging to Talleyrand, Napoleon's former foreign minister.
The Liberal Triennium, known in Spanish as the Trienio Liberal, was a three-year period of liberal rule beginning in 1820 after Rafael del Riego led a successful military uprising and forced Ferdinand to restore the Constitution of 1812. Ferdinand was quickly taken prisoner. The liberal period ended in 1823 when French forces under Louis XVIII invaded Spain and restored Ferdinand to absolute power.
In 1821, Agustín de Iturbide and Juan O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba and intended to offer Ferdinand VII the crown of the First Mexican Empire. Ferdinand refused because he would not recognise Mexican independence and would not be bound by a constitution. He also declared that no European prince could accept the Mexican throne, causing the crown to pass to Iturbide instead.
In May 1830, Ferdinand VII published the Pragmatic Sanction, which restored the right of daughters to succeed to the Spanish throne. The decree had been approved by the Cortes in 1789 but never officially promulgated. When his daughter Isabella was born on the 10th of October 1830, she displaced his brother the Infante Carlos, whose refusal to accept this led directly to the Carlist Wars after Ferdinand's death in 1833.
Ferdinand VII declared all Spanish Freemasons to be traitors on the 4th of May 1814, viewing Freemasonry as a vehicle for liberal revolution and an enemy of the Crown and the Catholic faith. He endorsed a decree against Freemasonry by Pope Pius VII and made it an edict of the Spanish Inquisition. During the Ominous Decade that followed the Liberal Triennium, members who refused to renounce Freemasonry were hanged.