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El rey no quiso dar la corona al príncipe.

El rey no quiso dar la corona al príncipe.
The king refused to give the crown to the prince.
From Lesson 256:Meaning changes in the preterite vs. imperfect·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about El rey no quiso dar la corona al príncipe.

Why does no quiso translate to "refused" instead of "didn't want"?
The verb querer usually means "to want". In the imperfect tense (no quería), it simply describes an ongoing state: he didn't want to. But in the preterite tense, it talks about a specific completed action. If someone "didn't want" to do something at the exact moment it was time to act, it means they "refused" to do it.
What would the sentence mean if we used the imperfect no quería instead?
El rey no quería dar la corona would mean "The king didn't want to give the crown" describing his general attitude or ongoing feeling. It doesn't tell us if he eventually gave it or not, just how he felt. No quiso tells us he took the definitive action of refusing.
Why is the preterite of querer so irregular here (quiso)?
Querer belongs to a group of verbs with highly irregular stems in the preterite. Its stem changes completely to quis-. These verbs also use a special set of endings that don't require written accents, which is why it is quiso and not quisó.
Why is it al príncipe and not a el príncipe?
In Spanish, whenever the preposition a (to) is followed immediately by the masculine article el (the), they must combine into the contraction al. They are never written as two separate words unless El is part of a capitalized proper noun.

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