D. Maria I

By Luísa Viana de Paiva Boléo

Subjects: Biography, mental disease, madness, princess, Queens, prince, regency, royalty, biography, illness, Portugal, History, king, queen

Description: This book is a biography about the tragic life of queen Maria I of Portugal (1734-1816), also known as Maria the Mad. She was the first Queen regnant of Portugal. She survived the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, endured the Marquis of Pombal hostility and suffered from religious mania and melancholia. In only two years she lost her beloved husband, her eldest son, her daughter and her trusted confessor. These deaths and the French Revolution consequences made her mentally insane and incapable of handling state affairs after 1792. During the Napoleonic Wars, she and her family had to move to Brazil, where she died in 1816.