Queen Maria II of Portugal (Rio de Janeiro, 4 April 1819 – Lisbon, 15 November 1853) was the first-born child of Pedro I (1798-1834) and Maria Leopoldina (1797-1826), Emperor and Empress of Brazil and King and Queen of Portugal. Her paternal grandfather was João VI (1767-1826), King of Portugal, and her maternal grandfather was Francis I (1768-1835), Emperor of Austria (also known as Francis II, last Holy Roman emperor). She was, successively, Princess of Beira (1819-1822), Princess Imperial of Brazil (1822-1825), Princess of Grão-Pará (1825-1826) and Queen of Portugal (1826-1853).
She was born in Rio de Janeiro, where the Portuguese court was located at the time, at a moment when Europe and America were undergoing deep transformations. In 1826, at six years old, following the abdication of her father, she became Queen of Portugal, a country she had never been to and where she would only disembark eight years later, after a long and hard fight for the throne. Victory won, there was no calm after the storm, and Queen Maria II found herself at the epicentre of almost two decades of political upheaval, which saw three constitutional texts, various revolutions and coups d’état, some successful and others not so, and even a new civil war.
At the same time, she managed to create a happy home. After her marriage to Auguste of Leuchtenberg (1810-1835), which only lasted two months, in 1835, she married another Prince of German origin, who went down in the history of Portugal as King Ferdinand II (1816-1885). She was the mother of eleven children, seven of whom reached adulthood – including Kings Pedro V (1837-1861) and Luís I (1838-1889) – and was greatly concerned with their education. Perhaps she would have preferred the simple role of wife and mother, like other women of the aristocracy or upper bourgeoisie of the time. When, at the dawn of the 1850s, political stability was finally established in Portugal, with the so-called Regeneration, the Queen was not given the peace she deserved. It was said that she was born destined for war, not peace. At 34 years of age, she died giving birth to her eleventh child, who, like her, did not survive. Queen Maria II, who had waged so many battles, did not, in the end, have the energy to win her last. It was the year 1853. Portugal has never again had a woman as head of state.
Courageous, strong, decisive, determined, impulsive, pragmatic, totally aware of her royal prerogatives, accused by many of being haughty and arrogant, the name of Queen Maria II is inextricably linked to the triumph of liberalism and, at the same time, the political unrest experienced by Portugal in the first half of the 19th century.
Paulo Drumond Braga
