In the winter of 1807, as Napoleon’s army swept through Portugal, the royal court fled across the Atlantic to Brazil. For the Portuguese monarchy, it was a humiliating retreat. For one ambitious princess, it was the opportunity of a lifetime. .
Described as a monster by her critics, mocked for her appearance, and feared for her unyielding ambition, Carlota Joaquina earned a reputation as one of the most notorious and reviled queens in European historyicu. . Born Carlota Joaquina of Spain on April 25, 1775, she was the eldest surviving daughter of the future King Charles IV of Spain, who took the throne in 1788. An older brother had died before her birth, and although her mother, Maria Luisa of Parma, was still young when Carlota was born, the following years brought a series of family tragediesâwhile several daughters were born in good health, every subsequent son died in infancy.
This raised fears about the succession and meant that Carlota stood the line of inheritance for much of her childhood. Finally, a healthy son named Ferdinand was born in 1784, when Carlota was nine years old. . Perhaps that early awareness of her place in the succession awakened with Carlota a thirst for power that would shape her later life.
. She received a strict Catholic education, focused on what was considered proper instruction for a royal woman: history, geography, languages, drawing, sewing, and writing. It made her exceptionally educated and intelligent, though it did little to temper her mischievous and willful personalityknown. Behind the palace walls, however, family life was far from stable.
Carlota’s mother was a domineering figure atthe Spanish court, and rumors swirled about an affair with Spain’s chief minister, Manuel Godoy. This made her an outcast in Spanish society, and some of Carlota’s later bad reputation stemmedin part from the way she was treated with the same logic applied to her mother. On top of this dysfunctional court, Spain had been steadily declining as a great power since the mid–17th century, but it still clung toa vast colonial empire inthe Americas, stretching from California and Cuba south to Chile and Argentina. Thus, even after Ferdinand’s birth in 1784, Carlota retained an important status as the eldest daughter of the future king of Spain, making her one ofthe most valuable royal brides in Europe.
\n\nIn 1785, at just ten years old, she was married off at an age shocking even by 18th-century standards. This was merely the beginning of a marriage that would escalate into scandal, hatred, and political intrigue. \n\nSince the late 1770s, negotiations had been underway between the Spanish and Portuguese governments to marry Carlota to Dom João, second in line tothe Portuguese throne. João’s parents, who were uncle and niece, had taken the throne as co-monarchs of Portugal in 1777.
While Pedro III died in 1786, Maria I lived until 1816, meaning Carlota’s life was largely shaped by her relationship with her mother-in-law, the first queen to rule Portugal in her own right. \n\nThe marriage contract was finalized in 1785, anda proxy wedding was held in May of that year, weeks after Carlota turned ten. João wasthen 18 years old. Because of Carlota’s youth, it was agreed thatthe marriage would not be consummated until 1790, by which time she was considered old enough to conceive and bear children.
Yet just days after the proxy wedding, the ten-year-old princess was sent to Lisbon with a Spanish retinue, leaving her family behind years before the marriage truly began. \n\nShe was there forepresent atthe Portuguese court when the kingdom’s politics shifted in 1788. On September 11 of that year, her brother-in-law, the heir tothe throne Dom José, died of smallpox, making Carlota’s husband the new heir. Moreover, Queen Maria had long suffered from depression and was declared insane in 1792.
This meant Joaõ was expected to assume the role of regent and effective ruler starting inthe 1790s, making Carlota something of an unofficial queen consort froman early age. In recognition of their elevated status, João and Carlota took the titles of Prince and Princess of Brazil. \n\nDuring the 1790s and early 1800s, as Carlota became more prominent atthe Portuguese court, she became a target of mockery and hatred among court circlesand wider Portuguese society. She was seen as apower-hungry woman who did not understand the conservative court culture around her.
Raised inthe more lavish Spanish court, she struggled to adapt to the deeply religious, austere atmosphere of the Portuguese court. Her outspoken personality, political meddling, and unconventional public behavior for a royal woman fueled gossip and malicious rumors, which were only amplified by widespread anti-Spanish sentiment. Her behavior drew harsh criticism, but her appearance drew even fiercer attacksm. \n\nDuring her time in Lisbon, the French writer Junot, Duchess of Abrantes, left one ofthe most scathing descriptions of Carlota, writing: “Her ugliness, her filthy and tangled hair, her thin purple lips adorned with a thick mustache, and her teeth as uneven as Pan’s pipes…I could not convince myself that she was a woman, yet I knew the facts atthe time thatproved the exact opposite.
” The Duke, Jean-Andoche Junot, echoed these sentiments after arriving atthe Portuguese court, reportedly exclaiming:“My God, how ugly! My God, how ugly the princess is, how ugly they all are! ” French observers were not alone in these biting remarks. Contemporary accounts repeatedly described Carlota as short, with a smallpox-scarred face, aprominent hooked nose, anda distinctive“Bourbon jaw,” while some alsonoted her slightly stooped posture.
She was insome ways the antithesis of 18th-century royal beauty ideals. One particularly cruel later account even claimed she possessed“the most monstrous and bizarre head that ever walked the face of the earth. ”\n\nHer public image was only onesource of her misery. Behind closed doors, Carlota’s married life was also unhappy.
She and João had their first child together in 1793, adaughter named Maria Teresa. Eight more children followed over the next 13 years, only one of whom, Francisco Antônio, died at an early age. Despite the growing tensions intheir marriage, Carlota was known for her attentiveness toand care for her children’s health. Yet even her role as a mother was steeped in scandal, as persistent court rumors claimed João was not the father of all her children, with suspicion focusing particularly on her son Miguel.
These claims were never proven, but they added tothe climate of gossip and hostility that followed her throughout her life. \n\nThe marriage itself suffered from João’s lack of affection, and, more significantly, his increasingly erratic behavior. In an era when Enlightenment ideas and the French Revolution were sweeping across Europe, he developed a paranoid fear that revolution would reach Portugal. Court rumors even claimed he wandered the halls of the royal palace atnight insomething close toa delirium.
Bythe early 1800s, the royal marriage had devolved into open political warfare. \n\nIn 1805, when Carlota was thirty, she conspired to seize power from her husband, the prince regent, planning to arrest him and declare him unfit torule, justas had happened with his mother. The plot, however, was discovered, and her co-conspirators were arrested. Carlota escaped imprisonment only because João refused to expose the scandal publicly.
Instead, he exiled her to the palaces of Queluz and Ramalhão while he withdrew to Mafra, effectively ending their marriage. It was during this exile that she earned her infamous nickname“the she-wolf of Portugal. ”\n\nCarlota’s lifein Portugal, especially after 1806, was shaped by broader political developments in Western Europe. A few years after her marriage to João, the French Revolution broke outin 1789.
Initially amoderate revolution aimed at establishing aconstitutional monarchy, it gradually became more radical and eventually escalated intoa full-scale European warin 1792, gradually drawing nearly every power in Europe intothe conflict. Portugal was one ofthe exceptions. For centuries, the kingdom had tried to avoid becoming entangled inthe endless religious and dynastic wars of Europe. On the other hand, it had afragile alliance with England dating back tothe early 1660s, when Catherine of Braganza married King Charles II of England.
This meant Portugal had indeed joined the War of the First Coalition againstthe French in 1793, but it did not play amajor role inthe subsequent French Revolutionary Wars until the end of the 18th century. \n\nWhat changed things for Portugal and Carlota was the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and his conquest of avast swath of continental Europe between themid-1790s and themid-19th century. In 1807, after conquering Germany and Poland, Napoleon turned west and invaded Portugal, aiming to bring Iberia more firmly into his empire. He would, for example, make his brother Joseph king of Spain in 1808.
Before that happened, however, Portugal had already been occupied, and Carlota fled with the rest of the royal court and government across the Atlantic to establish agovernment in exile in Brazil, Portugal’s vast South American colony. After ahorrific voyage inthe winter of 1807,during which Carlota was forced to shave her head due to an infestation of lice aboard ship, the exiled Portuguese court finally arrived in Rio de Janeiro. She spent the next thirteen years in Brazil, but those years proved to be some of the most turbulent and politically ambitious periods of her life. \n\nIn South America, Carlota’s ambitions took center stage.
While her mother-in-law remainedthenominal ruler of Portugal and its colonial empire, events elsewhere in South America presented Carlota with an opportunity to expand her influence. Wars of independence were breaking out across the Spanish colonies inthe late 1800s after France took control of Spain itself in Europe. One faction inthe Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata even proposed making Carlota regent of the region, amovement known as“Carlotism. ” This made sense given that Carlota wasthedaughter of King Charles IV of Spain.
The scheme won the support of British Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, but it faced opposition fromher husband,the Portuguese government in exile, Spanish officials, and many local elites. Carlota also undermined her own chances by insisting on exercising the powers of an absolute monarch. While many of her supporters imagined her asa constitutional symbol, the movement gradually collapsed, and after the Latin American wars of independence,the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata eventually developed into the Republic of Argentina. \n\nCarlota’s timein Brazil was controversial in other ways as well.
She was disdainful of people, drank heavily, was allegedly accustomed to drinking marijuana tea, and was the subject of persistent rumors of an affair with aprominent Brazilian businessman. Yet amid the scandal came the moment she had long awaited. On March 20, 1816, Queen Maria I died at the age of81. At forty years old, Carlota finally attained the title she had waited decades for, becoming queen consort of Portugal.
But after finally gaining the crown, her major political battles were still ahead of her. \n\nBy the time they became king and queen, Portugal had long since been liberated, as the Portuguese and Spanish, with substantial British help, had driven the French out of the Iberian Peninsula in 1813 and 1814,following the collapse of Napoleon’s empire inthe wake of his ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812. Yet,the Portuguese royal court did not immediately return to Lisbon, even after Napoleon’s final fall inthe summer of1815. The delay stemmed from deep uncertainty about what kind of monarchy would be reestablished after the Napoleonic Wars.
That ambiguity finally came toa head with the Liberal Revolution of1820, when amilitary uprising demanded aconstitutional monarchy andforced the royal family to return to Portugal. On April 26, 1821, they left Brazil. According tothe Viscount of Porto Seguro, the feelings of the king and royal family upon leaving Brazil appeared inthe tears of everyone except the queen. Carlota, who had never enjoyed life in Brazil, was said to be delighted to leave.
One famous anecdote even claims that, before boarding the ship, she shook the dustfrom her shoes, declaring:“I will not take even the dust of this land with me. ”\n\nAfter returning to Portugal, João accepted the country’s first constitution in 1822. The constitution sought to end absolute rule in Portugal. It achieved only limited success, however, and was quickly abandoned in 1823.
Meanwhile, Brazil had broken away to become anindependent empire under Pedro, Carlota’s son, in1822, resulting inthe loss of acolony thatPortugal had relied on for its wealth throughout the 18th century. \n\nThe Liberal Revolution signaled the complex political situation that Carlota, her husband, and the rest of the royal establishment had returned toafter the Napoleonic Wars. A power struggle erupted in which Carlota allied herself with her younger son Miguel inan attempt to wrest control from her husband. João was briefly amuch a prisoner, but British intervention in1824 led to Miguel’s exile and the restoration of João and his supporters to control of the government.
João went on to rule until his death in March 1826, at the ageof58. It was something of amiracle that Carlota’s marriage had lasted until one of them died given the enmity between them, and she refused to visit him duringhis final illness. \n\nJoão’s death plunged Portugal into acomplex succession crisis. Miguel, the expected heir, was still in exile.
Meanwhile, as noted, his older brother Pedro was ruling the newly independent Empire of Brazil. Pedro briefly claimed the Portuguese throne before abdicating in favor of his young daughter, who became Queen Maria II in May of1826. Miguel later returned in1828 to seize the crown, with aplan to avoid civil war by marrying his niece, Queen Maria. That, however, never came to pass.
\n\nBythe time of this rapid succession of rulers between1826 and1828, Carlota had been sidelined from Portuguese politics. Despite Miguel’s earlier alliance with his mother, he did not summon her back to court after becoming king in1828. Instead, she spent her final years in bitterness and away from court life, living inthe countryside outside Lisbon atthe Queluz Palace. She died on January 7, 1830, at the age of54.
Bythat time, anew civil war had broken outand ended four years later with Miguel’s deposition. Miguel spent the remaining 32 years of his life in exile, with Queen Maria II restored tothe throne in1834. Carlota was initially buried in Sintra before her remains were transferredin1854 tobe buried beside her husband inthe royal pantheon of the House of Braganza in Lisbon. \n\nThough she had always aspired to greater power, Carlota spent her adult life atthe heart of one ofthe largest monarchies inthe world, as queen or princess regent of Portugal and its vast empire spanning Brazil, Africa, and Asia.
To her enemies, she was a foreign, ugly, scheming, and power-hungry queen. Toothers, she was an intelligent and determined woman who refused to accept the limitations imposed onroyal women of her era. Perhaps thetruth lies somewhere in between.
Either way, she remains one ofthe most controversial and fascinating queens inIberian history.