page_title: Maria II of Portugal
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Maria II of Portugal / Consolidation / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Funeral of Queen Maria II of Portugal, 1854. Português: Funeral de D. Maria II de Portugal, 1854.
context_page_description: Dona Maria II "the Educator" or "the Good Mother", reigned as Queen of Portugal from 1826 to 1828, and again from 1834 to 1853. Born in Rio de Janeiro, she was the first child of Emperor Pedro I of Brazil and of his first wife, Empress Maria Leopoldina, and thus a member of the House of Braganza. One of the two surviving children born when Pedro was still heir apparent to Portugal, she inherited Portuguese titles and was placed in the line of succession to the former Portuguese throne, even after becoming a member of the Brazilian Imperial Family, from which she was excluded in 1835 after her definitive ascension to the Portuguese throne.
context_section_description: From her first pregnancy, at the age of eighteen, Maria II faced problems in giving birth, with prolonged and extremely difficult labor. An example of this was her third gestation, whose labor lasted 32 hours, after which a girl was baptized in articulo mortis with the name of Maria (1840).
  At 25 years of age and in her fifth gestation, the sovereign became obese and her births became even more complicated. In 1847, the fetal distress that preceded the birth of her eighth child – the Infante Augusto, Duke of Coimbra – brought to the world a child "quite purple and with little breathing".
  The dangerous routine of successive pregnancies, coupled with obesity (which eventually caused her heart problems) and the frequency of dystocic births (worrisome, especially as a multiparous woman) led doctors to warn the queen about the serious risks she would face in future pregnancies. Indifferent to the warnings, Maria II merely replied: "If I die, I die at my post."
  On 15 November 1853, thirteen hours after the onset of labor of the stillborn infant Eugenio, her eleventh child, Maria II died at the age of 34. The announcement of death was published in the Government Gazette of 16 November 1853:
  Paço das Necessidades, November 15, 1853, at half an hour after noon.
  Her Majesty the Queen began to notice announcements of childbirth at nine-thirty on the night of the day. Difficulties appeared in the progress of the same childbirth, which forced the doctors to resort to operations, for which the extraction of an infant was obtained, of time, which received the baptism before being extracted.
  
  The result of these operations took place at ten o'clock in the morning. Unfortunately, after an hour and a half, Her Majesty, exhausted from all strength, declared "I surrender my soul to God after having received all the sacraments."
  In a letter dated 28 November 1853, the Duchess of Ficalho, the queen's maid, reported the outcome to her brother, the 2nd Earl of Lavradio:
  At two o'clock after midnight from the 14th to the 15th, I was ordered to go to the Palace, where I arrived at about three o'clock. I found the Empress in the Queen's room, where I immediately entered, thinking Her Majesty troubled and even little then we left the immediate room and asked Teixeira what he thought, telling us: "Your Majesty is going well, but slowly." I did not like it, and it was like that, until Teixeira called the doctors, who were out and who had not seen the Queen, and as soon as they examined her, the horrible operation was decided: the doctors were Teixeira, Farto, Kessler, Elias and Benevides. Kessler immediately dismissed the case as very dangerous. The operation was begun. I climbed onto the bed. On the right side, the Empress, full of tears; the Queen, with no fainting, but with a very bad opinion, and, complaining that she was suffering enough, said in her natural voice: "O Teixeira, if I am in danger, tell me, do not deceive me."
  Queen Maria II is remembered as a good mother and a kind person who always acted according to her convictions in her attempt to help her country. She was later given the nickname "The Good Mother."
caption: Arrival of the funeral procession of Maria II to the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora.
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