page_title: Amélie of Leuchtenberg
section_title: Widowhood and final years
hierarchical_section_title: Amélie of Leuchtenberg / Widowhood and final years
caption_attribution_description: English: Former Brazilian Empress Dona Amélie of Leuchtenberg with her daughter Dona Maria Amélia, Princess of Brazil (1831-1853)
context_page_description: Amélie of Leuchtenberg, was Empress of Brazil as the wife of Pedro I of Brazil.
  She was the granddaughter of Josephine de Beauharnais, Empress of the French. Her father, Eugène de Beauharnais, was the only son of Empress Josephine and her first husband Alexandre, Viscount of Beauharnais. He thus became a stepson of Napoleon Bonaparte when his mother married the future emperor. The mother of Empress Amélie was Princess Augusta, daughter of Maximilian I, King of Bavaria.
context_section_description: The venturesome life of Dom Pedro had undermined his health; he contracted tuberculosis, and died 24 September 1834. Amélie respected the provisions of his will. He had wished that Maria Isabel de Alcântara, Countess of Iguaçu, his illegitimate daughter by the Marchioness of Santos, be given a good European education like her sister, the Duchess of Goiás. However, the Marchioness declined to send the girl. Dom Pedro also stipulated legacies for his other illegitimate children, reducing the inheritance of Amélie and her own daughter; the provision showed that Dom Pedro loved all his children, legitimate or not.
  Amélie never remarried; she moved to the Palácio das Janelas Verdes ("Palace of Green Windows," also known as the Palácio de Alvor-Pombal, now housing Portugal's National Museum of Ancient Art) and dedicated herself to charitable works and to her daughter's education. Maria Amélia showed herself to be very intelligent and to be a talented musician. Occasionally, Amélie visited Bavaria with her daughter. Despite being established in Portugal, they were not considered part of the Portuguese royal family. Amélie solicited recognition for herself and her daughter as members of the Brazilian imperial family, thereby entitled to a pension, but Dom Pedro II was still a minor and the Brazilian Regency feared possible influence by the empress-widow Amélie in state business, as well as the possibility of her adherence to political factions that might harm the government. They refused to recognize her daughter Maria Amélie as a Brazilian princess and forbade her to set foot in the country. This situation changed when Dom Pedro II reached majority. His relations with them were good, and on 5 July 1841 Amélie and Maria Amélia were recognized as members of the Brazilian imperial family. Prior to that, Maria Amélia's status and place in the line of succession had been doubtful, because she was conceived in Brazil while her father, Pedro I, was still the emperor, but was born abroad, after his abdication, and Brazil's Constitution invested the Imperial Parliament to settle doubts pertaining to the imperial succession. Soon after the start of his personal reign, Pedro II requested that Parliament should recognize his sister's rights. On 5 July 1841, Pedro II finally signed into law the statute approved by the Brazilian Parliament, recognizing Maria Amélia as a Brazilian princess.
  Princess Maria Amélia became engaged to Archduke Maximilian of Austria (later Emperor Maximilian of Mexico) at the beginning of 1852, but shortly afterward began to show symptoms of tuberculosis. Because of the disease, she and her mother moved to Funchal, on Madeira Island, in search of healthier airs, arriving on 31 August 1852. Nonetheless, the princess died there of tuberculosis at the age of 22 on 4 February 1853. Her death profoundly affected her mother, who visited Maria Amélia's tomb every year on the anniversary of her death, and financed the construction of a still-extant hospital in Funchal named "Princesa Dona Maria Amélia", and left her properties in Bavaria to Archduke Maximilian, "whom [she] would have been happy to have as a son-in-law, if God had saved her beloved daughter Maria Amelia."
  After her daughter's death, Amélie settled again in Lisbon, where she died on 26 January 1873 at the age of 60. Under the terms of her will, her sister, Queen Josephine of Sweden, was her primary heir (receiving, among other things, the Braganza tiara), but many documents pertaining to Dom Pedro were willed to Brazil, where they reside in the Historic Archive of the Imperial Museum of Brazil in Petrópolis. Her remains were transported in 1982 to the crypt of the Monument to the Independence of Brazil in São Paulo.
caption: Amélie with her daughter, Princess Maria Amélia, 1840.
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