I found some interesting and terrible things about Maria I. Her Madness appears to have been fairly common in this family. If anyone could post any other pictures of this Family I would appreciate it.....and what other sources could you recommend?
Within a royal family that has been dominated by inbreeding and madness for centuries, Maria I of Portugal (1734-1816) was the first and maddest Queen regnant. When her loved ones died one after the other, she began suffering from delusions. The most agonising shrieks echoed through the palace corridors..
Maria was a daughter of King Joseph I of Portugal (1714-1777) and Mariana of Spain (1718-1781). Many of Maria's relatives suffered from religious mania and melancholia. Maria's maternal grandfather was Philip V of Spain (1683-1746), who was periodically afflicted by fits of manic depression, sometimes lethargic, at others passionate and excitable. Grandfather Joao V In his more lucid periods he was driven by two obsessions: sex and religion, and as a result, torn between desire and guilt. Maria's paternal grandfather, Joao V of Portugal (1689-1750, to the right), was also highly sexed and religious, choosing nuns to be his mistresses. From 1742 onwards, Joao V suffered from a physical illness and gradually he, too, sank into a deep melancholia. Near the end of his life Joao V had left the government in the hands of incompetent advisors, mostly churchmen. After his death Maria's father, Joseph I, busied himself with hunting and playing cards, while Portugal was governed by Sebastiao José de Carvalho e Melo (1699-1782), who received the title of Marquis of Pombal in 1770. Despite his enlightened reform, Pombal's reign was a reign of terror, arousing social discontent. Portugal's prisons were soon crowded with noblemen and priests.
In 1760, Maria was married at the age of 25 to her 42-year-old uncle Pedro (1717-1786). Despite the age difference their marriage was quite happy. The couple was very pious and visited several masses every day. Maria also loved to take part in Church ceremonies to celebrate the salvation of converts. Pedro had inherited the palace of Queluz, but he had it torn down and started constructing a pink miniature Versailles, which wasn't completed until 1794. There, the couple lived and brought up their children. Only three of the seven survived their early years: Joseph (1761-1788), Joao (1767-1826) and Mariana (1768-1788). Pombal arranged that his adherents educated Maria's eldest son, because he knew Maria was opposed to his policy.
An earthquake, followed by a tidal wave, hit Lisbon in 1755 and 30,000 people were killed. Although the Royal family was in Belém at the time of the earthquake, for a long time Joseph I refused to enter any of his surviving palaces, preferring to live in a tent. One evening in September 1758 Joseph returned to Belém and his coachmen, finding a gate jammed, took a side road. Suddenly, three mounted men appeared under the darkness of an arch and fired several shots at the Royal carriage. The King was hit in the arm and ordered the coachman to drive straight to his surgeon at Junqueira, thus avoiding a second ambush. Joseph was treated for bullet-wounds in his arm, shoulder and chest. Rumours circulated that he had been ambushed by the Távora family. The Marquis of Távora was an enemy of Pombal and his daughter-in-law was one of Joseph's mistresses. Nothing more was heard of the affair until December, when the Távoras, the Duke of Aveiro, a few other nobles and a number of jesuits were arrested. Confessions were produced under torture and later retracted, but the Marquis and his second son withstood the torture and revealed nothing. On a public scaffold the elder Marchioness of Távora and her two sons were beheaded. The old Marquis and the Duke of Aveiro had their bones broken and the whole scaffold was set alight. Thus Pombal removed all resistance to his rule, while the King remained passive and idle.
A statue of Joseph mounted on a horse was inaugurated on a great square in rebuilt Lisbon in 1775. The next year, Joseph suffered from a stroke that deprived him of speech and his wife assumed the regency. Before his death in February 1777, he married Maria's eldest son, 16-year-old Joseph, to Maria's younger sister, 30-year-old Benedita (1746-1829). Mercifully, this incestuous marriage remained barren.
Husband-uncle Pedro III At Maria's accession, her husband-uncle Pedro III (to the right) was given the title 'King', coins were struck in their joint names and all acts and deeds mentioned them both, but the Queen was the real sovereign and her uncle-husband only her consort. Maria dismissed Pombal, amnestied his political prisoners, including the surviving Távoras1, and recalled all exiles except the Jesuits. Maria's rule soon calmed the discontent among the nobility, but her conscience was sorely tried. She found it difficult to undo things that were done in her father's name, but she also thought her father's soul might be suffering eternal torment for having permitted Pombal to persecute Christ's representatives on earth. Once, in 1780, Maria scratched out her signature exclaiming that she was "condemned to very hell". She was carried off to her apartments in a state of delirium. By 1786, the Queen's behaviour had become increasingly odd.
Pedro was chiefly concerned with prayers and masses. A contemporary noted that Pedro talked much about goodness and justice, but that he had no knowledge of mankind or business and that he was easily governed by those immediately around him, especially if they belonged to the church. Apparently, he was also unable to read or write. Still, Maria and Pedro were deeply devoted to each other and Maria suffered intense grief at his death in March 1786. Royal festivities were banned, and state receptions resembled religious ceremonies. Two years later, their eldest son, Joseph, died of smallpox2. Maria's only surviving daughter Mariana died two months later. In the same year Maria's confessor and chief minister both died, too.
Maria had always shown a tendency toward religious mania. When her loved ones died one after another, she retreated into uncontrollable grief and melancholia. She was afflicted by stomach pains, depression, fever and insomnia. The melancholy fits and recurring nightmares increased. Reports of the revolution in France further disturbed her. The Queen's courtiers, who had been rotting for years in prison, were vengeance-obsessed and often half-crazed, and their presence did not much to enlighten the atmosphere at court.
Around 1790, Maria sank into a state of permanent melancholia. The English author William Beckford visited the pink palace and reported: "Queen Maria, fancying herself damned for all eternity, therefore on the strength of its being all over her, eats barley and oyster stew Fridays and Saturdays and indulges in conversations of a rather unchaste nature." She fancied she saw her father's image "in colour black and horrible, erected on a pedestal of molten iron, which a crowd of ghastly phantoms were dragging down.".
