Historical accounts and cultural depictions, such as Carla Camurati’s 1995 film "Carlota Joaquina, Princess of Brazil"
It was in Rio that Carlota Joaquina truly assumed her role as . Rio ceased to be a colonial backwater and became the capital of the Portuguese Empire. For the Princess, this was not an exile; it was an opportunity. Carlota Joaquina- Princesa do Brazil
She returned to a Portugal torn by civil war, where she sided with her absolutist son, Dom Miguel, against her more liberal son, Dom Pedro I of Brazil. She died in 1830, a bitter, scheming, and forgotten relic of a vanished era. Historical accounts and cultural depictions, such as Carla
As , she was one of the first royal women in the Americas to conceive of a genuinely transatlantic, independent power base. She understood the fragility of the Spanish and Portuguese empires and tried to carve out her own kingdom. Her failure paved the way for the independence movements she sought to prevent. By destabilizing her husband’s government and humiliating the British diplomats, she inadvertently weakened monarchical authority in Rio—creating space for the very ideas of revolution that would lead to Brazil’s independence in 1822. She returned to a Portugal torn by civil
Back in Portugal, she refused to live under the same roof as Dom João. She settled in the Palácio de Ramalhão in Sintra, from where she continued to conspire. She aligned herself with Portugal’s most absolutist factions, plotting to reclaim Dom João’s throne (which she believed he had weakened by accepting a liberal constitution). She even supported her younger son, Dom Miguel, in a rebellion against her own husband.