Infanta Antónia of Portugal


Infanta Antónia of Portugal also known as Antónia of Braganza, was a Portuguese infanta of the House of Braganza. She was the daughter of Queen Maria II of Portugal and her King consort Ferdinand II of Portugal. Through her father, she also held the titles of Princess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duchess of Saxony.

Life

Antónia was born in 1845 at the Palace of Belém, she was the sixth child of eleven, and the third girl. She married Leopold, Prince of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen on 12 September 1861. They had three sons;
Princess Marie of Edinburgh, her daughter-in-law, described her appearance in her memoirs:
"Antonia, or Antoinette, had been one of the great beauties of her time; one of those old-fashioned, classic-featured beauties, whom one associates with the crinoline. Her profile was Grecian, her shoulders sloping, her hands long and delicate, her feet very small and useless. But her figure somehow could not fit in with the clothes of the day, there was a disproportion between the bust and the legs. The crinoline was missing. Superbly aristocratic, she moved slowly with a curious swinging of the hips. She loved fine clothes and jewels and, though leading almost an invalid's life, was always very smartly dressed." Later, Marie also wrote on their complicated relationship and views on her mother-in-law's character: "She was a curious mixture of dignity and childish futility, vain, self-centered, small in her judgements of others. She lived so protected, so out of the world, hedged in by her Church, nursing her delicate health, everybody serving her, spoiling her, she was more like an exigent child than a woman who had lived a real woman's life. I really think she liked me then, but there was also something else in this; I was to be shown off as a favourite to spite Mädi, her eldest daughter-in-law."
Antónia of Braganza died in the German Empire in 1913.

Honours and awards