By cable to the Chicago Tribune
The life of the Dowager Queen Maria Pia, grandmother of King Manoel of Portugal, has been "encompassed with romance and tragedy." Along with the other members of the Portuguese Royal Family, Maria Pia is a fugitive from the country. Maria Pia's mind "has given away under the terrible events" that led to the royal family fleeing the country following the revolution that brought down the Braganza monarchy.
Queen Maria Pia is the daughter of the "great" King Victor Emanuele II of Italy. She was born in 1847 and was named after Pope Pius IX, who her father asked to be her godfather. The pope accepted the honor "with pleasure."
Victor Emanuele desired to see Italy free "from all foreign dominion," but had not yet "conceived the idea of being himself one day ruler of United Italy." The ties between the papacy and the Kingdom of Sardinia were very close, and which in turn lead to further integration of an Italian kingdom.
Princess Pia was "not quite 15 years old" when she married King Luis of Portugal in 1862. She would visit her homeland for occasions of great events, such as the marriage of her older brother, Umberto, to his cousin, Princess Margherita.
She nursed her "father in his dying moments," which seemed to be the "saddest event that could happen in her life. She was widowed in 1889. Her brother, King Umberto was murdered in 1900, and eight years later, she was deprived of her son, King Carlos, and her eldest grandson, Crown Prince Luis Filipe, by "assassination in Lisbon."
Now the elderly queen and the remaining members of her family, "is a fugitive from the land of her adoption."
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