Mary del Priori

Mary Del Priore is a historian and has a post-doc degree from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales from Paris. She is the author of over 50 books on Brazilian History and taught at several Brazilian Universities. With over 20 Brazilian and international literary prizes, among them three Jabutis, she hosts a radio program on CBN, Rios de História (History Rivers), and collaborates with several academic and non academic newspapers and magazines.
Two of her books, D. MARIA I, about the Brazilian/Portuguese queen D. Maria, and O MAL SOBRE A TERRA (EVIL ON EARTH), about the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, were published in Portugal, by Leya and PRH respectively.
SECRETS OF A ROYAL FAMILY: THE PORTUGUESE IMPERIAL FAMILY IN EXILE (SEGREDOS DE UMA FAMÍLIA IMPERIAL)
On November 15th 1889, the last empire of the Americas fell. Victim of a military coup, the Orléans and Bragança family was exiled to France. The Countess d’Eu, with her husband, the Count of Eu, and their three young sons, Pedro, Luis and Antônio, left their dream of a Third Empire in Brazil. In Europe, they had to face and adapt to economic difficulties and much more: the life of the decadent French nobility in France; the secularization of society;militarized education steeped in radical Catholicism for the princes. But they also traveled a lot from India to the United States. These experiences coincided with unsuccessful attempts at monarchist resistance and the Restoration. Tensions between parents and children grew. Faced with authoritarian parents who wanted to decide the fate of their children, the sons reacted in different ways. Lois, the middle son, was the protégé, and his parents did everything they could to win back the Crown for him. He served briefly in World War I on the side of the British, but his ambition was cut short by a degenerative and deadly disease.
Antonio, the rebellious dauphin, plunged into the Crazy Years and died in a plane crash after the Armistice was signed. The heir to the throne, Pedro, was born with a defect in his arm and had to live with the scorn of his parents, who made him give up the throne in exchange for marrying the woman he loved. Three lives, three fates, and it was the firstborn who didn’t want to be king who brought his family back to Brazil. This is the story of characters who led lives going from a sleepy Empire to the greatest conflicts of the XX century. And how they faced the challenges with passions that were all too human.

Publication/Status: Published by Planeta (Brazil) in September 2024. [240 pages]