Princess Isabel of Brazil

Princess Isabel signed the law that abolished slavery in Brazil and lost her family's throne within eighteen months. She was the daughter of Pedro II and heir to the empire, educated far better than was usual for a nineteenth-century princess and formally recognised as successor after her brothers died in infancy. She served three times as regent while her father travelled in Europe, and on each occasion did something her father's ministers had avoided. In 1871 she signed the Law of Free Birth, which freed children born to enslaved mothers. In May 1888, as regent again, she signed the Lei Aurea - two sentences, without compensation to owners and without any provision for the freed - which ended slavery in the last country in the Americas to hold it, some seven hundred thousand people. Crowds filled the streets of Rio and the pope sent her the Golden Rose. The planters of Sao Paulo and Rio, who had financed the monarchy, withdrew from it immediately, and the army had its own grievances; a coup in November 1889 declared a republic and put the imperial family on a ship. She was aware of the cost when she signed and is recorded as saying that if there were a hundred thrones she would give them all to free the slaves. Her exile lasted thirty-two years, mostly in France. The republic's ban on the imperial family entering Brazil was lifted in 1920, a year before she died, and she never returned. Her remains were brought back to Petropolis in 1953.

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