While Dom João opened Brazil’s ports to friendly nations (the British) and founded factories, libraries, and the Bank of Brazil, Carlota retreated to the Quinta da Boa Vista , a palace she would transform into a center of intrigue. She despised her husband’s Anglophilia and his dependence on the British diplomat Lord Strangford. Instead, she saw Brazil as a base from which to launch a personal campaign to conquer the Spanish Empire.

Her greatest failure came with the so-called “Carlota War” – her failed attempts to seize control of Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Her plans were bold, but her execution was chaotic. Her emissaries were arrested, her letters intercepted. The fierce, independent leaders of the Spanish colonies had no interest in swapping one distant monarch for another, especially one as notoriously difficult as Carlota. Her empire was a fantasy, a castle built of parchment and spite.

Her husband and his ministers were horrified. An attack on Spanish territories would break the fragile alliance with Britain (which was fighting Napoleon in Spain) and plunge Portugal into an unnecessary war. For years, the Brazilian court was divided: the "Joanine" party (loyal to the Prince Regent) and the "Carlotist" party (loyal to the Princesa).

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.

She arrived in Rio de Janeiro like a storm. While the Portuguese court was still unpacking their finery and trying to recreate the grim formality of Lisbon’s Queluz Palace, Carlota was already plotting. She saw herself not as a Portuguese princess, but as the rightful Queen of Spain, whose throne had been usurped by Napoleon. From across the Atlantic, she began sending letters, secret emissaries, and frantic instructions to the Spanish resistance in Buenos Aires and Caracas. She demanded that Spanish colonies in the Americas swear allegiance to her , not to the puppet king Joseph Bonaparte.

Under the protection of the British Royal Navy, the entire Braganza court—estimated at 15,000 people—embarked on a harrowing voyage across the Atlantic. The journey was squalid and dangerous. Carlota Joaquina, heavily pregnant and seasick, was forced to endure the cramped conditions of the ship. Upon arrival in Salvador, and subsequently in Rio de Janeiro, the royal family found a colony unprepared to house a court.