Queen
As a queen, Maria Pia became known both for her extravagance and for her charity. She had a taste for luxury, parties, balls, fashion and masquerades; at a masquerade ball in 1865, she changed her costume three times. When the Portuguese parliament discussed the queen's excessive expenses, Maria Pia replied saying "if you want a queen, you have to pay for her".
Maria Pia of Savoy was also known in Portugal as "angel of charity" or "mother of the poor" for her compassion and work on social causes.
She did not involve herself in politics, but at a conflict with João Carlos Saldanha de Oliveira Daun, 1st Duke of Saldanha in 1870, she stated: "If I were the king, I would have him shot!"
Read more about this topic: Maria Pia Of Savoy
Famous quotes containing the word queen:
“Half-opening her lips to the frost’s morning sigh, how strangely the rose has smiled on a swift-fleeting day of September!
How audacious it is to advance in stately manner before the blue-tit fluttering in the shrubs that have long lost their leaves, like a queen with the spring’s greeting on her lips;
to bloom with steadfast hope that, parted from the cold flower-bed, she may be the last to cling, intoxicated, to a young hostess’s breast.”
—Afanasi Fet (1820–1892)
“I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round
Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.
A king and a queen are wandering there, and the sound
Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind
With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Just as the queen bee, the highest-ranking, peerless creature of her hive, is surrounded by lowly drones to please her, whereas the workers produce honey, the same way is the one who sits on the throne an equal only to himself, and no one’s companion.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)