On a June evening in 1769, a bride stood before the altar in Vienna while the groom remained three hundred miles away. The marriage had been decided long before by someone else entirely—the bride’s mother, Maria Theresa, the most powerful woman in Europe. The bride was twenty-three years old, an archduchess of Austria. The groom was eighteen, a duke of a small Italian state.

He did not attend his own wedding. The ceremony was performed by proxy, with a stand-in taking his place, and when the vows were complete, Maria Amalia of Austria was bound for life to Ferdinand of Bourbon, Duke of Parma and Piacenza. She had not wanted this. She had protested, refused, resisted.

Maria Amalia had fallen in love, and the man she loved was not Ferdinand. He was Prince Carl August of Palatinate-Zweibrücken, and her mother had no intention of allowing such a match. Maria Theresa had chosen Ferdinand years before, and the empress was not accustomed to being overruled. So her daughter married a man she had never met.

Weeks later, Maria Amalia left Vienna—her family, her home, her former life, and the man she had once loved. On the twenty-fourth of August, she arrived in Parma, where the young duchess was greeted with joyous celebrations. On the surface, her new life began in splendor. But the marriage itself got off to a difficult start.

It was said that Ferdinand could not consummate the marriage for three months, and his grandfather, King Louis XV of France, wrote to the young duke offering advice. For Maria Amalia, it was the beginning of a life full of contradictions. In public, she was the celebrated duchess. In private, she lived with a man she did not love.

They could hardly have been more different. Ferdinand was reserved and devout. Maria Amalia was volatile, proud, and impulsive. He was content with his quiet routines; she was restless and hungry for life.

For most of her existence, others had decided her fate. In Parma, Maria Amalia decided that she would decide for herself how to live. And that was exactly where the trouble began. She gave little regard to the strict rules of court.

She loved music, festivals, and theatrical performances, but above all she loved hunting. She took no notice of the formal distance expected between a duchess and her servants, maintaining an unusually friendly relationship with the household staff and even the ducal guard. This scandalized the courts of Europe, but in Parma it won her widespread affection. She was generous to the poor.

During a smallpox epidemic, she was said to have visited the sick personally, regardless of the risk of infection. In time she acquired a striking nickname: “La Mata,” the madwoman. She was especially fond of the Paganza estate, where she could ride and hunt while Ferdinand often stayed at Colorno. There she felt at ease.

There she flourished. There she found what she had long missed: freedom. But Maria Amalia went further than hunting and festivities. She wanted a voice in how Parma was governed.

This brought her into conflict with the powerful minister Guillaume du Tillot. When Ferdinand lost his support in France, Maria Amalia seized the opportunity. In September 1771, du Tillot was suspended and removed from office. Maria Amalia had won.

What happened in Parma did not go unnoticed in Vienna. Maria Theresa received reports about her daughter—her spending, her behavior, her interference in matters of government. In 1772, the empress responded. She dispatched twenty-three officers to Parma with instructions for her daughter.

Maria Amalia was to spend more time with Ferdinand. She was to live a more frugal life. She was to respect the ministers. Most importantly, she was to stay out of affairs of state.

Maria Amalia was twenty-six years old. She was a duchess, and her mother was still trying to control her, still trying to dictate how she should live. But Vienna was far away. Maria Amalia did not submit.

Others had decided her marriage years before. In Parma, she would determine her own path. There was a small prayer book, a gift she had prepared even before her first child was born, intended for the son she expected. In 1772, Ludwig was born, and Maria Amalia became a mother.

She supervised his upbringing with great care. Her children mattered to her deeply, and Ludwig in particular remained close to her. Her relationship with her own mother remained difficult. Maria Amalia defied Maria Theresa, yet her mother’s approval still meant something to her.

In 1778, she commissioned portraits of her four eldest children. On a table in the painting lay a letter addressed to Maria Theresa, the children’s grandmother. Perhaps it was an attempt to rebuild a bridge to Vienna. But there was little time left for reconciliation.

In 1780, Maria Theresa died. A true peace between mother and daughter was never achieved. Maria Amalia stayed in close contact with her two younger sisters, Maria Carolina and Marie Antoinette. The three women lived at different courts across Europe, and letters, portraits, and gifts kept them connected.

Then the French Revolution erupted, and the danger became immediate. In Paris lived Maria Amalia’s youngest sister, Marie Antoinette. In 1791, Marie Antoinette attempted to flee with Louis XVI. The escape failed.

From Parma, Maria Amalia could only watch. In a surviving letter, she thanked King Gustav III of Sweden for his help to the French royal family, while criticizing Louis XVI for not acting decisively enough. Then came 1793. In January, Louis XVI was executed.

Marie Antoinette was still alive. Maria Amalia feared for her sister and hoped for a fortunate end. Nine months later, that hope was gone. On the sixteenth of October, 1793, Marie Antoinette was executed.

Maria Amalia’s youngest sister was dead. Accounts say Maria Amalia fainted when she heard the news. Whether that is true or not, the death of her sister shook her profoundly. For years, letters had been the bond between them.

Now they had ceased forever. The Revolution had taken her sister’s life, and a few years later, it reached Parma itself. In 1796, Napoleon marched into Italy with his army. Maria Amalia and Ferdinand tried to keep Parma out of the war, but without success.

French troops entered the duchy, and the ducal couple was placed under surveillance at the palace of Colorno. Maria Amalia had once roamed the forests of Sala, where she found her freedom. Now she was watched in her own palace, and once again, others controlled her life. The rebel had become a prisoner.

She wrote to Vienna, pleading with her nephew, the emperor, for help. She waited, but no help came. In one letter, she described her situation herself: she felt like a prisoner in a cage she had built with her own hands. After Napoleon’s victory at Marengo in 1800, Parma finally fell under French control.

On the ninth of October, 1802, Ferdinand died—the man Maria Amalia had never chosen for herself. Their marriage had begun badly. They had often lived apart. And yet thirty-three years had passed between them: children, disputes, and a shared life in Parma.

On his deathbed, Ferdinand once again entrusted the government to his wife—but for only thirteen days. Then it was all over. Maria Amalia was forced to leave. She was fifty-six years old.

After Ferdinand’s funeral, she departed with her daughters and a few servants. Behind her lay the places where her children had grown up and the grave of her husband. A moving saying was attributed to Maria Amalia about this farewell: she left her little duchy with the same sorrow with which she had arrived. The phrase might well describe her fate.

After leaving Parma, Maria Amalia hoped to return to Vienna, the city where her life had begun. But she could not go back there either. Her nephew, Emperor Francis II, refused to allow her to settle permanently in Vienna. After a stay in Venice, she continued her journey.

In December 1802, she arrived in Prague—another foreign city. Maria Amalia did not isolate herself. She supported the needy and donated to charitable institutions. In early 1803, she traveled to Dresden, where her eldest daughter, Carolina, lived.

It was their last meeting. Maria Amalia had already lost several children at an early age. Now, within a few months, she lost two of her adult children. In 1803, her son Ludwig died of an epileptic seizure.

He was only thirty years old. Ludwig—the son to whom she had dedicated a small prayer book even before his birth. Now she had to bury her son. Only a few months later came the next news: Carolina was dead.

The daughter Maria Amalia had visited the previous year died in March 1804, after giving birth to her eighth child. She was thirty-three. Within a few months, Maria Amalia had lost two of her children. Marie Antoinette was gone.

Ferdinand was gone. Parma was lost. Now Ludwig and Carolina as well. Her own strength began to fail.

By the spring of 1804, her left hand was paralyzed. Soon she could hardly get out of bed. The woman who had once ridden through the forests of Sala could no longer stand. Her sisters Maria Elisabeth and Maria Carolina set out for Prague, but they arrived too late.

On the night of the eighteenth of June, 1804, Maria Amalia died at the age of fifty-eight. She was buried in a simple brown dress, holding a rosary and a small cross. She had brought the cross with her from Parma—the land she had never wanted to go to in her youth. She had lived there for thirty-three years.

Her children were born there. There she had hunted, celebrated, and rebelled against the rules. Then she had been forced to leave.

Maria Amalia died far from Parma, but something of her lost homeland remained with her, and she held onto it until the very last moment.