, 1816 On 5 December 1827, she married Dom
Nuno José Severo de Mendonça Rolim de Moura Barreto, then
Marquis of Loulé and
Count of Vale de Reis, future
Duke of Loulé. Subsequently, he served several times as
Prime Minister of Portugal. The wedding was celebrated in a private ceremony in the chapel of the Royal
Ajuda Palace and was a
scandal at the time. Although Loulé was a
nobleman and remote descendant of Portugal's royal
dynasty,
Dona Ana de Jesus was the first infanta of Portugal since the
Middle Ages to marry a man who was not of royal rank. The reasons for the marriage were probably not political, considering the couple's first child was born on 27 December 1827, twenty-two days after the ceremony. The marriage proposal had been refused by D. Ana's father, King John VI, prior to his death in March 1826 (strictly, Portuguese law at the time only stated that the marriage of the
heir presumptive required the sovereign's consent, a position D. Ana never held). Nor were either of her brothers present in the country at the time of the wedding (both claimed the kingship from abroad). The designated
regent of the kingdom was D. Ana's elder sister,
Infanta Isabel Maria of Braganza, who was present in Lisbon. The marriage was not an
elopement, as the
royal family was aware of the couple's intention to marry and D. Ana's mother facilitated rather than sought to prevent the marriage before her daughter gave birth. With the restoration of
absolutism in Portugal in 1831, the couple went into
exile and began extended travel through Europe. They had several other children abroad. The marriage ended with a
de facto separation in 1835. The infanta died before her husband was created a duke (in 1862). D. Ana's heir, and the head of the
Loulé ducal line is her great-great-great-grandson D. Pedro Folque de Mendoça Rolim de Moura Barreto, 6th Duke of Loulé. He is considered by some to be the rightful
pretender to the defunct Portuguese throne by virtue of his ancestors' uninterrupted Portuguese citizenship and uninterrupted
domicile on
Portuguese soil. == Issue ==