Sergei Soloviev: Since "Ada" is also a novel in "alternative history" of some sort, it may be of interest that Josephine de Beauharnais was an ancestor to many modern royal families...
 
JM: There are various references  to Brazil in Ada: one of Marina's boyfriends  was called Pedro; the Mascodagama stunt suggest the Portuguese navigator, Vasco da Gama, whose adventures are told in the famous epic "Os Lusíadas" written by Camões); references to Wellington leading to a Portuguese heroine,  a Bela Ines, possible links to various Alphonse III and IV... )
I missed the Beauharnais link: Emperor Pedro I was married to Austrian princess Maria Leopoldina (  & her sister Marie Louise married Napoleon and bore him a son, Napoleon II). Amélia was his second wife. Such intrincate genealogies...    
 
( Wikipedia): Amélia, Empress of Brazil, Duchess of Leuchtenberg, was the granddaughter of Josephine de Beauharnais, Empress of the French. Her father, Eugène de Beauharnais, was the only male child of Empress Josephine and her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais and stepson of Napoleon Bonaparte, who admired his military qualities. The mother of Empress Amélie was Princess Augusta Amélia, daughter of Maximilian I, King of Bavaria.
Empress Amélia married Emperor Pedro I of Brazil (King Pedro IV of Portugal) in 1829. The Emperor, enchanted by Amélie's beauty, created in her honor to celebrate the occasion the Imperial Order of the Rose.After Pedro I abdicated the crown of Brazil in April 7, 1831, Amélie followed her husband back to Portugal, where he engaged himself in the battle against his brother Dom Miguel I for the Portuguese crown.
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