[4] Given the dubious legitimacy of the will due to the possible violation of the inheritance rights of Antonio Alberico's grandnephews, [5] who were already alive at the time, and her consequently insecure position,[6] Ricciarda secretly appealed for Emperor Charles V's superior intervention in her favour.
Thus, on 16 July 1529, she succeeded in getting invested with the two fiefdoms suo jure, with a truly unusual imperial decree: in derogation of the Salic law, it gave her the right to transmit her titles not only to her male descendants, but, in their absence, also to females, always respecting the newly established principle of primogeniture.
With the backing of Cosimo I de' Medici and Andrea Doria, he seized power by force, occupying the lands of Massa and Carrara with troops led by his father Lorenzo.
[10] Ricciarda immediately appealed to the emperor, and Charles V decided to temporarily confiscate the marquisate placing it in the hands of his plenipotentiary in Italy, Ferrante Gonzaga, and then, at Giulio's request, in those of Cardinal Cybo.
[8] Giulio's recalcitrance in complying with the imperial decrees and the suspicions aroused in Cosimo I by his increasingly close ties with the Doria family, induced the Duke of Florence to have him arrested in Pisa on 17 March 1547 and to keep him in prison until the 20th when he finally accepted to place the marquisate in the hands of his uncle.
In fact, he kept on exerting heavy pressure upon his mother, with promises, threats and new acts of force, and, mainly thanks to the intercession of his uncle the Cardinal, he finally obtained the stipulation of an onerous contract with her for the purchase of government rights over the marquisate, remaining the sovereignty in her possession.
[11] At that time Andrea Doria was a very high magistrate ("perpetual censor") of the Republic of Genoa, an ally of Emperor and King of Spain Charles V, to whom the petty Massese state, as an imperial fief, was also linked by a bond of loyalty.
In January 1547, on the occasion of a revolt led by his brother-in-law Giovanni Luigi Fieschi,[12] he had not hesitated to send a small military expedition to help Doria; which, however, had been stopped along the way by the news of the failure of the rebellion.