Faro was at that time the last part of the Kingdom of the Algarve still in Muslim hands, and there her father was the Qadi.
[1] She was christened in time,[2] receiving her new name as Maior Afonso, or Mor Afonso, Mor being short for Maior, a common female name in medieval Portuguese.
Duarte Nunes de Leão, a Portuguese royal chronicler of the 16th century, said that Madragana was a Moor (Arab-Berber).
[7][8][9][10] Nonetheless, this supposed Moorish connection gave rise to a claim by Mario de Valdes y Cocom that the British royal family had African ancestry via the 15-generation descent of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of George III of the United Kingdom,[11] from Madragana, giving Charlotte what the proponent described as a "conspicuously Negroid" appearance.
[12] However, it is far from clear that Madragana's family was of recent African origin,[13] nor is it likely that, even were she North African, Madragana's negligible contribution to Charlotte's genetic makeup would have caused the Queen alone, among all of Madgarana's descendants, this number of generations removed, to display distinctive Sub-Saharan African features.