[citation needed] In 1925, at the age of eighteen, Maria Pia of Braganza married Francesco Javier Bilbao y Batista, a Cuban playboy twenty years her senior.

The union proved much happier and together they had a daughter, Maria da Glória Cristina Amélia Valéria Antónia Blais de Saxe-Coburgo e Bragança,[5] born in 1946.

This work, written in Spanish and published under the name "Hilda de Toledano", is a defence of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who was living in exile at the time.

[citation needed] In 1954, Maria Pia wrote Un beso y ... nada más: confidencia consciente de una pecadora inconsciente (A Kiss and ...

[citation needed] In 1957, Maria Pia wrote Mémoires d'une infante vivante (Memoirs of a Living Infanta) published in Paris by Del Duca.

It marks the first attempt of Maria Pia to receive widespread public recognition for her claim that she was the bastard daughter of King Carlos I of Portugal.

Instead, Maria Pia of Braganza suggests that the rightful heir to the Portuguese throne should be Princess Isabelle d’Orléans, eldest child of Henri, Count of Paris.

[citation needed] For at least several decades Maria Pia had claimed to be the bastard daughter of King Carlos I, and even to be entitled to the style "Her Royal Highness" and the title "Infanta".

It was not, however, until 1957 that she claimed to be the rightful queen of Portugal in succession to Manuel II, the son of Carlos I (and the purported half-brother of Maria Pia) who had died childless in 1932.

[citation needed] On July 15, 1957, a group of ten Portuguese monarchists published a petition asking Maria Pia to claim the throne.

In 1958 she went to Portugal where she was received by the President Francisco Craveiro Lopes; the Prime Minister, António de Oliveira Salazar, however, refused to meet her.

[5] Maria Pia of Braganza played on the rivalry in monarchist circles between the Miguelists and the constitutionalists, presenting herself as the "constitutional" (i.e. liberal) candidate.

The support given to Salazar by Miguel's heir at the time, Duarte Nuno, in the 1950s enabled Maria Pia of Braganza even more to represent herself as the liberal and democratic claimant to the Portuguese throne.

She claimed that for many years she maintained an ongoing friendship with the exiled King Alfonso XIII of Spain and his son Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia, and this was confirmed by the first wife of the latter, Emanuela de Dampierre.

[5] In October 1966 Duarte Nuno petitioned an ecclesiastical court of the Diocese of Madrid-Alcala to remove the name of King Carlos from the baptismal certificate of Maria Pia.

On December 6, 1972, the court dismissed the claim, on the grounds that Duarte Nuno did not have legal standing in the case, being only the second cousin twice removed of King Carlos.

The court did not address the primary question of whether there was sufficient evidence for Carlos being Maria Pia's father and thus named as such on the baptismal certificate.

[citation needed] Had the Roman Rota found in favour of Duarte Nuno, his supporters could have said that the court had determined that Carlos was not Maria Pia's father.

[citation needed] In 1982 Maria Pia filed a claim for the restitution of the private real property of the Royal House of Portugal.

On December 2, 1985, Maria Pia signed a document purporting to amend the Portuguese Monarchic Constitution of 1838, and recognising Rosario Poidimani as her eventual heir.

In fact, most of the letters cited by Maria Pia in support of her claim were simply courteous replies by royals to her numerous queries and salutations.

[5] Traditionally, the only way in which an illegitimate child of a Portuguese monarch could have been made legitimate and take his or her place in the line of succession was if his or her parents subsequently were married.