The European Royals Message Board: Official, but non-published

Indeed, I believe that you were the one who mentioned the fact that Parliament had actually changed the succession law in 1789 back to the original Castilian. However, although official, it was secret and non-published.

It's this sort of thing which often leads to confusion and succession disputes. You see this in other issues -- such as the conditions for dynastic marriages, in particular, the never-ending controversy surrounding Ebenbürtigkeit.

It came to the forefront, when in 1900 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, nephew and heir-presumptive to Emperor Franz Joseph, tried to dynastically marry the Bohemian Countess Sophie Chotek, who did not come from any house which was royal, reigning, or even mediatized. Moreover, she didn't even meet the "noble quartering", when it came to ancestry.

It was then that the emperor pulled out a copy of the Habsburg house laws regulating marriage and succession -- official, but not published. It stated explicitly the conditions for dynastic unions, and why Sophie didn't meet the requirements. As such, Franz Ferdinand had no choice but to settle for a morganatic marriage.

The archduke also demanded, on the occasion, that the emperor publish the documents -- so as to hold future generations accountable to it. Unfortunately, the present head of the house, Archduke Karl, didn't do a terribly good job of doing that ...

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The Pragmática was published before Princess Isabel was born.
And no ecographies at that time, you know.

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Carlist bastards ? Because D.Carlos refused to accept the Pragmatica his brother issued when he discovered he would not father a son ?

Well, you surely know that, as soon as he grabbed the spanish throne via a female, the arrivist Bourbon Felipe V cut any oportunity for a female to inherit the throne and, monkey sees, monkey does, he introduced in Spain the french salic law.

D.Carlos was his brother's heir until Fernando VII decided otherwise, cutting his legitimate expectations with a signature.
D.Carlos was not amused with his brother's action. Who could blame him ?

Queen Isabel II of Spain: she was only three years old when her father, King Fernando VII, died -- and her accession triggered the Carlist wars (those bastards seemed to have a hard time in remembering their history, as they conveniently forgot how the Bourbons even came to the Spanish throne in the first place -- via Infanta Maria Teresa)