If anything, the weakness of these children might suggest that Don Francisco de Asis was their father. They were the first, third, fifth, and ninth children born to their mother (i.e. spread out throughout the child-bearing years of their mother).
How easily people believe scandalous Carlist propaganda!
If only all that was observed of Queen Isabel's self-indulgent nature could be dismissed as Carlist fabrication...
Until there is a DNA analysis, who can say whether or not the exquisitely perfumed “frills-and-laces” Francisco fathered some or all of his wife's children? However, it is good to keep in mind that the successful candidature of “Paquita” was a compromise between those who envisioned a cypher as royal consort to a queen who would be controlled by others, and those who favored the more attractive Montpensier to carry on Spain's future royal line. The expectation was that a politically handicapped isabel would be a figurehead ruler doomed to a “white marriage,” and the thwarted ambitions of Montpensier and the French would be mollified by the likelihood of his siring Spain's future royal line with the queen's somewhat prettier and better behaved younger sister.
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