Im no specialist on Spanish civil law in the 19th century but i would expect that any child born to a married woman was legally the child of her husband no matter who conceived it. So Francisco accepting them or not was not what made them legitimate.
I think it almost universal that any child born to a married woman is assumed to be (biologically) the husband's -- UNLESS evidence proves otherwise. And indeed, even before modern molecular biology, it has always been possible to disprove biological paternity: one can establish, for instance, that the husband was too far away for too lengthy a period of time to have fathered the child. This, of course, is viewing the matter from the outside looking in: it is precisely the bone of contention behind the disputed biological paternity of King Edward IV of England (his purported father, Richard, the 3rd Duke of York, was presumably too geographically distant for too long).
Viewing the matter from the inside, a man would know whether or not he could have fathered the child. Homosexuality, for one, could (in his mind) disprove biological paternity (e.g. Francisco d'Asis). Or it could be that he and his wife have not, in some time, been intimate (e.g. Edward Wells, whose wife Barbara was the mother of the famous singer-actress Julie Andrews).
The mothers of Winston and Clementine Churchill, like Manuela Kirkpatrick (mother of Empress Eugénie of the French) were known to have extramarital relationships, and if you will, engage in love affairs with men who were not their husbands. Jack Churchill (Winston's younger brother) is not believed to have been fathered by Lord Randolph Churchill. Sir Henry Hozier is not believed to have been the biological father of Clementine Churchill. And Cipriano de Palafox y Portocarrero, 8th Count of Montijo is not believed to have been the biological father of the empress. Nicholas Longworth III, son-in-law of U.S. President Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt, is not believed to have been the biological father of Paulina Longworth, the only child of Alice.
Back to royalty: Prince Alexander of Hesse-Darmstadt (founder of the morganatic branch of the grand ducal branch known as the Battenbergs) and his younger sister, Princess Marie (who became the empress consort of Czar Alexander II of Russia, his dynastic first wife) are not believed to have been biologically fathered by Grand Duke Ludwig II of Hesse and by Rhine. And Princess Anna of Saxony (born in 1902) is not believed to have been biologically fathered by King Friedrich Augustus III.
But there is a common strand running through all these examples of disputed biological paternity: the children were all born in lawful wedlock, and their mothers' husbands officially acknowledged them as their own children. Of course, in the case of Clementine Churchill, her relationship with her legal father was a highly strained one, to say the least: the most that could be said of the two is that she legally bore his surname (Hozier) as her maiden name. It became a moot point later on, when she married Winston Churchill.
All that being said, a child can still be illegitimate, despite being born in lawful wedlock: the mother's husband refuses to formally accept the said child as his own. Case in point: Eliza Courtney was born in 1792 to a married woman -- Georgiana Cavendish (born Lady Georgiana Spencer, a collateral ancestor of Princess Diana). As it was, her mother's husband (William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire) did NOT accept her as his own child. In fact, he made his wife give her up for adoption. That was what made Eliza illegitimate -- not her adulterous conception per se. For if it was about adultery, all those afore-mentioned persons could be said to have been illegitimate.
It's somewhat unfair to lay it all on the husband -- whether or not he chooses to acknowledge a child as his own. But that's how things work in a patriarchal society: the men hold (almost) all the strings on money and power. In fact, it has been explained that the obsession with female virtue is linked to the economic disadvantage in a man raising and supporting another man's child. But if the husband doesn't mind, and is willing to accept another man's child as his own, who cares?
Of course, a husband could theoretically reject a child who is biologically his (look at Shakespeare's plays). But he is more likely to willingly or unwittingly accept another man's child as his own: that has been the default throughout history ("Mama's baby is Daddy's maybe"). That being said, he has to have a darn good reason for rejecting a child (it's worth noting that in the said plays by Shakespeare, the husbands do eventually come around to acceptance).
Indeed, in the Cavendish case, there was no point in the Duchess of Devonshire attempting to pass off her youngest child as biologically her husband's: everybody know that her lover, Charles Grey, was the likely father of Eliza.
That being said, the Duke could theoretically accepted the girl as his own daughter. In that case, she would have been perfectly legitimate, entitled to style herself as Lady Eliza Cavendish. As it was, William's rejection was what made her illegitimate.
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