Great videos, Elsa. My favourite is this one:
Poor Queen.
I don't think the other children attended the Mass.
D. Francisco Van Uden is not a fascist. He doesn't have any reason to be one. Her mother was condemned to death by Gestapo when she was living in Austria and I have never heard him talking against democracy.
Francisco was a brilliant officer of the Portuguese Army. He received condecorations for his services in our African wars.
D. Francisco is the son of Nicolaas Johannes Maria Van Uden (a Dutch) and Dª Maria Adelaide de Bragança, Infanta of Portugal. Dª Adelaide is D. Duarte's aunt, since she was sister of D. Duarte's father, D. Duarte Nuno.
Dª Adelaide and D. Duarte Nuno were the younger children of D. Miguel de Bragança (for some,
King D. Miguel II). D. Miguel has always lived on exile. The
Miguelistas were banned from Portugal around 1830.
Some people say that D. Duarte Nuno could never be the Pretender to the Throne because he was not the closest Relative of D. Manuel II, the last King of Portugal. He was only his distant cousin. The closest relative was a half-sister of D. Manuel, an illegitimate daughter of D. Carlos. As illegitimate children are ineligible, D. Duarte Nuno was chosen as the royal pretender. The problem is that he was an Austrian, not a Portuguese. His sisters (including Dª Maria Adelaide) were not Portuguese either.
D. Duarte Pio was born in Switzerland as an Austrian just like his father.
Dª Adelaide is a mother of 4 children: Francisco Van Uden is the third one but he and his younger and only sister were the only children of her who were born in Portugal. The Royal Constitutional Letter of 1842, article 8, says that a future king cannot be naturalized in foreign soil, as it happened with D. Duarte Nuno and his son.
Therefore, D. Francisco Van Uden is for some (including me
) the right Pretender to the Throne of Portugal. It doesn't mean we dislike D. Duarte. I would respect and acccept him as my King, but imo the right one should be D. Francisco.
D. Duarte Nuno claimed that he and his son, D. Duarte Pio, were born as Portuguese but there is the strong
suspicion that in 1961 he tried to falsify the birth certificates of him and his son.
Here is a great
interview with D. Francisco (only in Portuguese).