March 1881. On 12 November 1882, Mercedes gained a sister, Infanta Maria Teresa. The marriage of their parents was unhappy. Alfonso had married Maria Christina in order to secure the succession to the throne. He did not love his wife and was disappointed after she gave birth to two daughters, while he already had two extramarital sons. In July 1883, Maria Christina left the Spanish court and traveled with her daughters to visit her own family in Austria. By the summer of 1884, Alfonso XII's health had deteriorated and he had tuberculosis. After a brief improvement, the 27-year-old king died on 25 November 1885, leaving behind a widow who was three months pregnant. Mercedes was not declared queen because she would be displaced if a son was born, and instead there was a six month interregnum until the birth of her brother Alfonso XIII on 17 May 1886, who assumed the throne as king immediately upon birth. Had the pregnancy been lost or resulted in another daughter, Mercedes would have become queen regnant and been retroactively recognized as such during the interregnum. She resumed the position of heir presumptive, which she held for the rest of her life. Education Mercedes made her first public appearance at the royal court by the hand of her mother when Queen Maria Christina was declared regent. The education of the Princess of Asturias and her younger sister Infanta Maria Teresa was confined to the Royal Palace of Madrid in an austere environment headed by two widows: their mother and their paternal aunt Isabella (herself formerly Princess of Asturias). The Queen brought up her three children strictly. Despite her constitutional status, Mercedes was not given an education that would have prepared her to govern the nation. She received instead the conventional upbringing of princesses of her time. There were piano and painting lessons, knitting practices and the Queen involved her daughter in palace duties. Particular attention was paid to obedience and religious precepts. Mercedes grew up to be a serious young woman, shy and unprepossessing. She was more Habsburg in appearance due to her long face. The family spent the summer months in the Miramar Palace in San Sebastián. In her adolescence, Mercedes accompanied her mother to trips abroad visiting her paternal grandmother in Paris, her paternal aunt Paz in Munich, and her maternal grandmother Elisabeth Franziska in Vienna. The situation in Spain became more