Anton of Austria–Tuscany in 1931. Carol II's reign On 6 June 1930, Carol arrived in Bucharest and made his way into Parliament, where the Act of Succession 1927 was duly declared null. Thus, Carol usurped the throne from his son, becoming King Carol II. Upon hearing of Carol's return, Marie, who was abroad, was relieved. She had been growing anxious with the direction in which the country was heading and viewed Carol's return as the return of the Prodigal Son. However, as soon as she arrived in Bucharest, she became aware that things would not go well. Carol refused to accept his mother's advice to take Helen back and never sought Marie's counsel during his reign, thus making the already existing breach between mother and son complete. Desolate and almost stripped of her belief, Marie turned to the religious teachings of the Baháʼí Faith, which she found "vastly appealing". She was particularly attracted by the idea of humanity's unification under one faith, given her own religiously divided family. Introduced to the doctrine by Martha Root, Marie carried on a correspondence with Shoghi Effendi, then head of the Faith, where she expressed herself as a follower of the Baháʼí teachings. Additionally, she made several public statements promoting the teachings of Baháʼu'lláh, describing him as a prophet similar to Jesus or Muhammad. This written correspondence has led Baháʼís to regard her as the first royal convert to their religion. Biographer Hannah Pakula notes that Marie "continued to attend the Protestant Church", even though she "prayed 'better at home with my Baha-u-llah books and teachings.'" In 1976, William McElwee Miller published a polemical book against the religion, which included selections from a letter written in 1970 by Marie's daughter Ileana denying any such conversion had taken place. In 1931, Prince Nicholas eloped with Ioana Doletti, a divorced woman. Marie strongly disapproved of her son's actions and felt hurt by Doletti's repeated attempts to keep Nicholas from communicating with his mother. Although she blamed the women in her sons' lives for a while, she also came to blame herself, for failing to educate them properly. However, she stubbornly and continually refused to meet Magda Lupescu, even after Carol's pleas. Until her last years, Marie seldom even mentioned Lupescu's name. With Carol's mistress hated throughout the country, it was only a matter of time before opposition to the King emerged. This opposition most prominently came