Paula's birth, the independence of Brazil had been declared in September 1822; as Pedro only had daughters, Paula was supposed to have been fourth in the line of succession to the Portuguese throne. However, under Portuguese law, Paula was a foreigner having been born after the independence and was thus excluded from the line of succession. However, her elder sister Maria da Glória was not excluded from the succession having been born in 1819; she ascended the Portuguese throne after the death of João VI and the abdication of Pedro on 28 May 1826. Instead of her mother, Paula was suckled by the same wet nurse who would later suckle the Prince Imperial. Life On 11 December 1826, Empress Leopoldina died after either giving birth to a stillborn son or suffering a miscarriage. However, at the time there were rumors that purported Pedro had actually killed Leopoldina during a heated discussion. Supposedly, Pedro had kicked Leopoldina in the womb, causing her to have a miscarriage and die. Domitila de Castro, Pedro's longtime mistress, and Philipp von Mareschal, the Austrian minister in Brazil, had witnessed the quarrel and Mareschal stated that the couple exchanged only insults and nothing else. Pedro greatly missed his wife and arranged a second marriage, this time to Napoleon's step-granddaughter, Amélie de Beauharnais von Leuchtenberg. The two were married on 17 October 1829. Amélie became like a mother to Pedro's five surviving children, D. Maria da Glória (born 1819), D. Januária (born 1822), D. Paula, D. Francisca (born 1824) and the Prince Imperial (born 1825), all of whom adored their new mother. The Emperor abdicated the Brazilian throne of 7 April 1831 and left Brazil for Portugal in order to support his eldest daughter's claim to the Portuguese throne. Pedro's vessel left that very morning and Pedro, now styling himself "the Duke of Braganza", took with him Amélie, Maria da Glória and his sister D. Ana de Jesus. The children never saw their father or stepmother again. Before he left, Pedro had appointed José Bonifácio de Andrada as legal guardian, Mariana de Verna Coutinho to continue as aia, and an afro-Brazilian war veteran named Rafael to generally tend to his children. Out of these three, Rafael remained loyal to the Emperor until his death in 1889. Left with no one else, the children formed close bonds with each other, they were even "dependent on each other." Besides