As the wife of Xavier, Madeleine was, however, proclaimed Queen consort of Spain by the remaining Carlists in 1952. Widowed in 1977, she remained a staunch adherent of her husband's Carlist principles. She excluded her elder son from the funeral of her husband as disloyal to his father's traditionalist Carlism, recognizing instead the claim to Carlist leadership and to Lignières of her younger son, Prince Sixtus Henry of Bourbon-Parma, (self-proclaimed) Duke of Aranjuez, who continued the rivalry with his brother as Carlist pretender.