Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy
Exiled heir to the Italian throne and arms dealer who was investigated for manslaughter and vice
VITTORIO EMANUELE OF SAVOY, who has died aged 86, would have been King of Italy but for the monarchy’s abolition in 1946 when he was nine; circumstance and character subsequently condemned the former Crown Prince to a life of exile and squalid controversy.
The House of Savoy, which had its power base in Turin, ascended to the throne in 1861 during the country’s unsteady progress towards unification. Victor Emmanuel II (as he was known in English) became the first ruler of a united Italy since the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet the new royal family never succeeded in becoming a symbol of national identity, in part because too often they became entangled in politics rather than rising above it.
This was especially the case with Vittorio Emanuele’s grandfather and namesake, Victor Emmanuel III, who reigned during the Fascist era. Many Italians blamed him for allowing Mussolini to embroil them in the Second World War and turned on the king after Il Duce’s fall from power in 1943. As Italy’s former allies the Germans seized control of most of the country, young Vittorio Emanuele, his three sisters and their mother, the Belgian princess Maria José, were hustled north from Rome to the remote Aosta valley.
This was not simply for their safety. Without her husband Crown Prince Umberto’s permission, Maria José had tried to broker a separate peace between Italy and the US via the Vatican. When this was discovered, it strained a marriage which was far from a love match. Not only had it been arranged, but there were also rumours that Umberto was homosexual.
Umberto ordered that his wife and family be kept isolated while he tried to repair the damage caused by his father’s association with Mussolini. In 1944, he largely assumed the powers of the king, and in May 1946 succeeded to the throne when Victor Emmanuel abdicated.
Although he enjoyed considerable personal popularity, Umberto II was to reign for less than a month. In a referendum that June, the Italian people voted by a narrow but decisive margin to turn the country into a republic. The Savoys went into exile 10 days later, and for half a century no male of the line was allowed to set foot in the land that had been their birthright.
Vittorio Emanuele Alberto Carlo Teodoro Umberto Bonifacio Amedeo Damiano Bernardino Gennaro Maria di Savoia was born in Naples on February 12 1937 and given the courtesy title Prince of Naples.
After the post-war dissolution of the monarchy, Umberto settled in Portugal (and his father in Egypt), while Maria José and the children moved to Switzerland. As Vittorio Emanuele grew up and began to assert his independence, relations with his father became still more tense. While he was at university in Geneva, Umberto abruptly cut off his allowance, and explored the possibility of declaring a third cousin, Amedeo, Duke of Aosta, as his heir instead.
Matters came to a head in 1969 when Vittorio Emanuele proclaimed himself king on the grounds that his father had renounced his right to the throne by agreeing to be bound by the referendum. He further infuriated Umberto by marrying without his approval. His bride was his girlfriend of 10 years, Marina Doria, a Swiss water ski champion and the heiress to a biscuit fortune.
After a civil wedding in Las Vegas, the pair were married in a religious ceremony in 1971 during the lavish celebrations staged by the Shah at Persepolis to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of Iran’s monarchy. The following year they had a son, Emanuele Filiberto, on whom was bestowed the title Prince of Venice.
During his thirties, Vittorio Emanuele began to use his name to make a lucrative career in the more shadowy reaches of international finance and arms dealing. He helped, for instance, to broker a multimillion-pound sale of Chinook helicopters to the Shah by the Italian firm Agusta. By 2000, he was said to be worth anywhere between £50 million and £500 million.
Neither his claim to the throne, nor the family’s continued use of their titles, was officially recognised by Italy. Monarchists tried to portray him as a glamorous figure, but the disappointments of exile had in fact made him boorish, and his own sister characterised him as a money-grubbing simpleton. For years, most Italians only took notice of him when news broke of a fresh scandal, as it did with increasing regularity.
The most dramatic instance took place in 1978. In August of that year, Vittorio Emanuele’s yacht was moored off Corsica when he noticed that its dinghy had been taken. He spotted it tied up to another boat nearby and, enraged, grabbed a rifle and set off to confront the supposed thieves. As he prepared to board the yacht, one of its passengers came into view and he shot at him. The round missed but hit a German teenager asleep on the deck of an adjoining boat. The boy died of his injuries four months later.
Vittorio Emanuele accepted civil liability for the death, but a French criminal investigation dragged on for a decade. He was finally charged with manslaughter in 1991, only to be acquitted. Some 15 years later, Italian officials secretly recorded him boasting of having outfoxed the French judges. It became the subject of a Netflix documentary, The King Who Never Was.
The Italian constitution forbade the male Savoys from returning, and even when Umberto was dying in 1983 this was enforced. In 1999, Vittorio Emanuele challenged the law in the European Court of Human Rights, and three years later it was repealed. Together with his wife and son, at Christmas 2002 he made his first visit to his homeland in 55 years. The three-day trip, during which he had an audience with Pope John Paul II, went well enough, but during a walkabout in Naples the next year he was barracked by bystanders.
His reputation was not improved by remarks he made which tried to excuse the wartime measures against the Jews signed into law by his grandfather, nor by the revelation that he was a member of the P2 masonic lodge, thought by many Italians to be the country’s real government.
He also faced problems within his own family. In 2004, a long-standing feud with his cousin Amedeo, who also claimed to be head of the House of Savoy, boiled over at a dinner held by the King of Spain for Prince Felipe’s wedding. Vittorio Emanuele punched his rival twice in the face, knocking him down a flight of stairs. The Duke, bleeding profusely, was eventually rescued by the ex-queen of Greece.
In 2010, an Italian court ruled that Vittorio Emanuele was indeed the head of the family. By then, however, following intercepts of his telephone calls by the Italian police, he was facing charges of having taken bribes and procured prostitutes for a casino on Lake Lugano. These were later dismissed, with Vittorio Emanuele claiming that he had been used as a front by business associates. A claim by him for 200 million euros in compensation from the Italian state for properties confiscated from the former royal family has yet to be resolved.
He is survived by his wife and his son Emanuele Filiberto, who in 2009 won the Italian version of Strictly Come Dancing.
Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy, born February 12 1937, died February 3 2024