Italy’s last crown prince, Victor Emanuel of Savoy, died on Saturday in Switzerland at the age of 86.
“He passed away this morning,” the prince’s lawyer, Sergio Orlandi, told AFP. The location and time of the funeral would be announced at a later date.
Several media outlets had previously reported, citing a statement from the dynasty, that the son of the last Italian king, Umberto II, “passed away peacefully in Geneva surrounded by his family.”
Victor Emanuel was the last crown prince of Italy
Born on February 12, 1937 in Naples, Victor Emanuel was the head of the Savoy dynasty, which ruled Italy from 1861 to 1946. His father lost the throne after a brief reign from May to June 1946 as a result of a referendum in favor of abolishing the monarchy and proclaiming a republic.
Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, who styled himself the “Prince of Naples,” left Italy at the age of nine. Along with all other male descendants of the dynasty, he was exiled by the Italian constitution in 1946 because of the collaboration of his grandfather Viktor Emmanuel III. exiled from Italy with the fascist Benito Mussolini. Critics accuse the monarch, who died in 1947, of paving Mussolini’s path to power in the 1920s. In 1938 he signed the anti-Semitic racial laws.
In 2002, Victor Emmanuel of Savoy was finally allowed to return to Italy from exile in Switzerland – but only after he gave up his long-standing refusal to swear allegiance to the Republic. The Italian Parliament had previously voted to lift his exile.
Source: Stern
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