King Umberto II of Italy & Marie Jose

[frederika]

Maria Josè, princess of belgium, was queen of Italy for a month. How did she feel having to leave italy and go it to exile?

[gleb]

Of course she was sad and very upset, but she also was a very strong woman who had not intention to spend the remaning years of her life (in 1946 she was only 40 years old!) thinking to the past (as, partially did Umberto II).

So after living with her husband for a short time, she left and went to live in Suisse, where she started a new life.
She travelled a lot with her mother (together they went to China) and dedicated herself to her hobbies that is music (she was a great expert) and writing (she wrote marvellious books on Casa Savoia's history).

Bye

[gleb]

In 1988 (5 years after Umberto II's death, he never saw Italy again!) she was given the permission to visit Italy.
So she went to Aosta and Turin and some people say she also came back to Naples...

[amedeo]

They loved each other, but were raised in two very different ways so they had different attitudes towards life, and this after years of marriage in Italy separated them.
It is true Maria Josè had not a good relation with Vittorio Emanuele III. In 1943 she was basically sent to "exile" in the mountain resort of S. Anna di Valdieri, so that she could not interfer with political matters anymore...

Consider only that Maria Josè did not go to VE III's funeral in 1947, but went to the one of her Mother-in-law, Queen Elena....


Anyway in her late years her opinion of her father-in-law got better.

[Marc]

[RomanovFan]

Info on Marie-José of Belgium:

Born: 4 August 1906 in Ostend, Belgium

Died: 27 January 2001 in Italy?

Parents: King Albert I & Queen Elisabeth (of Barvaria)

Siblings: Brothers, Charles-Theodore and Leopold III

Married: Crown Prince Umberto (King Umberto II) of Italy
January 8, 1930

Children:

Maria Pia, b. 1934

Vittorio Emanuelle (III) b. 1937

Maria Gabriella b. 1940

Maria Beatrice b. 1942

*Known as the "May Queen" of Italy...did the Italian monarchy end after she died?

[umigon]

Umberto II married Marie José of Belgium (1906-2001) in 1930. They had the following children:


1. Maria Pia (1934). She married Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia (b.1924) in 1955, but they were divorced in 1967. She married Prince Michael of Bourbon-Parma (born 1926) in 2003.

2. Vittorio Emanuele (1937). He married Marina Ricolfi Doria (b.1935) in 1971.

3. Maria Gabriella (1940). She married  Robert Zellinger de Balkany (b.1931) in 1969, but they were divorced in 1990.

4. Maria Beatrice (1943). She married Luis Reyna y Corvalán (1939-1999) in 1970.


All of Umberto's children had children. Umberto never returned to Italy after he fled th country in 1946!

[gleb]

Umberto II's son is Vittorio Emanuele IV King of Italy or Prince of Naples, he currently lives in Switzerland in a town near Geneve called Vesenaz.
Btw as now he can also live in Italy he says he's looking for a house somewhere in Italy. He hasn't decided yet.
His son is Emanuele Filiberto, Prince of Venice and Piemont. He married Clotilde Courau and they have a daughter, Vittoria.
We are waiting for a little Umberto...
They want to live in Italy too.
They bought a house near Vesenaz, and they also live in Paris, as Princesse Clotilde was born there.

They are a very nice family and Princesse Vittoria is indeed a beautiful child.

[TampaBay]

Why won't "they" let the old dead king back in.  If you were born in Italy and want to be buried in Italy, it seems to me you have that right.  The Romanians even let Carol II and his mistress come back.

How much trouble could a "dead" king cause?

Also, who are "they" which are fighting his reburial on Italian soil.

TampaBay

[gleb]

Italian comunists and many other politicians, you cannot imagine how the Savoia are still hated in Italy.

How incomprehensible!!

The Savoia created Italy, without them we would still have a Pope King in Rome.
How unbecoming it would be, don't you think?
The Popes like Pio IX, the last Pope King, used to condemn even to death!
They were true Christians (I am being ironical, of course)

Gleb

[amedeo]

Thanks Lucien for writing here your opinions which I found very interesting.

There are anyway some points I do not share. I know that characters like VE III and UII aren't still completely known and understood, even in Italy.

For example, as regards VE III, I wouldn't be so severe. He wasn't just a puppet in mussolino's hands. Those years were very difficoult in Italy, many historians begin to ask "In 1922, could the King refuse fascism?" and other questions like these.
To me they show that a different attitude towards VE III is now possible, although we are still far from his rehabilitation.

[gleb]

Well, I do not agree at all, I'd be happy to tell you that Umberto II started a new life in Portugal maybe with another woman. But it is not true, Umberto never was a womanizer as some still think.
He was quite shy.

I think Umberto II loved very much MJ, but they were different and lived in strange years.

What I mean is : U II did not have an army of lovers.
If he had affairs we do not know, there are not evidences. And it is right, these are private aspects of their lives.

[gleb]

Umberto II wore an ancient dress in occasion of an historic Carousell in remembrance of EMANUELE FILIBERTO di Savoia, the ancestor who brought the capital of the Sabaudian Duchy in Turin.

[Aliss_Kande]

I think Marie Jose was so lovely.  I feel so sorry for her trying to manage her curly hair.  The curls look so tight!

I can't see the pictures on the websight anymore.  I saw them for half a second and then my pop-up blocker blocked it out.  I turned the blocker off, but I still can't see them.

[amedeo]

Umberto II, occasionally anglicized as Humbert II, (September 15, 1904 - March 18, 1983), the last King of Italy, nicknamed the King of May (Italian Re di Maggio), was born the Prince of Piedmont.