Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples
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| Pretender: Vittorio Emanuele | |
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| Image:Víctor Manuel de Saboya.jpg | |
| Born | February 12, 1937 (age 69) Naples |
| Regnal name claimed | Vittorio Emanuele IV |
| Title(s) if any | Prince of Naples |
| Throne claimed | Italy |
| Pretend from | March 18, 1983 - present |
| Monarchy abolished | 1946 |
| Last monarch | Umberto II |
| Connection with | son |
| Royal House | House of Savoy |
| Father | Umberto II |
| Mother | Marie-José of Belgium |
| Spouse | Marina Doria |
| Children | Emanuele Filiberto |
Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples (Vittorio Emanuele Alberto Carlo Teodoro Umberto Bonifacio Amadeo Damiano Bernardino Gennaro Maria di Savoia) (born February 12, 1937) was the last Crown Prince of Italy and is considered to be a pretender to the defunct Italian throne.
Although the titles and distinctions of the Italian royal family have not been legally recognised in Italy or elsewhere since 1946, he is often styled Prince of Naples out of courtesy, particularly by supporters of the former monarchy.
Vittorio Emanuele claims to be Duke of Savoy and head of the House of Savoy. These claims are disputed by supporters of his cousin, Amedeo, 5th Duke of Aosta. He is also a claimant to the title of King of Jerusalem. He is known to some Italian monarchists as Vittorio Emanuele IV. He has lived for most of his life in exile – following a referendum in 1946 in which a majority of the Italian people voted for Italy to become a republic.
On several occasions he has been the centre of controversy in Italy and abroad due to a series of incidents, including remarks that were seen by some as anti-semitic. In France he was tried on a murder charge, of which he was cleared of unlawful killing but convicted of a firearms offence. More recently, Vittorio Emanuele was arrested on June 16, 2006, following an investigation started by Henry John Woodcock of the Public Prosecutor's Office in Potenza, Italy [1], on charges of criminal association, corruption and exploitation of prostitution.
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[edit] Early life and family
Vittorio Emanuele was born February 12, 1937 in Naples to Umberto, Prince of Piedmont, who would later become the last King of Italy, and Princess Marie-José of Belgium. When Umberto II left Italy after a referendum abolishing the monarchy in 1946 (see also birth of the Italian Republic), the Savoy family lived in exile, mostly in Switzerland and Portugal. Following the separation of the exiled ex-King and ex-Queen, Prince Vittorio Emanuele lived with his mother in an estate in Merlinge, Switzerland. Vittorio Emanuele and his family currently reside in Geneva.
After an 11-year engagement, Vittorio Emanuele married Swiss biscuit heiress and world-ranked water skier Marina Doria in Tehran on October 7, 1971.
Vittorio Emanuele has worked as a banker and an aircraft salesman[citation needed].
Vittorio Emanuele has one son, Emanuele Filiberto, Prince of Venice and Piedmont, born in Geneva, June 22, 1972. He married Clotilde Courau, a French actress, on September 25, 2003.
[edit] Titles
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Vittorio Emanuele and his family hold no official titles, nor do they have royal or governmental duties because Italy is now a republic. The Constitution of Italy, in Temporary Provision XIV, states that noble titles are no longer recognised in Italy. Nevertheless, their royal titles and honours are still used as courtesy titles by certain other European royals, and also by some monarchists in Italy and elsewhere.
[edit] Grand Masterships
King Umberto II, the last king of Italy, did not abdicate his position as fons honorum (or fount of honours). When he left Italy, he purported to take the hereditary Grand Masterships of the dynastic orders of his royal house with him. These orders were Ordine Supremo della SS. Annunziata (The Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation) and Ordine dei Santi Maurizio e Lazzaro (The Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus). Umberto II claimed to hold these until his death in 1983.
[edit] Duke of Savoy
On July 7, 2006 Vittorio Emanuele's kinsman and dynastic rival, Amedeo, 5th Duke of Aosta declared himself to be the head of the House of Savoy and Duke of Savoy, claiming that Vittorio Emanuele had lost his dynastic rights when he married without the permission of King Umberto II in 1971. Amedeo has received the support of the President of the Council of the Senators of the Kingdom Aldo Alessandro Mola and of Vittorio Emanuele's sister Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy.
[edit] Other honours
| Styles of Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples |
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| Reference style | His Royal Highness |
| Spoken style | Your Royal Highness |
| Alternative style | Sir |
Vittorio Emanuele is a Bailiff Grand Cross of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and a Bailiff Grand Cross of Justice of the Constantinian Order of St George.
He also claims to hold several Russian dynastic orders, including the Order of Saint Andrew, Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky, the Order of the White Eagle, and the Order of Saint Anne. He is also a Knight of the Order of the Redeemer of Greece, and the Order of the Immaculate Conception of Vila Viçosa. He is the heir to the Savoy claim to the title of "King of Jerusalem".
[edit] Exile from and return to Italy
[edit] Reasons for exile
In line with certain other countries that were formerly monarchies, Italian law restricted the male line of the House of Savoy from entering Italy. This was enacted via a special constitutional "temporary disposition", in force from 1948.
[edit] Requests for return
Vittorio Emanuele lobbied the Parliament of Italy over the years in which the law prohibiting his return was in force to be allowed to return to his homeland after 56 years in exile. In 2001 he filed a case at the European Court of Human Rights, in which the prince charged that his lengthy exile violated his rights [2].
In order to achieve a return to his homeland, he renounced any claim to the throne and to Italy's crown jewels. He publicly assured the Italian government that the nation and the crown properties, confiscated by the State in 1946, "are no longer ours", referring to the House of Savoy. "For that matter we have no claim on the Crown jewels", he said. "We have nothing in Italy and we are not asking for anything." Vittorio Emanuele also dropped his case at the European Court of Human Rights. In February 2002, Vittorio Emanuele and his son Emanuele Filiberto wrote a signed letter, published through a law firm, in which they formally expressed their loyalty to the Constitution of Italy[1]. In line with the provisions of the Italian Constitution, in temporary disposition XIV (which deals with the abolition of titles of nobility) Vittorio Emanuele renounced his title of prince.
[edit] Return to Italy
On October 23, 2002, the provision in the Constitution of Italy that prohibited Vittorio Emanuele's return to Italy was repealed, after he signed an agreement recognizing the Republic as the valid government of the state. Vittorio Emanuele was permitted to re-enter the country from November 10 of that year. On his first trip home in over half a century, he, his wife and his son had a 20-minute audience with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican [2].
The visit lasted three days. Vittorio Emanuele spoke of experiencing "indescribable emotion" upon visiting Italy for the first time since he was nine years old. The reception of the Savoys was mixed; most people were indifferent to them, some hostile, few supportive. The media reported that many in Naples were not happy to see the return of the family, when hundreds of noisy demonstrators chanted negative slogans as they progressed through the city [3] In Naples, where Vittorio Emanuele was born, and from where his family sailed into exile in 1946, noisy demonstrations were staged by two traditionally opposing factions: anti-monarchists on one hand, and supporters of the Bourbon Kings of the Two Sicilies, whose family was deposed when Italy was united in 1861 under the House of Savoy.
[edit] Controversies
[edit] Unilaterial declaration of Kingship (1969)
Vittorio Emanuele unilaterally declared himself King of Italy on December 15, 1969.[4] He argued that by agreeing to submit to a referendum on his place as head of state, his father (Umberto II) had thereby abdicated. Vittorio Emanuele took this action after his father allegedly called for Amedeo, 5th Duke of Aosta to visit him in Portugal to name him his heir.[5] Under his self-assumed powers as King of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele conferred the title of Duchess of Sant'Anna di Valdieri on his then fiancee, Marina Doria.[6]
[edit] Killing of Dirk Hamer (1978-1989)
On the night of August 17 or the subsequent morning of August 18, 1978, on the island of Cavallo, which lies off the south coast of Corsica, Vittorio Emanuele discovered his yacht's rubber dinghy had been taken and attached to another nearby yacht. Arming himself with a rifle, he attempted to board the yacht. He shot at and missed a passenger he had awakened, but mortally wounded Dirk Hamer (the 19 year old son of Ryke Geerd Hamer), a passenger sleeping on the deck of another adjacent yacht. The prince admitted civil liability for the death in a letter dated August 28, 1978[7]. Mr. Hamer died of his wounds on December 7, 1978, and Vittorio Emanuele was arrested.
After 13 years of legal proceedings, on October 11, 1989, Vittorio Emanuele was indicted on charges of fatal wounding and offensive weapons possession[3], but on November 18, 1991 the Paris Assize Court acquitted him of the fatal wounding and unintentional homicide charges, finding him guilty only of unauthorised possession of a US30MI rifle. He received a six month suspended prison sentence. [8].
When incarcerated in June 2006 on unconnected charges of corruption (see below, "Arrest and imprisonment"), Vittorio Emanuele was recorded admitting that "I was in the wrong, [...] but I must say I fooled them [the French judges]". [9], leading to a call from Dirk Hamer's sister for Vittorio Emanuele to be retried in Italy for killing her brother [10]. He also described, in a phone call, the magistrates investigating him as "penniless, envious turds whose wives are probably cuckolding them while they keep track of me." [11] [12]
[edit] Membership of banned Masonic lodge (1981)
Vittorio Emanuele's name was found on Licio Gelli's list of 900 members of the "Propaganda Due" Freemasonic lodge [citation needed], a secretive Masonic lodge which is banned in Italy.
[edit] Allegations of anti-semitism (2003)
Vittorio Emanuele also said in recent years that the anti-Semitic laws passed under Mussolini's regime were "not that terrible" [13] [14]. Other senior members of the House of Savoy have also in the past downplayed the significance of the anti-Jewish laws signed by Vittorio Emmanuele's grandfather [citation needed]. "I'm not saying it was he who signed the racial laws in 1938. But, as a Savoy heir, Victor Emmanuel has never distanced himself from them," the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, Amos Luzzatto, said in an interview with Il Corriere della Sera newspaper [15].
On 27 January 2005, in a letter published by Il Corriere della Sera, Vittorio Emanuele issued an apology to Italy's Jewish leadership asking forgiveness from the Italian Jewish community, and declaring that it was an error for the Italian Royal Family to have signed the racial laws of 1938 [4].
[edit] Fight with cousin Amadeo (2004)
On May 21, 2004, following a dinner held by King Juan Carlos I of Spain on the eve of the wedding of his son Felipe, Prince of Asturias, Vittorio Emanuele punched his cousin and arch-rival Amadeo of Savoy, Duke of Aosta, twice in the face [16]. Part of the background to his behaviour during this incident is the support Duke Amadeo has received from monarchists as legitimate heir to the Italian throne, since Vittorio Emanuele officially had to renounce his claim to it in order to return to Italy [citation needed].
[edit] Arrest and imprisonment (2006)
On June 16, 2006 he was arrested in Varenna and imprisoned in Potenza on charges of corruption and recruitment of prostitutes for clients of the Casinò di Campione (casino) of Campione d'Italia.[17] [18] [19]
The enquiry was conducted by Italian magistrate John Woodcock, of British ancestry, famous for other VIPs' arrests. [20]
After several days, Vittorio Emanuele was released and placed under house arrest instead.[21] He was released from house arrest on July 20, but he had to stay inside the Italian borders.
[edit] References
- ^ Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy: Loyalty to the Constitution, from La Repubblica
- ^ Exiled Italian royals go home
- ^ The Prince and the Prostitutes
- ^ Royal Decree No. 1
- ^ Gigi Speroni, Umberto II, Milan, Riscoli Libri
- ^ Royal Decree No. 2
- ^ HAMER v. FRANCE - 19953/92 [1996 ECHR 30 (7 August 1996)]
- ^ Summary of trial proceedings concerned the killing of Dirk Hamer
- ^ [http://www.repubblica.it/2006/09/sezioni/cronaca/vittorio-emanuele/vittorio-emanuele/vittorio-emanuele.html Vittorio Emanuele, cimici in cella "Ho fregato i giudici francesi"]
- ^ Prince's braggadocio spurs call for justice
- ^ Italian royal taped boasting he got away with murder
- ^ Prince: I beat rap for killing
- ^ "Italy's Jews wait for royal apology" (The Observer (UK), May 18, 2003). "It was a rocky start for what was intended as a romantic trip down memory lane for Italy's exiled royal family, the Savoys, who returned to Rome last week to meet government officials, only to be greeted by angry Italian Jews still waiting for an apology for the royals' anti-Semitic leanings during the Second World War. Some five years ago, Victor Emmanuel made headlines when he said in an interview that the race laws were 'not so bad'."
- ^ The Royalist
- ^ Tom Gross, Mideast Media Analysis
- ^ Right royal punch-up at Spanish prince's wedding
- ^ Arrest and jail
- ^ Arrested Italy prince goes from palace to jail
- ^ The Prince and the prostitutes
- ^ VIP arrests by Woodstock
- ^ House arrest
[edit] External links
- Genealogy of recent members of the House of Savoy.
- A web page about the prince.
- House of Savoy fansite.
- On the murder of Dirk Hamer (In Italian language)
- Royal House (A Fan Site)
| House of Savoy Born: February 12 1937; Died: |
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| Titles in pretence | ||
| Preceded by: Umberto II |
* NOT REIGNING * King of Italy (1983-) |
Incumbent Designated heir: Emanuele Filiberto |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements | Articles lacking sources from October 2006 | All articles lacking sources | Spoken articles | 1937 births | Living people | Natives of Naples | Claimant Kings of Jerusalem | Heirs apparent who never acceded | House of Savoy | Pretenders | Princes | Italian Freemasons | History of Italy | History of Europe | Propaganda Due
