Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Parma

Italian Royal Family
HRH The Prince of Naples HRH The Princess of Naples HRH The Prince of Venice and Piedmont HRH The Princess of Venice and Piedmont HRH Princess Vittoria HRH Princess Luisa HRH Princess Maria Pia HRH Princess Maria Gabriella HRH Princess Maria Beatrice Extended family HI&RH The Dowager Archduchess of Austria-Este HRH Princess Maria Cristina HRH The Duke of Aosta HRH The Duchess of Aosta HRH The Duke of Apulia HRH The Duchess of Apulia HRH Prince Umberto HRH Prince Amedeo HRH Princess Isabella HRH Princess Bianca HRH Princess Mafalda HRH Princess Maria Isabella

Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Parma (née Princess Maria Pia of Savoy; born 24 September 1934) is the eldest daughter of Umberto II of Italy and Marie-José of Belgium. She is the older sister of Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, the Prince of Naples, and Princess Maria Beatrice of Savoy. She is the cousin of former King Albert II of Belgium.

Biography

Maria Pia Elena Elisabetta Margherita Milena Mafalda Ludovica Tecla Gennara di Savoia was the first-born child of the Prince and Princess of Piedmont, born in Naples, Italy in 1934. Her parents, married since 1930, were unhappy together, as her mother confessed in an interview many years later (On n'a jamais été heureux, "We were never happy"), and separated after the Italian monarchy was abolished by plebiscite on 2 June 1946. Exiled, the family gathered briefly in Portugal, and she and her three younger siblings soon went with their mother to Switzerland while their father remained in Portugal. Being devout Catholics, her parents never divorced.

Marriage and issue

On the royal cruise of the yacht, Agamemnon, hosted by Queen Frederika of Greece on 22 August 1954, she met and later married Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia (born 1924), son of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark. Not long after their wedding, Maria Pia gave birth to the couple's set of fraternal twin sons. Another set of twins was born to Maria Pia during the marriage five years later, this time a girl and boy:

• Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia (b. 1958)
• Prince Michael of Yugoslavia (b. 1958)
• Prince Sergius "Serge" Wladimir Emanuel Maria of Yugoslavia (born 1963), married to Eleonora Rajneri^[1]
• Princess Helene Olga Lydia Tamara Maria of Yugoslavia (born 1963), married to Thierry Alexandre Gaubert^[2]
  • Milena Maria Pia Angelique Armaule Gaubert (born 1988)
  • Nastasia Marie-José Tania Vanessa Isabelle Gaubert (born 1991)
  • Leopold Umberto Armand Michel Gaubert (born 1997)

The couple were divorced in 1967.

In 2003 she remarried to Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma (born 1926), son of Prince René of Bourbon-Parma and Princess Margaret of Denmark, and divorced from Princess Yolande de Broglie-Revel, by whom he has five dynastic children, and who is also the father of a child born out-of-wedlock in 1977, Amélie de Bourbon de Parme. Through him she is a sister-in-law of Queen Anne of Romania. Her ex-husband, Prince Alexander, also remarried to Princess Barbara of Liechtenstein, a cousin of that principality's monarch, and they have one son, Prince Dushan.

Ancestry

Maria Pia's ancestors in three generations

References

External links

• Royalty visits the Hoover Institution Archives

See also