Marie-José of Belgium

Marie-José of Belgium (Marie-José Charlotte Sophie Amélie Henriette Gabrielle; 4 August 1906 – 27 January 2001) was the last Queen of Italy.

Her 34-day tenure as queen consort earned her the nickname "the May Queen".

Princess Marie-José was born in Ostend, the youngest child of King Albert I of the Belgians and his consort, Duchess Elisabeth in Bavaria.

Through her mother she was a grandniece of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and of Maria Sophie of Bavaria, last queen consort of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

During the First World War, she was evacuated to England where she was a boarding pupil at the Brentwood Ursuline Convent High School in Brentwood, Essex.

She later attended the College of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence, Italy, where she first met her future husband.

In 1918, the Princess reprimanded Major Gordon when he called her rabbit Marshal Soult by the name Soult.

The princess explained that if she called for "Gordon", no one would be able to understand who she meant.

Still, if she addressed him as Major Gordon, everyone would understand her because everyone knew who Major Gordon was.

In 1924, Marie-José attended her first court ball.

For the occasion she was given an antique pearl and diamond tiara that had originally been owned by Stéphanie de Beauharnais.

During the First World War, the Princess resided mainly in Great Britain but was often escorted by the Belgian King's Messenger, Archibald Alexander Gordon to her parents in Belgium.

On 8 January 1930, she married Crown Prince Umberto of Italy, from the House of Savoy, at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, and so became Princess of Piedmont (Italian: Principessa di Piemonte).

Among the wedding gifts was a turquoise and diamond parure, worn by the bride at her pre-wedding reception, and a diamond bow worn as a sash decoration at state occasions.

The couple had four children:

Mussolini's mistress, Claretta Petacci, claimed in her diary that in 1937 the then princess and wife of the heir to the throne tried and failed to seduce the dictator at a beach resort near Rome.

However, Mussolini's son, Romano, claims that the princess and dictator entered into a sexual relationship.

In October 1939, Princess Marie-José was made President of the Red Cross in Italy.

The Princess and Duchess of Aosta attended the ceremony where Marie-José was installed as President of the Italian Red Cross.

During the Second World War she was one of the very few diplomatic channels between the German/Italian camp and the other European countries involved in the war, as she was the sister of Leopold III of Belgium (kept hostage by the German forces) and at the same time, as the wife of the heir to the throne, close to some of the ministers of Benito Mussolini's cabinet.

A British diplomat in Rome recorded that the Princess of Piedmont was the only member of the Italian Royal Family with good political judgment.

In 1943, the Crown Princess involved herself in vain attempts to arrange a separate peace treaty between Italy and the United States; her interlocutor from the Vatican was Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, a senior diplomat who later became Pope Paul VI.

She also interceded with Adolf Hitler to ask for mercy towards the people of Belgium.

Her attempts were not sponsored by the king and Umberto was not (directly, at least) involved in them.

After her failure (she never met the American agents), she was sent with her children to Sarre, in the Aosta Valley, and isolated from the political life of the Royal House.

She sympathised with the partisans, and while she was a refugee in Switzerland, smuggled weapons, money and food for them.

She was nominated for appointment as chief of a partisan brigade, but declined.

Following Italy's defection to the Allied side in the war, her discredited father-in-law, King Victor Emmanuel III, withdrew from government.

Her husband became regent under the title of Lieutenant General of the Realm.

He and Marie-José toured war torn Italy, where they made a positive impression.

However, King Victor Emmanuel III refused to abdicate until only weeks before the referendum.

Upon the eventual abdication on 9 May 1946 of her father-in-law, Marie-José became Queen consort of Italy, and remained such until the monarchy was abolished by plebiscite on 2 June 1946, effective 12 June 1946.

Umberto and Marie-José had been widely praised for their performance over the last two years, and it has been argued that had Victor Emmanuel abdicated sooner their relative popularity might have saved the monarchy.

Following the monarchy's defeat (54–46%), she and her husband left the country for exile on 13 June 1946.

In exile, the family gathered for a brief time on the Portuguese Riviera, but she and Umberto separated.

She and their four children soon left for Switzerland, where she lived most of the time for the rest of her life, while Umberto remained in Portugal.

However, the couple, both of whom were devout Catholics, never divorced.

The republican constitution forbade the restoration of the monarchy and also barred all male members of the House of Savoy, as well as former queens consort, from returning to Italian soil.

For some time, she lived in Mexico with her daughter, Princess Marie-Beatrice, and her grandchildren.

Queen Marie-José returned to Italy after her husband's death in 1983.