All Eyes on Italy Some Matrimonial Rumours

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 508, 10 November 1928, Page 26

All Eyes on Italy Some Matrimonial Rumours

(Written for THE SUN by LADY DRUMMOND-HAY.)

r TOUGH Woodrow Wilson and America intervened in the Great War to “make the world safe for Democracy,” the race of kings and queens will not die off. We have “ Newspaper Kings,” “ Sugar Kings,” “ Iron Kings,” “ Petroleum Kings,” to say nothing of the “ Soap Kings.” There is something magic about the title.

■piAIRIES, kings, queens, princes and princesses are heritages of childhood, but now and then, to the secret joy of the romantic, a new real king springs up in this age of republics and democracy. Such a one is Scanderbeg 111., the new King of Albania, and as kings must have queens, Rome has become an enchanted city, where rival kings seek a queen, resulting in many fairy-tales of their hunt, and of others as well. Yolanda, the beautiful eldest daughter of the King and Queen of Italy, married her riding-master, a captain of cavalry; Princess Mafalda, the second, took as husband a German Prince of Hesse, whose chief claim so far is that he is a typical German “bookworm.” I was at their wedding at Rocconlgl in 1925. Giovanna, the third Royal Princess of Italy, has as many suitors as the princesses of fable and legend. King Boris, of the Bulgars, and King Scanderbeg, of the Albanians, are said to be the keenest rivals. Rumour in Rome has it that Mustapha Kenral, the great “Ghazi” of Turkey, has one eye on Giovanna, while with the other he is looking towards Kabul at the pretty Afghan princess, sister of King Amanullah. Rumour is not satisfied with that, though, for it is even hinted that Mussolini, wants to divorce Donna Rachele, and himself become the son-in-law of King Vittorio Emanuele, fcy

taking Princess Giovanna as wife . . . if she will have him. In Rome, as in all other capitals, there are very many people who have nothing better to do than to manufacture rumours. To the desire which they attribute to the Duce of wanting to be the King’s son-in-law, they add another wish on his behalf—to have the Crown Prince Umberto as his own son-in-law by giving his daughter Edda to the future King of Italy. It all sounds like a tangle of fairy tales. The Duce is an exemplary family-father now. Women, if ever they were, are no longer dangerous to him. His career is ample proof that they have never diverted him from his path of ambition.