The Peacock Throne

Her name is Maria Gabriella Giuseppa Aldegonda Adelaide Margherita Ludovica Felicita Gennara di Savoia. The founder of her house was Humbert the White-handed, who ruled Savoy in the 11th century. Among her ancestors are saints, Holy Roman and Byzantine emperors, antipopes, French and Belgian princesses, Italian and Balkan nobility and kings of lands as widely separated as Spain and Cyprus and England. Italy, last week, was in a ferment over Princess Maria Gabriella. The report was that she might marry a king twice her age whose father had been an army private.

Adjectival Search. In 1946 Princess Maria Gabriella, then aged six, left Italy with her father, Umberto II, who was known as "the King of May" because he had ruled only for that month, been ousted when the Italian people narrowly voted out the monarchy and voted in a republic. She was raised in exile in a seaside villa at Cascais in Portugal, and, when she was 17, she took leave of her dethroned father and her English governess to join her mother, Queen Marie Jose, in Switzerland and attend Geneva University.

Called Ella by her intimates, the princess made occasional short visits to Italy, where her former subjects searched for adjectives to describe the tall (5 ft. 11 in.) doe-eyed beauty who speaks five languages, rides, sings, plays the guitar, walks regally erect and smiles like a queen. "A charming princess," raved the weekly Settimo Giorno. "One of the loveliest girls of royal blood," mooned Rome's Il Messaggero. "Last summer at the pool at Gstaad, everyone agreed she had the most beautiful royal legs in Europe." Gushed a reporter: "With those eyes and that long chestnut hair, when you call 'Ella' the echo comes back 'bella.' "

Her name was linked with Don Juan Carlos, son of the Pretender to the Spanish throne ("He was made for her," sighed the weekly Epoca. "Six feet tall with wavy blond hair and blue eyes full of melancholy"), and with Britain's sportive Duke of Kent. The princess said nothing about either of the young men, went quietly back to her studies in Switzerland.

Pensive Thought. Another melancholy man turned up last year as a possible suitor: the hawk-nosed, greying Shah of Iran, 39, able and conscientious, divorced from his Queen Soraya and badly needing a son for his heirless kingdom. Attracted by published pictures of Princess Ella, he went to Geneva ostensibly for dental care, was a dinner guest at the sprawling Merlinge villa where Ella lives with ex-Queen Marie Jose. After the Shah departed, the Italian press clamored so loudly that lovely Ella again visited her native land. At a press conference, after some pensive thought, she told reporters that "I do not have the harem of men attributed to me; neither the Duke of Kent, Don Juan, nor the Shah of Iran. I have only seen the Shah once, for ten minutes. I deny reports of our engagement." To friends, she reportedly said of the Shah: "He is old enough to be my father, and looks like my grandfather." Yet -a strong point in his favor -he is one of the few kings who have a throne.

Despite Iranian predictions that there will be an "announcement" next month, the Italian press insisted that the marriage would be "impossible." Epoca cried: "Let's forget state complications. He is a sad and tired man, 20 years older than she. He lives in a dull and distant capital, on the edge of a backward and savage world. His court is oriental, his country uncivilized. Radiant Gabriella needs youth, sunshine and laughter. And then, how could a princess of Savoy, whose title goes back a thousand years, marry a man whose dynasty began in 1930?* Could she end up in the squalor of Teheran?" A Vatican source said: "In the eyes of the church, the Shah is an infidel."

Papal Message. In his capital city of Teheran, where his own life is not squalid, the Shah was silent on his Peacock Throne. But Iranian court circles pointed out that the staunchly Roman Catholic house of Savoy was used to religious difficulties. Maria Pia, Ella's sister, married Alexander of Yugoslavia, who belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church. Her Aunt Giovanna married Orthodox King Boris of Bulgaria, and the pledge to raise their children as Roman Catholics was given but not fulfilled. Yet Pope Pius XI sent Queen Giovanna a message carrying his blessings and esteem -and the message was carried by the then Archbishop Roncalli, who is now Pope John XXIII. But marrying a Moslem would presumably be an entirely different matter.

The Iranian constitution offered a stumbling block with its requirement that the heir to the throne have an Iranian mother. But court circles suggested that this explicit injunction might not be interpreted too rigidly, as long as Princess Ella allowed her children to be raised as Moslems. At week's end the Shah's matchmaking sister, Princess Chams, who arranged his earlier marriage to Soraya, was in Geneva, ostensibly for sinus treatment but presumably ready, willing and able to conduct further negotiations between the Peacock Throne and the House of Savoy. As for tall, irenic Princess Gabriella in her villa bedroom filled with toy stuffed animals -like many a lovely princess before her. she would be expected to marry whomever her queen mother tells her to.

* Actually, in 1925. In that year the Shah's father, a onetime cavalryman, seized the throne.

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