Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia has a clear view of his family’s history: in his words, the women of the House of Savoy have mattered far more than the men. He said so on Sunday 25 October as a guest of Mara Venier on the Italian TV programme Domenica In, where he talked about La Regina di Maggio (“The May Queen”), his memoir about his grandmother Maria José, the last Queen of Italy. The 224-page book was published by Sperling & Kupfer in May 2026.
A queen for just over a month
Born in Ostend in 1906, a daughter of King Albert I of Belgium, Maria José married Umberto of Savoy and became queen in May 1946. Her reign lasted only around five weeks: the June 1946 referendum ended the monarchy, and the family went into exile. She died in Geneva in 2001, aged 94.
Her grandson describes a woman who was anything but a picture-postcard royal. He calls her free-spirited, cultured and openly anti-Fascist, someone who preferred the company of scientists, artists and thinkers to court ceremony, and who met figures such as Albert Einstein and Charlie Chaplin. According to his account, she would walk into Mussolini’s office unannounced to tell him what was going wrong, and from Switzerland she helped send money, supplies and weapons to Italian partisans.
Sunday lessons in history
The warmest memories in the book come from Sunday visits to the Château de Merlinge, near Geneva, the family’s Swiss home. As a boy, he admits, he would sometimes rather have gone cycling or to the cinema. Today he sees those afternoons as a gift: while his school friends read history books, he says, he had history sitting in front of him. From her he learned two things above all, freedom and curiosity, and his one wish would be to record her voice so he could hear her stories again.
Born in Geneva in 1972, he grew up unable to enter Italy and only returned in December 2002. He told Venier that for him, as a child, the word Savoy simply meant exile, and that his surname has not always been easy to carry. He has dedicated the book to his daughters, Vittoria and Luisa, so that they can know their family’s story. Asked about his private life, he said he has no new partner, adding only that he is happy and free.
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Sources: Vanity Fair Italia, “Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia a Domenica In: «Le donne di Casa Savoia sono molto più importanti degli uomini»” (25 October 2026); Sperling & Kupfer, La regina di maggio book page; Gente, “Emanuele Filiberto e La Regina di Maggio” (11 June 2026). Featured image: AI-generated illustration.
