When Victoria of Savoy turned sixteen she received a particular gift. Her grandfather, Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, the son of the last king of Italy, announced that, after more than a thousand years, the house would abolish Salic law to “conform to the spirit of the times.” “Taking into account the evolution of today's society,” Victor Emmanuel saw it necessary that the heirs of both sexes could enjoy “all the inherent privileges, prerogatives, rights and powers” of the Savoy family.
“It was the best gift I could give myself,” celebrated the young Victoria, a fashion enthusiast and very active influencer on social networks.
Now, after the death of her grandfather last Saturday at his residence in Geneva, the name of Victoria of Savoy has once again gained notoriety. Her father, Manuel Filiberto de Savoy, has become the head of the family and therefore the supposed claimant to the non-existent Italian throne. And her daughter, Victoria, now twenty years old, the first female heir to the House of Savoy.
Victoria Cristina Chiara Adelaide Maria, born on December 28, 2003 in Geneva, is the first-born of Manuel Filiberto and his wife, the French actress Clotilde Courau. Her little sister, Luisa, was born three years later. Raised between Geneva, Monte Carlo, France and Italy, Victoria studies in Paris and not long ago she was in the front row, with her mother, at the Dior show in the French capital. She is part of a modeling agency and is active on Instagram, where she has almost 100,000 followers. When her grandfather abolished family Salic law, she also gave her “the treatment of royal highness and the title of princess of Carignano, followed by the title of marchioness of Ivrea.”
“She was really moved. She appreciated the gesture and whenever she was with my father she took the opportunity to ask him about the thousand years of history of the house. And dad, who was a great history buff, began to tell him. The history of the House of Savoy was his passion and he knew everything,” Manuel Filiberto recently declared in an interview on Corriere della Sera.
The change infuriated the rival branch of the Savoy clan, the Dukes of Aosta, so at odds with Victor Emmanuel that both he and Amadeo of Saboya ended up expelled from the Zarzuela for a fist fight during the wedding of the then princes of Asturias, Felipe and Leticia. Amadeo, who died in 2021, claimed that he was the legitimate heir to the extinct throne, which is why he said that the Salic law could not be modified until the remote prospect of the monarchy being restored in Italy.
However, since his great-grandfather, Umberto II, had to renounce the crown after Italians voted in the 1946 referendum that they would abolish the monarchy and that Italy would become a Republic, none of this really means much. The Republican Constitution stipulated that the male descendants of the Savoy family had to go into exile, without being able to set foot in the country. His reputation was badly damaged by the connivance of his grandfather, King Victor Emmanuel III, with the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. The family then settled between Portugal, Switzerland, France and Corsica, until they were able to return to Italy when the country's Parliament, in 2002, abolished the measure that forced them into exile after they swore allegiance to the Republic and distanced themselves. for the first time of fascist racial laws.
Manuel Filiberto, a character who occasionally appears in gossip magazines and has participated in television contests such as the national versions of Look Who's Dancing, continues to dream that one day the Italians will ask them to come back. “Never say never,” he said, in 2020.
