Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia
Prince of the Italian royal dinasty.
The Savoy dynasty was founded in the 11th century by Umberto the Whitehanded and ruled over the territories of Savoy, in parts of what are now France and the Italian Piedmont. In the 16th century, the Savoys moved their seat from Chambéry to Turin and gradually expanded their territory. After the Italian Risorgimento, the movement to create one country from a patchwork of tiny entities, Italy was united in 1861 under Vittorio Emanuele II.
The royal family was condemned for its actions on Sept. 8, 1943, when Mussolini was overthrown and Italy surrendered to the allies. The king and his court fled German-occupied Rome for safety in Brindisi, abandoning Italian troops. Hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers were deported to internment camps in Germany. (One of the king's sisters, Mafalda, was arrested by the Nazis and died in Buchenwald).
In 1946, Vittorio Emanuele III abdicated, putting his son Umberto II on the throne in an effort to salvage the monarchy. But Umberto II was king for only one month, until Italians voted in a referendum to abolish the monarchy in favor of a republic. The royal family went into exile, and in 1948 a constitutional amendment barred their return till the year 2002, when the ban was finally lifted.
