Word: emmanuele
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King's Coffee. But Italians long since had learned to jeer at their little king. Two attempts to assassinate Victor Emmanuel failed prior to World War II. Casualty lists and home-front privations in war did not allay the discontent. Ran one popular coffeehouse rhyme...
...stubbornly the King procrastinated, hoping somehow to hang on to his throne. In 1944, he named his tall (6 ft.) playboy son and Crown Prince, Umberto, as "Lieutenant General of the Realm," subject to the people's will to be expressed by free vote. Victor Emmanuel remained a king in name only...
King's Fishing. One May afternoon in 1946 Victor Emmanuel, wearing white gloves, went fishing for sgómbro, a kind of mackerel, in the bay of Naples. For hours he sat erect on a camp chair, his short, spindly legs clear of the royal yacht's deck. Only one sgómbro bit. The political fishing was just as bad. The king's few remaining friends told him that the Italian people would vote against the monarchy...
...Victor Emmanuel, in a last effort to save his line, decided to abdicate in favor of Umberto. Wearily, he penned his abdication, got the date wrong, corrected it, and paid a notary a 129-lire (15?) fee to register the document. Queen Elena cried. By this time, Italy's politicians professed not to care what he was doing or what his plans were; informed of the impending abdication, Premier Alcide de Gasperi said: "It's not even fourth or fifth on my list of matters of importance...
...Victor Emmanuel and Elena sailed for Egypt, whose King Farouk had offered them asylum. Stepping off the Italian cruiser at Alexandria, the exiled king cried to the sailors lined up amidships: "Farewell. . . . You are the men I loved the most." In his reign, Italy had embarked on five wars, two of them undeclared; more than 1½ million Italian soldiers and sailors had died in them...