Archduchess Margherita, Archduchess of Austria-Este

Biography

Margherita, born in the Royal Palace of Capodimonte, Naples on 7 April 1930, is the eldest daughter of Prince Amedeo of Savoy, Duke of Aosta, and Princess Anne d'Orléans, first cousins married in 1927. She has a younger sister, Marie Christine (born in 1933). The princess was baptised in the chapel of the Capodimonte Palace on 28 May 1930 with the names Margherita Isabella Maria Vittoria Emanuela Elena Gennara. Her godparents were the King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III and her paternal grandmother Princess Hélène d'Orléans.

Her father, the Duke of Aosta, was appointed Viceroy of Ethiopia on 21 December 1937, and Margherita spent part of her childhood in Africa. In 1940, she returned to Italy with her mother and her younger sister, Marie Christine, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. Her father, taken prisoner by the British, died prematurely of typhus in captivity in Nairobi on 3 March 1942.

At the beginning of the Second World War, Margherita lived with her sister and mother in a flat in the Pitti Palace in Florence. In 1943, Germany invaded Italy. In July 1944, the Duchess of Aosta and her two daughters were arrested by the Germans and deported to the Hotel Ifen in Hirschegg, Austria, before being released in May 1945 and returning to Italy on 7 July. The fall of the Italian monarchy in June 1946 forced Margherita, her mother and her sister to leave the country and settle in Belgium, where they stayed for just over a year, before moving to Switzerland.