Queen Giovanna of Bulgaria

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Queen Giovanna of Bulgaria was born on this day in 1907, exactly 110 years ago! The third daughter and forth child of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and Princess Elena of Montenegro. In 1930, she married Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria at the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. The couple had two children, Tsar Simeon and Princess Marie Louise, and were happily married until his death in 1943, under dubious circumstances in the second world war. After remaining in house arrest by the Communist government until 1946, Queen Giovanna and her children were forced to flee into exile, joining her father, also in exile, in Egypt, then Madrid, and then to Portugal, where she spent the rest of her life, apart brief return to Bulgaria in 1993, and died in 2000.

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One thought on “Queen Giovanna of Bulgaria

  1. Well, I’ll say this. Tsar Boris III did the best he could to avoid sending Bulgarian Jews to Nazi concentration camps. I’ve read where he was murdered using a slow-acting poison which took weeks to do its nefarious job. Poor Queen Giovanna was left alone to raise their children in exile, including Tsar Simeon, who was his country’s Prime Minister at some point. Quite an extraordinary life, n’est pas?

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