The son of the last king of Italy dies in substantial indifference: a sad testimony of a personal incapacity to interpret not only the role of “claimant” but also that of the heir to a family’s past that had made history. In reality, it was the weight of this past, combined with the vicissitudes of a childhood and adolescence lived amid family discord and the emptiness of exile, that crushed his too fragile personality.
Cavallo was certainly not an “accident.” It was the uncontrolled outburst of murderous rage of a young man too weak and too spoiled, whom only a shadowy circle of friends managed to save from the deserved punishment.
Listening to him recall those events in a recent television documentary evokes the painful impression of a lack of awareness bordering on audacity such as a child might have. Both in Cascais and in Geneva, in fact, I don’t believe that anyone ever deluded themselves about what the actions of Alfredo Covelli or Commander Achille Lauro were worth and could represent here in Italy: a very sorry thing destined to leave no trace.
In history, the sins of the fathers fall on the children. Often even on the children’s children: it’s unfair but it’s the reality.
And in a certain sense, Vittorio Emanuele was the last to pay for the chain of tragic errors of his grandfather along with the follies of his father. The betrayal of the Statute and the supine acceptance of fascism, including racist legislation and the war alongside Germany by Vittorio Emanuele III; in the aftermath of 8th September, Umberto’s inability to take any initiative, to “do something”, for example, to join the monarchist partisan groups in Piedmont to fight the Germans.
Of this burden, only this very heavy burden, its consequences, and nothing else, was indeed the heir of the man who closed his eyes yesterday: is it any wonder that he was crushed by it? February 4, 2024 | 09:12
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