February 28 2000                                                                              OBITUARIES

Widow of a reluctant ally of Hitler, who helped to save some
   of Europe's Jews

      QUEEN GIOVANNA OF THE
      BULGARIANS

   Queen Giovanna of the Bulgarians, widow of King
  Boris III, was born in Rome on 13 November 1907. She
   died in Estoril, Portugal, on February 26 aged 92

 QUEEN Giovanna of the Bulgarians was the daughter of a
 King who abdicated and the wife of a King who was
 possibly murdered. She began her life in the splendour of
 Rome, lived through the torments of wartime in Bulgaria and
 ended her days in tranquil exile.

 Giovanna was the third daughter of King Victor Emmanuel
 III of Italy and the only one of his daughters to have been
 born in the Quirinale Palace in Rome. Her father had been
 King of Italy since the assassination of his father in 1900.
 Her mother, Queen Elena, was a princess of Montenegro,
 one of the daughters of the roguish Prince Nicholas, later
 King of Montenegro, who planted his daughters in the courts
 of Europe, using them as ambassadors and spies.

 Giovanna's early life was spent at the Villa Savoia, where she
 was raised strictly by her governess, learning history,
 literature and Latin, speaking English and French, and
 playing the piano.

 Her lot in life was to be appropriately married. She was not
 permitted to choose a commoner, but since the various
 European princes who presented themselves held no appeal,
 her parents did not force her to accept their proposals. Her
 first serious suitor was King Boris of Bulgaria, who lunched
 with her parents at San Rossore in September 1927. The
 pair hardly spoke, but Giovanna was nervous, because of
 newspaper reports suggesting that although they had never
 met, they would soon be marrying. Lunch was followed by a
 second meeting at dinner, at which Boris focused more
 attention on the young Italian princess.

 Their next meeting was at the wedding of Giovanna's
 brother, Umberto, in Rome in January 1930 where King
 Boris asked her to marry him. There remained, however, the
 hurdle of her Catholicism versus his Eastern Orthodoxy.

 The couple were married at St Francis's Cathedral, Assisi,
 that October. Among the guests was old King Ferdinand,
 King Boris's somewhat difficult father, and a group of Italian
 Fascist ministers led by Mussolini. In Sofia there was a
 second marriage ceremony, this time Orthodox, which
 converted Princess Giovanna into Tsaritsa Ioanna and
 enraged Pope Pius XI.

 The new Queen had to adapt to life among strangers and the
 rather forbidding palace in Sofia. In another royal home,
 Vrana, she found King Ferdinand's rooms locked. When she
 penetrated them she found a Bluebeard's haunt to which the
 former King had been wont to retreat to meditate, and which
 he had filled with funeral masks. She soon ousted the
 unwelcome relics.

 During the prewar years the couple travelled abroad, visiting
 other European monarchs, and staying at Balmoral with
 George V and the Duke of York. But there were times when
 she felt lonely.

 She gave birth to Marie-Louise in January 1933 and four
 years later produced a son and heir, Simeon. Although King
 Boris had the children christened in the Eastern-Orthodox
 rite for political reasons, the Queen was not excommunicated
 by the Catholic Church.

 The succession assured, Queen Giovanna gradually became
 involved in charitable enterprises and personally financed the
 building of a children's hospital. When war came King Boris
 did his best to keep Bulgaria neutral, but was gradually
 drawn in on the side of Germany. Both he and the Queen
 were shocked by the Nazis' anti-Semitism; the King saved
 many thousands of Bulgarian Jews from the concentration
 camps, and Queen Giovanna intervened to obtain transit
 visas to enable a number of Jews to escape to Argentina.

 King Boris also resisted declaring war on Russia, which
 greatly displeased Hitler. Following a stormy meeting with
 the F?hrer in August 1943, the King returned to Sofia in low
 spirits, aware that his vow not to send Bulgarians to fight
 outside their country was likely to be overturned. He did not
 contact Queen Giovanna and rarely saw her thereafter. In
 those last days he went mountain climbing, but back in the
 capital he became seriously ill. The Queen was not told of his
 condition until two days before he died, something she
 resented all her life.

 Stress and a heart condition were the official reasons for the
 49-year-old King's death, but rumours that he had been
 poisoned were voiced at the time and have since grown.

 The next years were no easier for his Queen. Bulgaria was
 invaded by Russia and Prince Kyril (the Regent) was tried
 by a People's Court in Sofia in 1945 and shot.

 Queen Giovanna and her nine-year-old son, the new King,
 remained at Vrana until the end of 1946, when they were
 given 48 hours to leave Bulgaria. They went first to Egypt,
 where they joined her father. Later they moved to Spain.
 Her last years were spent living quietly in a villa at Estoril,
 attending Mass every evening at six and living a life of quiet
 retreat from the world.

 Following the collapse of communism Queen Giovanna
 made an emotional pilgrimage to Sofia in 1993 after an exile
 of 47 years. She visited the grave where her late husband's
 heart, which had just come to light, had been reburied and
 attended a private Mass for his soul.

 She is survived by her son, King Simeon, a businessman in
 Madrid, and her daughter.