[Deathwatch] Geraldine Apponyi, former queen of Albania, 87

[Deathwatch Central]

thanks to a reader for sending this in (took me a while to get obit) -
ed.

Sunday, October 27, 2002 - 12:00 a.m. Pacific

Fairy tale soured for Queen Geraldine

By Douglas Martin

Geraldine of Albania, who as the wife of King Zog was for one year her
adopted country's first and only queen and the only member of European
royalty with U.S. blood, died on Tuesday in Tirana, Albania's capital.
She was 87.

Her story reads as if it were a Hollywood fantasy. Though she was a
countess, her family's fortunes had plunged so far that at 20 she was
selling postcards in the Budapest National Museum. Then King Zog, who
had been desperately seeking a bride, saw her picture. They met on New
Year's Day 1938, and 10 days later were engaged.

The wedding was triumphant. Her veil trailed from a high diadem of
orange blossoms and her white satin gown was embroidered with pearls.
Fifty thousand children in native costumes applauded, and enemy clans
shared wine. The wedding gifts included a scarlet Mercedes from Adolf
Hitler.

A year later, Italy invaded Albania, and the queen, still bleeding
after giving birth, fled with her infant son in an ambulance over
tortuous mountain roads to Greece. The king and 115 members of his
court, carrying 10 heavy cases of valuables, followed.

Her dreams of founding a dynasty were dead. The tall, graceful queen
turned down an offer to be in movies. The couple began the long
country-to-country odyssey — this month a chateau at Versailles, next
month a palace in Egypt — so drearily familiar to banished royalty.

At the time of his escape, King Zog was believed to have made his
situation easier by adding Albania's gold reserve to his large personal
fortune, previously deposited in Swiss and English banks. His last act
before fleeing was to broadcast an appeal to his people "to fight to
the last drop of blood for Albanian independence."

Geraldine Apponyi was born a countess in Budapest on Aug. 6, 1915. Her
father was the Hungarian nobleman Count Gyula Apponyi de Nagy-Appony
and her mother was the former Gladys Virginia Stewart, a member of an
old Virginia family. Her grandfather had been a high official of the
Hapsburg Court. But Central European royalty had lost thrones, money
and prestige after World War I. The queen's father died in 1924, and
her mother remarried a French army officer. The Apponyi family insisted
Geraldine and her two sisters be educated in Hungary.

Circumstances dictated that the young women learn shorthand and typing,
but they still went to balls. When she was 17, her photograph was taken
several times at a ball given by Hungarian monarchists. One of those
pictures would change her life.

Meanwhile, King Zog, who had advanced from tribal chief to prime
minister to president to Albania's first monarch and who was sometimes
called the Balkan Napoleon, was miserable. He barely escaped
assassination in 1931 as he left the Vienna Opera House, and his mother
kept watch over the royal kitchen to make sure his food was not
poisoned. An article in The New Yorker in 1989 said he did little
except play poker and smoke 150 perfumed cigarettes a day.

"What have I to offer a bride?" the king asked, according to the 1944
edition of Current Biography.

It said he offered a "handsome fee" to a marriage broker to find him an
attractive bride with an income of $1 million a year. Then he saw the
photograph. The Muslim king fell in love with a penniless Roman
Catholic.

He invited her to Albania, and she arrived shortly after Christmas in
1937. She was made a princess after accepting his New Year's Day
proposal.

She charmed the Albanians. When the country's vice president gave her a
velvet pocketbook containing the equivalent of $500,000, she directed
that it be given to the National Albanian Charities, The New York
American reported.

She remained a Catholic and was wed in a civil ceremony on April 27,
1938. The circumstances of the wedding hinted at the scheming politics
that would abruptly end the queen's fairy tale in a year's time. The
New York Herald Tribune observed that Geraldine, 22, "seems to be
marrying the Rome-Berlin axis as well as her king." In addition to the
Mercedes from Hitler, gifts included copper vases from Italian Prime
Minister Benito Mussolini and a rare cabinet from Spanish dictator
Francisco Franco.

But in April 1939, Italian troops invaded and the king and queen fled.
Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Italian foreign minister, who had been King
Zog's best man, arrived in a bomber. The immediate pretext for the
invasion was the Italian accusation that the king was misusing Italian
money, but many suggested that Mussolini was jealous of Hitler's
conquests and that Albania was nearby.

The crown passed to King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, and the couple's
wandering began. They passed through Greece, Turkey, Romania, Poland,
the Baltic states, Sweden, Belgium and France before landing at the
Ritz Hotel in London. Once it was clear they would be unable to return
to Albania, they moved to Egypt, where King Farouk welcomed exiled
royalty.

When Farouk was overthrown in 1952, they moved to Paris, where King
Zog, who had survived numerous assassination attempts, died in 1961.
The queen then lived in Spain and South Africa before returning to
Albania at the invitation of Parliament four months ago. She is
survived by her son, Leka, who returned to try to take the Albanian
throne in 1997 but was rejected 2-to-1 in a referendum.