News emerged yesterday that Benito Mussolini, the great Italian dictator that was partly responsible for fascism, actually did have an affair with Marie-José, who happened to be the last Queen of Italy. Previously, Mussolini’s mistress, Claretta Petacci, claimed this wasn’t so. Mussolini’s youngest son however seems to know something that she didn’t.

Back in 1937, Claretta Petacci wrote in her personal diary that the then princess and wife of the heir to the Italian throne, Marie-José, tried and failed to seduce the dictator at a beach resort near Rome.

Much like with the current dictatorial-ish Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, it seems bunga bunga-type parties have been catching up with Italian leaders more often than not throughout history.

Romano, the son in question, has been quoted in a letter republished by the weekly magazine Oggi, as writing that a “brief period of intimate romantic relations between my father and the then princess of Piedmont,” did happen.

That is a direct reference to Marie-José, who was born in 1906 as the daughter of the then Belgian king, Albert I.

What happened was that it was arranged quite early on in Marie-José’s life that she should marry into the Italian royal family, and in 1930 she wed Umberto of Savoy, the only son of King Victor Emmanuel.

One day, according to Claretta Petacci, this conversation apparently went down between Mussolini and herself: “Marie-José came and said ‘May I?’ Then, with a small movement her dress fell and she was there virtually naked.”

Mussolini reassured her that he found the princess “repulsive” and that she had made “no impression on me at all”.

But that’s obviously not what happened.

Long story short, aside from the promiscuous lifestyle Mussolini led, including the purported one-woman-a-day thing at his office in Palazzo Venezia for almost 14 years, he got stuck into some royalty too.

According to the letter written by Romano in 1971, addressed to Antonio Terzi, a former deputy editor of the newspaper Corriere della Sera:

I can confirm in all good faith that the romantic and political relations between Marie-José and my father were often talked about at home, and I can tell you with honesty that my mother (albeit with understandable reservations) was always pretty explicit: there was a brief period of intimate romantic relations between my father and the then Princess of Piedmont that was then I believe interrupted at the instance of my father.

The Italian monarchy was abolished by referendum in 1946 and this brought about the separation and end of Marie-José and Umberto’s marriage.

She then spent the rest of her life in Switzerland where she died in 2001.

[Source: Guardian]