Princess Fawzia: The Forgotten Queen of Glamour, Grace and Geography

The pantheon of the most beautiful women of the 20th century includes Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and many other beauties. Hollywood goddesses are well known to us, but one member of this distinguished group is a symbol of a forgotten era. Her name was Fawzia and she was both a princess and a queen. In the eyes of the world, she was the embodiment of glamour, her style a mixture of European fashion and Oriental mysticism.

Her beauty was so unusual and striking that the famous photographer Cecil Beaton called her “the Venus of Asia”, admiring her perfect heart-shaped face and her unusually pale but penetrating blue eyes. The shy princess, who also had European roots, looked like a lush version of Hedy Lamarr and a gentler copy of Vivien Leigh. But the life of the former Egyptian princess and Iranian queen shows that great beauty does not always guarantee happiness, let alone inner peace, success or security.

Most people know nothing about Fawzia. She has been predictably silent about her life and her circumstances. Few people seem to know what she really thought or felt. Her face and personality were as mysterious as the Mona Lisa. But there were cracks in the mask, as her shy eyes clearly reflected great sadness and pain.

Reza Pahlavi, the last princess of Egypt and first wife of the Shah of Iran, has gone down in history not only as one of the most exciting beauties of the East, but also as a woman who voluntarily gave up a life in the Iranian royal court, a high title and other symbols of a life of luxury. She has never regretted her decision.

The early years of Princess Charming

Princess Fawzia bin Fuad was born on 5 November 1921 in Ras el-Tin Palace in Alexandria, Egypt. The eldest daughter of Sultan (later King) Fuad I of Egypt and Sudan and his second wife Nazli Sabri, she was given the title ‘Her Sultan Highness’ at birth. Albanian, French and Circassian blood flowed through her veins. One of her ancestors – a French officer who served under Napoleon – converted to Islam and stayed in Egypt. Fawzia clearly owed him a European appearance.

The Princess, who was born a year after her brother Farouk, was followed by three sisters, Faiza, Faika and Fatia. All the daughters’ names begin with the letter F in memory of Fuad’s beloved late mother Ferijal.

Fawzia spent her childhood in the beautiful royal palaces and gardens of Cairo and Alexandria, surrounded by British nannies and Italian servants who adored the charming princess. They spoke mostly in English, for Father Fuad was more European than Arab in heart, spirit, upbringing, values and perception. In fact, he grew up abroad, did not speak Arabic and totally despised Arabs, including his own countrymen. It was not unusual for him to call them “ces crétins” and other even less polite terms.

Despite her wealth and comfort, the girl did not live a fairy-tale life, as the family was rather dysfunctional. Her father and mother increasingly despised each other and quarrelled more and more frequently, and there was also abuse.

Immediately after their marriage, Nazli’s father Fuad, who was 26 years older than his wife, imprisoned Nazli in his harem with the other women in the Abbassia Palace and warned her that she would live there until she proved her worth by giving birth to the heir to the Egyptian throne.

Fortunately, the stars were on her side and nine months after their marriage she gave birth to a son. The dynastic succession was assured and Fuad finally allowed her to move into Kobbeh Palace, the royal residence.

Although Nazli was queen, she was only a trophy wife to her husband. She was not allowed to leave the palace except on rare occasions when she could attend opera performances, flower shows and other social events reserved for women. Nazli, as a highly educated, emancipated and modern woman – she never wore the hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf – found it difficult to adapt to this restrictive way of life. It is therefore not surprising that the couple often quarrelled and that Fuad often hit his wife in anger and locked her in her room for several weeks.

He also restricted her contact with her son Farouk. The boy was allowed to spend only one hour a day with his mother to prevent her from infecting him with her feminine wiles and encouraging him to become less manly. Nazli could not submit to her husband’s cruelty and resisted again and again. Once she tried to take her own life by taking an overdose of aspirin tablets, but the maid discovered her in time and the doctors managed to save the Queen.

There was another key quality in Fawzia’s life – her incredible naivety. Although she was sent by her parents to a prestigious boarding school in Switzerland and was fluent in English, French and her mother’s Arabic, she was severely lacking in practical education and ill-equipped for life in the world. One source described her as “an over-protected, cellophane-wrapped girl”.

When she returned to Egypt after her schooling in Europe, where she enjoyed socialising and European fashion, she had to face again the rules and customs of the place, a major departure from her previous life. This was very distressing for the princess, who loved freedom and did not want to be confined to the palace, accompanied by bodyguards and under the watchful eye of servants. The Egyptian courtier and writer Adil Sabit described this period of her life as follows:

“In those days Fawzia was a prisoner in her mother’s household … She rarely went for walks, and during the few hours when she did, she was always accompanied by servants and maids. At a time when other young girls enjoyed relative freedom, Fawzia was restricted in everything because of her social position.”

A political puppet of men

In addition to the political situation in Egypt, her life was also shaped by that of her brother, who succeeded their father as King Farouk. Sometimes she was a political puppet of the men around her, other times a victim of circumstances, but always subordinate to regional politics. Her life was inextricably intertwined with that of her brother. In many ways, understanding Farouk is the key to understanding Fawzia. His personality was crucial not only to his own fate, but also to the fate of Fawzia and of Egypt as a whole.

The political dreams of the self-important young King Farouk, who succeeded to the Egyptian throne at the age of 16 after his father’s death in 1936, and his perception of himself as a political powerbroker were greatly enhanced by the dynastic aspirations of another monarch.

Reza Shah Pahlavi ascended the Persian throne after a British-backed coup overthrew the long-standing Qajar monarchy. Concerned about the succession and the future of his new dynasty, he sought a suitable bride for his eldest son, Crown Prince Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

The ideal candidate would have had old royal blood, which would have added lustre to Iran’s shallow-rooted monarchy and strengthened Iran’s power in the Middle East. Reza Shah has set his sights on Fawzia, the favourite sister of a wealthy Egyptian king and a princess with an enviable pedigree.

When Fawzia was seventeen years old, an Iranian ambassador was sent to Cairo to propose marriage between Fawzia and Iran’s Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Fawzia’s brother, King Farouk, initially resisted the Shah’s attempts to obtain his consent to the union. In fact, he only agreed to the possibility of the marriage after pressure from his advisers, who saw it as a confirmation of the power of a constitutional monarch in a region heavily influenced by the British.

The Egyptians were not impressed by the gifts Reza Shah sent to King Farouk to persuade him to marry his sister to his son, Prince Mohammed Reza. When a group of Iranian envoys arrived in Cairo to arrange the wedding, Farouk took the Iranians on a tour of his five palaces to show them true royal splendour and asked if there was anything comparable in Iran.

The bride and groom-to-be, who had never even met, came from different backgrounds with different traditions, spoke different languages and belonged to different branches of Islam. A Sunni princess and a Shiite crown prince would be united. However, only Fawzia’s mother, Queen Nazli, was strongly opposed to the union, which would have taken her daughter to a distant country. King Farouk, too, felt guilty about giving up his favourite sister, and hesitated to give his final blessing.

To ease his conscience, Faruk left the final decision to Fawzia, knowing full well that the young, inexperienced and heavily protected princess would be stunned by the prospect of becoming Shahbanu, Queen of Queens.

Fawzia was delighted. Marrying a foreign prince seemed like a release from a golden cage and a different life was promised.

The nineteen-year-old Crown Prince was unaware of the wedding negotiations and did not even see a picture of his bride-to-be until the betrothal was publicly announced in May 1938. Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was already in love with an Iranian girl, but he realised the importance of strengthening Egyptian-Persian relations and agreed to marry Princess Fawzia after seeing her charming face on the cover of an English magazine.

Princess Fawzia of Egypt and Crown Prince Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran were engaged in May 1938, but saw each other only once before the wedding. King Farouk took the newlyweds on a tour of Egypt, showing them the pyramids, Al-Azhar University and other famous Egyptian sites.

At the time, much attention was paid to the contrast between Crown Prince Mohammed Reza, dressed in the simple uniform of an Iranian officer, and the extravagant teenage King Farouk, who lived a life of extravagance and luxury.

Since under Iranian law only an Iranian could become Queen, a law was hastily passed in Iran declaring Fawzia a Persian, and her children would be considered pure-blooded Iranians.

A politically orchestrated marriage

Fawzia and Mohammad Reza were married the following year. The 18-year-old princess seems to have taken a liking to the crown prince. According to his twin sister Princess Ashraf, the feeling was mutual.

The wedding ceremony was performed twice – first in the Sunni tradition and later in the Shiite tradition. The first wedding took place on 15 March 1939 at the Abdeen Palace in Cairo and the Shah’s family did not attend. After the ceremony, King Farouk hosted a glamorous reception with a dinner of more than twenty courses in a huge arabesque hall with verses from the Koran inscribed in gold on the high ceiling. Guests were presented with gold and precious stone candies, flower-filled carriages rolled down wide avenues and fireworks were set off over the Nile.

After the honeymoon, Fawzia travelled to Iran with her mother Queen Nazli, her sisters and more than 200 pieces of luggage. After the sophistication of Cairo, Iran came as a shock; the train carrying the new Crown Princess to Tehran suffered several power and water cuts. In the photographs taken during her first days in Tehran, which was backward and primitive compared to Cairo, her face shows a look of resignation.

The newlyweds were married for the second time in Tehran at Reza Shah’s new Marble Palace, which was also their future residence. According to Princess Ashraf, who came to greet her new sister-in-law, the couple looked “radiant” and “when they looked at each other, their eyes were full of affection”. It also helped that the young bride had a sense of fun and a passionate zest for life, which the young Crown Prince liked very much.

The Persian ceremony was also known for its extravagance, with Persians flooding the streets of Tehran, decorated with banners and flower arches, to welcome their new ruler. It included a seven-day celebration with a display of traditional sports games, synchronised student acrobatics and a parade of international troops at Amjadieh Stadium, where 25 000 members of Iran’s elite gathered.

The wedding dinner was held in French style and the dishes chosen included ‘Consommé Royal’ soup and ‘Caspian Sea Caviar’. Some prisoners were released from jail and food and money were distributed to the poor.

Queen Nazli accompanied her daughter to the Persian royal court and quickly found fault with almost everything she experienced there. Her dissatisfaction with the situation in the palace caused tensions in the family and hardly a day went by without Queen Nazli quarrelling with the Shah’s mother, Taj al-Moluk, who was an overbearing, cold, bitter and demanding ruler and was often referred to as “the tyrant”. In fact, she was the only person who was not intimidated by her brutal and intimidating husband Reza Shah.

Culture shock

After Nazliya’s return, Princess Fawzia found herself alone in a foreign country and increasingly missing her court. Much to her chagrin, the capital and the royal court could not have been more different. The two courts reflected the lifestyles of their rulers. The Egyptian royal family lived in the Abdeen Palace, which was built in an oriental style and had a touch of European sophistication.

The Egyptian court was reminiscent of the glamour and opulence of oriental fairy tales, with a touch of Versailles. Poets, artists, musicians, intellectuals and aristocrats mingled at sumptuous balls and evenings, and witty repartee in English, Turkish, Italian, Arabic and French was elevated almost to an art form. Even the women were dressed and made up like their European counterparts. The royal court in Cairo was a veritable Paris of the Middle East.

Just as the Egyptian court glittered, so did Cairo, a very advanced capital by Middle Eastern standards. Cairo in those days was like an enchanted city; beautiful, mysterious and wonderfully alive. Compared to other Middle Eastern capitals that were just emerging from the darkness of the past, Cairo was like a glittering jewel. It was a cosmopolitan city, rich in ancient traditions, but brimming with the intellectual and creative impulses of the 20th century.

The world into which Princess Fawzia entered, however, was not very “inspiring”. The Iranian court had a comfortable but simple bourgeois atmosphere. The capital was provincial and rough, both in terms of architectural layout and cultural attractions. Entertainment was limited to traditional oriental bazaars, which looked exactly as they must have looked centuries ago; a few shops selling imported goods; a few separate cinemas, where women sat in one section and men in another, watching old American films; and a Muslim theatre dedicated to the life and death of the martyrs of the Persian faith.

Many of the town houses were built of mud or brick. The streets, which were unpaved and unattractive even in the daytime, were taken over at dusk by gangs of roving bandits. People did not dare to wander outside, preferring to sit in teahouses or opium dens.

Life in Tehran was very different for Fawzia, and for the new Crown Princess, who had previously lived in a sophisticated and Europeanised court in Cairo, the uncultilised environment of Iran was quite a shock. She was shocked by another realisation. Although she was now a married woman, her life was no less restrictive than before her marriage.

She also soon realised that her husband’s family was more than just an oddity. They were downright horrible. Her father-in-law, Reza Shah, was a domineering, violent man who liked to hit people with a riding crop. Fawzia was completely controlled by her father-in-law, whose authoritarian rule extended not only to the country but also to members of the royal family.

He forbade her contact with her family and sent back all servants and belongings brought back from Egypt. When all her Egyptian servants were dismissed, she decided to communicate with her husband and the members of the court only in French from then on, as a sign of protest, because she did not want to learn Persian.

Fawzia’s husband Mohammed had a difficult relationship with his father – he later described him as “one of the most terrifying men” he had ever known – and grew up fearing his domineering personality and violent temper. Indeed, the old Shah thought that showing affection for his son would arouse homosexual tendencies in him, but he could not allow it. Mohammed despised his father, describing him as a cuckolded Cossack who had achieved nothing as Shah.

Mohamed’s mother, the dangerously superstitious but determined Taj al-Moluk, gave her son the emotional support he so desperately needed. Under her influence, he grew up with an almost messianic belief in his own greatness. In her own way, Taj al-Moluk was Muhammad’s Rasputin. Although Mohamed Reza grew up surrounded by the women who influenced him most, he had a reputation as a womaniser and often spoke of women as sexual objects who existed only to please him.

Court intrigues and intrigues

If the Queen Mother still had some reservations about confronting her husband, who had to go into exile in 1941, she had no qualms about confronting her son or interfering in his affairs. Her repressive personality caused many heated arguments with the new Shah. The young Shah was trying to establish himself as an independent man and deeply resented his mother’s attempts to control him. But he could not ignore her either; as Queen Mother, Taj al-Moluk still wielded great influence at court.

Fawzia had even more problems with her than her husband Mohammed. Taj al-Moluk seems to have felt utter contempt and disgust for her son’s teenage bride, and she pushed Fawzia to the sidelines as best she could. The Queen Mother did not want to have another queen in the court she herself had dominated for so long. Even more problematic was the fact that Fawzia was unwilling to do her bidding or to submit to her.

Taj al-Moluk may have been a ‘tyrant’, but many say that the Shah’s sister Princess Ashraf was an even bigger problem. In fact, she is said to have helped destroy Fawzia’s marriage by making her life unbearable. Princess Ashraf was an incredibly intelligent and dominant person, much like her mother. She loved her twin brother with a passion that was both possessive and selfless, so it is not surprising that she was hostile to any woman who entered her brother’s life. She made life very difficult for her rivals.

She was extremely powerful and even so influential that, during the war, the British and Americans often turned to her when something important had to be done. In Iran, people believed that Ashraf was her brother’s backbone and that without her he would be lost. But it was also a woman who resented Fawzia having to share her beloved brother’s attention.

Fawzia was more shy than cold, but she was certainly not arrogant or haughty. If she kept her distance from Princess Ashraf, it was simply because she did not trust her sister-in-law. She tried hard to keep a calm blood in this new world, but she did not have the patience to deal with her husband’s family. One day, Fawziya and her sister-in-law quarreled so much that Ashraf, in a fit of rage, broke the vase on Fawziya’s head.

Perhaps if she had the support of her husband, Fawzia could have coped with the broken vases and her psychotic mother-in-law. Unfortunately, it turned out that Mohamed Reza had only ever supported his mother and sisters, leaving Fawzia in the lurch when it came to defending her.

If Fawzia had any illusions about her “prince charming” Mohamed Reza, they were soon dispelled. She quickly realised that he was a womaniser, having had several extramarital affairs. Moreover, he did not hide these affairs and they were spoken about publicly and with no discretion whatsoever.

Rumours began to circulate that the enraged Fawzia was about to get very good with a particularly handsome and erect member of the security services. But her friends insist that these rumours were only malicious and insist that Fawzia was “a lady and never strayed from the path of chastity”.

The lonely Queen of Iran

Mohammed and his wife have reached a certain understanding. He was not in love with her and there was no passionate romance between them, but there was a great deal of affection, informal ease and respect. Although Fawzia liked him, she liked her new position even better. Immediately after their marriage, Reza was preparing to become a chess player, while Fawzia was involved in charity work.

The young Reza married with the aim that his charming young wife would provide him with a male heir to carry on the Pahlavi dynasty. Two years after their marriage, in 1940, Fawzia finally gave birth to a child. Much to Reza Shah’s disappointment, it was not a boy. They named the baby girl Shahnaz and continued to try for a son. But to no avail.

The marriage began to fall apart when Mohammed Reza took the throne at the end of 1941, after his father had to abdicate and go into exile due to the Anglo-Soviet invasion during the Second World War. The young Crown Prince became Shah of Iran and Fawzia Queen of Iran. With a child on her chest and a crown on her head, she was bound ever more closely to the marriage that was destroying her. To save herself, she would have had to give up everything.

Queen Fawziya had to look perfect in public, even as she fell increasingly into episodes of depression. In the same year that her husband became Shah, she appeared on the cover of Life magazine, which introduced her to the West and made her unusual blue eyes famous all over the world. She was described as “unearthly beautiful” or “stunningly sophisticated”.

The famous society photographer Sir Cecil Beaton wrote of her: “If Botticelli were ever reincarnated and wanted to paint an Asian Venus or Primavera, Queen Fauzia would be his muse. He would have been fascinated by her features, which include a perfect heart-shaped face: the unusually pale but penetrating blue eyes, the crimson lips that curl like volutes of wrought iron, and the dark chestnut hair that falls teasingly from her forehead.”

Her slender and elegant figure was perfectly represented by the latest creations of sophisticated French fashion.

At this time, she stopped sharing a bedroom with her husband, as rumours of his mistresses grew louder and more frequent. Mohammed was openly unfaithful and was often seen driving around Tehran in one of his expensive cars with his girlfriends. When he tried to apologise to her and knocked on her locked bedroom door, her reply was always the same: “Pour l’amour de Dieu, partez!”. (For God’s sake, go away!)

His domineering and extremely possessive mother saw Fawzia as a rival with whom she had to share her son’s love, and humiliated her at the slightest opportunity. Relations with her sisters-in-law were also strained, and her husband Mohamed was always on his mother’s side. There was no one with whom she could talk in confidence, let alone with whom she could form a sincere friendship.

To avoid boredom, she spent most mornings in bed, then dressed for a few hours and played cards for the rest of the day. She also began to neglect her daughter because of her increasing listlessness. Even when her husband asked her to, she refused to attend meetings of the charities and foundations she officially headed as Queen of Iran, and increasingly expressed her contempt for Iran and all things Iranian.

Her cold relations with her husband, her mother-in-law, her sisters-in-law and almost everyone else connected to the Iranian royal family eventually led her to retreat into seclusion. She felt unwanted and unloved in her husband’s family and longed to return to Egypt.

This mental anguish eventually exhausted the Princess, who seemed to have fallen into anorexia, and in 1944 she visited an American psychiatrist in Baghdad to deal with her overwhelming depression. Since her arrival in Tehran, she has also suffered from frequent illnesses, including malaria.

News of Fawzia’s worrying condition reached Egypt and her worried family sent an envoy to check on her condition. When the ambassador arrived in Tehran, he saw how much Fawzia’s emotional turmoil was showing in her body. As he reported, the princess was all skin and bones, her shoulder blades “sticking out like the fins of a malnourished fish”.

The reaction of her brother Farouk was swift. He suggested that she return home for good.

A one-way ticket

There are still many theories about what was the final straw that caused Fawzia to flee Tehran, but it was certainly not just a desire for a change of scenery. In May 1945, she flew back to Cairo and filed for divorce in an Egyptian court. Despite the Shah’s many attempts to persuade his wife to return to Iran, she remained in Egypt and firmly insisted on a divorce.

The journey from Tehran to Cairo was one-way. Fawziya’s years of life with the Shah had transformed her from a naïve girl into a woman of iron will, and she finally began to fight for her happiness. At the end of 1945, she succeeded in obtaining an Egyptian divorce from Mohammed Reza. The official announcement of the divorce stated that “the Persian climate was endangering the health of Queen Fawzia, and it was agreed that the sister of the Egyptian king should be divorced”.

By contrast, the CIA documents reveal a more scandalous story. The US government was at this time following developments in the Middle East very closely, apparently including the Shah’s bedroom life. The documents reveal that Fawzia ridiculed and humiliated the Shah for his alleged impotence, which led to their divorce.

Ashraf Pahlavi, the Shah’s twin sister, claims in her book that Fawzia stayed in Egypt despite the Shah’s numerous attempts to persuade her to return to Iran. Each time she found another excuse not to return. The suggestion that the Shah demanded a divorce because she did not give him a male heir is therefore untrue. It was Fawzia who demanded the divorce.

In 1945, Mohamed Reza confided to the British Ambassador that his mother was “probably the main obstacle to the Queen’s return”.

The divorce shocked the Middle East, as it was feared that relations between Cairo and Tehran would fracture and a political crisis would ensue, but the Shah claimed in an official statement that the divorce “can in no way affect the existing friendly relations between Egypt and Iran”. Iran initially did not recognise the divorce for several years, but in 1948 an official divorce was also accepted in Iran.

The only explicit condition for divorce imposed by the Shah on his ex-wife was also the most cruel: Fawzia had to relinquish custody of their daughter Shahnaz, who was a full-blooded Iranian because of the provisions adopted in Iran on the occasion of the marriage of Princess Fawzia and Crown Prince Reza. The five-year-old girl had to stay at the Iranian court and Fawzia could expect only limited visits from her little girl.

Shahnaz thus paid a heavy price for her parents’ separation, as she grew up without a mother, while her father, the Shah of Iran, was busy looking for a new wife in order to obtain a much-needed heir. It was not surprising, then, that he had no time for the little girl, especially when he fell in love with Soraya, the love of his life (at least until then), and married her. According to the Shah’s court minister and closest confidant, Princess Shahnaz grew up virtually neglected by her father, at least emotionally, as she was certainly not lacking financially.

Incidentally, Fawzia’s brother, King Farouk of Egypt, also divorced his wife, Queen Farida, in November 1948. Fawzia’s divorce restored her former title of Princess of Egypt and she helped her brother to run the Egyptian court. She never forgot Shahnaz; she insisted on spending the summers when she was not running the Egyptian court in Switzerland with her daughter.

Mrs Shirin’s ordinary life

In 1949, Princess Fawzia married Ismail Hussein Shirin, a prominent Egyptian diplomat who was also Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army, in a very private ceremony and subsequently had a daughter and a son, Nadia and Hussein. It was a true love story and it was in this union that Fawzia found her balance and fulfilment.

During the first years of her marriage, she again lived in luxury in the many spacious palaces of Cairo. But in 1952, the Egyptians staged a coup d’état led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, which overthrew not only her brother, King Farouk, but also the entire monarchy. Faruk boarded the royal yacht and sailed to Italy, never to return to the throne.

Unlike most of her relatives, Fawzia remained in Egypt with her family, even though the revolution stripped her of her official titles and confiscated her property.

In 1976, as a gesture of reconciliation, President Anwar Sadat invited Fawzia and Shahnaz and their families as guests to the Royal Palace in Alexandria. When some of Fawzia’s former servants learned of her visit, they came to greet her, many of them shedding tears as they embraced the former princess. On this day, Fawzia took the group on a private tour of her former home, and her memories were very personal. She led them up the stairs to the crown chamber and pointed to verses from the Koran written on the walls above her.

“I’m afraid my brother didn’t read all the verses accurately,” she said. “If he had, we would still be here as a ruling royal family.” Later she added: “Twice in my life I have lost the crown. I was once Queen of Iran, but I was also a princess here.” Without the bitterness she had left behind long ago, she smiled: “It’s all over now. But it doesn’t matter.”

Fawzia did not want to appear in the media, preferring to avoid all public events and the limelight. She walked the streets without being recognised by passers-by, something she had dreamt of all her life. She lived a quiet, almost anonymous life in her villa in Alexandria. Her neighbours and friends described her as the polite and friendly Mrs Shirin. She visited Paris and Geneva on various occasions and spent her summers in Switzerland, visiting her eldest daughter Shahnaz, who still lives there today.

The former Princess of Egypt and Queen of Iran died on 2 July 2013 at the age of 92. She was farewelled the following day in a modest funeral ceremony that did not attract much interest from the Egyptian media. She was buried in Cairo’s Al-Rifa’i Mosque next to her second husband, Ismail Shirin, who died in 1994.

The rise of Venus

How we interpret the life of Princess Fawzia depends on our personal view. Her decision to leave Iran, seek a divorce and give up her child is a testimony either to the degree of her unhappiness and lack of choice, or to her selfishness.

When she became Queen of Iran, Fawzia was an insecure, somewhat flighty, frivolous and immature young woman. She probably did not know exactly what she wanted, she only knew that she could not accept a life full of obligations and duties, even in a foreign country. Perhaps it would have been different if she had remained Crown Princess for a longer period of time and had eventually matured for the role of Queen. Perhaps she would have been able to adapt if Iran had been more like Egypt and her home, or if she had had the support of her mother-in-law and sister-in-law and, above all, her husband.

There are many speculations, but one thing is certain: the Fawzia who remained in Egypt after 1952 – despite the loss of status, title, money and security – was a very different woman from the teenager who married the Persian crown prince. Gone was the vivacious, temperamental young woman who did not know what she wanted and who swung from mood to mood, loving children’s games or dancing the night away.

In her place came a serious mother of two who refused to join her brother in his luxurious European exile. She chose a quiet life without luxury in a small suburb. She helped in the International Red Crescent (Muslim Red Cross) and stood by her husband for all 45 years of their marriage. Gone was the spoilt and sheltered child, replaced by a real lady who calmly, without complaint and with grace, accepted what fate, politics and circumstances had in store for her. She asked for nothing more. It was as if she had never been the daughter, sister and wife of three different kings.

Botticelli would have been proud. Venus had truly risen from the storm and shell of her life …