A Savoy

Throughout her life Queen Margaret displayed a very strong dynastic feeling, proud to be a Savoy princess and devoted to the glory and prestige of her family. Margaret gave this feeling a nationalistic and militaristic color, combined with an unshakeable certainty in a value system that placed the Throne, in alliance with the Altar, above all else, according to a paternalistic and absolutist conception of monarchy.
After the death of Victor Emmanuel II, so beloved by the people, Umberto and Margherita embarked on a program of ten trips around Italy in order to quell the country’s anti-monarchist spirits and familiarize themselves with their subjects. It was an operation desired by the government and well prepared, which reached its highest point on November 6, 1878, when in Bologna the queen collected the tribute of the republican Giosuè Carducci, then the greatest living Italian poet, who had cursed mitres and crowns. However, the Italy visited by the sovereigns, that of the cities, did not fully reflect the reality of the country, where the vast majority of the population, 70 percent of the total, lived in conditions that were often truly miserable and in any case of great cultural, hygienic and sanitary backwardness.
The failed assassination attempt on the king conducted on November 17, 1878, by the unemployed young man Giovanni Passannante, during the sovereigns visit to Naples, shook Margherita to the core, so much so that she was convinced of the crown’s failing sanctity in the eyes of part of the people. Subsequent socialist attacks and riots in various cities in Italy and Europe heightened the queen’s anguish and her inclination toward intransigent and repressive politics and justice. The nineties, with an increasingly severe economic and social crisis, a failed policy culminating in the tragedies of Adua and the Milan massacre, and thus with growing hostility to the pillars of the crown’s policy (militarism, triplicism, colonialism), served as a prelude to the regicide of July 29, 1900 in Monza by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci. Margaret never really understood in which atmosphere that act had matured, and to the grief for the loss of her husband she added horror at the sacrilege of the killing, consistent with her ancient conception of the sacredness of the crown.