“The queen was much admired as a woman; people liked her appearance and gestures, her words and attitudes. She enchanted as a young woman by her blond grace and as a mature woman by her exceptional talent in upholding the role of queen. She soon had a great reputation for culture and charity; everyone celebrated her love of poetry and religious faith, her encouragement for the arts and taste for study, her sumptuous elegance and her acts of beneficent providence for the humble”¹.
After the tragedy of Monza, her attitude as an inconsolable widow found echoes and wide exaltation among poets, public opinion and newspaper reports, up to the exaltation of her queen-mother figure beside the wounded of the Great War as a nurse in her palace-hospital at the Quirinale. The level of popularity reached almost fetishistic forms among the most humble classes of society: it was believed that keeping a dried daisy in the prayer book was an infallible good luck charm. Margaret’s prestige transcended the boundaries of the crown and remained intact even after her demise: “daisiness” was not only literary, as evidenced by the countless tangible and intangible objects, streets, squares, hospitals, schools, sewing machines, plates and cups bearing her name and effigy.
The economic aid devolved to the assistance of the weakest also contributed to the creation of this popular myth; attentive to social and topical issues such as schooling and education, she had relationships with the great theorists of her time, first and foremost Maria Montessori, to whom she was bound by a relationship of friendship. Her role as “first queen of the Italians” and as a representative of national femininity made Margherita the patroness of many women’s initiatives and works, often related to the recovery of traditional arts and crafts, such as Venetian embroidery, Abruzzese bobbin lace and Valsesian puncetto. Margherita’s efforts, along with those of so many other forerunners, sparked the birth of numerous quality craft manufactures in textiles and fashion, setting the fundamental precedent for the advent of future Made in Italy.
- Casalegno, Carlo La Regina Margherita, (Bologna: il Mulino, 2001. p.117)