Beguiling Queen Soraya of Iran-Who Received a Jewel Every Day From Shah: A Victim of Time Ended in Tears

The Beguiling Soraya remains one of the saddest and most beautiful figures of royal history, a victim of times and mentalities like so many other women who did not have her outstanding public status.

 

This is tragic story of Soraya Former Queen of Iran:- who received a jewel every day from Shah- but was divorced when she couldn't give birth a successor to the throne successor to the throne. The beguiling Soraya was the Shah's only true love.

 

His first of marriage of Reza Shah Pahlavi, to Princess Fawzia of Egypt, ended in divorce. Because he only had one daughter with his first wife, and his younger brother, Ali Reza, was expected to succeed him, the Shah had to remarry to ensure stability of the crown in the country

 

Love struck the new and by now divorced Shah. Beautiful, emerald eyed beguiling Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari half German half Irani and the only daughter of Khalil Esfandiary, Iranian Ambassador to West Germany, and his wife, Eva Karl.

 

Soraya had been brought up more as a German under the tutelage of her governess Frau Mantel, followed by a stint at a Swiss finishing school in Montreaux.

 

While she was studying in London at the age of 16 in 1948, she was befriended by the Shah’s younger sister Princess Shams. A relative of Soraya’s showed her picture to the Shah who became smitten with her.

 

After his very first meeting with her, the Shah asked her father for her hand in marriage. Soon they were engaged and the Shah presented Soraya with a whopping 22.37 carat diamond ring.

 

The Shah married Soraya in 1951 at the Marble Palace that his father had had built. The wedding had been delayed because the bride had been ill from typhoid. 

She wore a Christian Dior Couture gown from his New Look collection. It had 37 yards of silver lamé studded all over with tens of thousands of pearls, 6,000 diamonds, and 20,000 marabou feathers.

 

It weighed a staggering 44 pounds (20 kilograms). Because she was still weak, the bride had difficulty walking in the heavy dress. Seeing her totter, Shah ordered a lady-in-waiting to cut the petticoats and train to lighten her load. 

Additionally, the strapless dress had a fitted long sleeve waist length jacket and veil for the Nikah ceremony. Because the wedding was in February, a full-length white mink cape kept the bride warm in the non-heated palace and she secretly wore woolen socks on her feet, which were hidden by the baggy skirt.

 

In the evening, for the 2000 people reception, the jacket and veil came off and an emerald and diamond parure from the crown jewels that matched her green eyes added even more sparkle. 5 tones of orchids, tulips and carnations had been flown in from Netherlands to do up the palace and the entertainment included a Roman equestrian circus.

 

The couple received such lavish wedding gifts as a mink coat and a desk set glittering with black diamonds sent by Soviet head Joseph Stalin, a Steuben glass Bowl of Legends sent by U.S. President and Mrs. Truman, and silver Georgian candlesticks from King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.

 

Though the new Queen headed Iran’s charity association. Just two years later, in 1953, the royal couple fled Tehran for Iraq and Italy after a failed revolution attempt in Iran, but they returned soon after.

 

Seven years into the marriage, the royal couple was faced with a dilemma. They had come to a crossroads due to Soraya’s inability to have children, a fact confirmed by American doctors.

 

In October 1954, when she was 22 years old, a doctor told Soraya that it might take years for her to become pregnant, leaving her and the Shah without an heir to the throne.

 

Two days later, the Shah became angry at his birthday party when he learned that his brother, Ali Reza, next in line for the throne would not be at dinner because he was running late leaving a hunting party near the Caspian Sea. The following day, the family learned that Prince Ali Reza had died when the plane bringing him back to Tehran crashed.

 

Though he was very much in love with Soraya, the Shah desperately needed a male heir. Under the Persian constitution, if Shah had no heir, then the royal line would end. He tried to convince her to let him take a second wife, but Soraya was adamant.

In an interview to the New York Times Soraya said that she did not want “the sanctity of marriage” violated and decided that “she could not accept the idea of sharing her husband’s love with another woman.” She added it was with a heavy heart and because he had no choice that the Shah reluctantly divorced her.

 The Beguiling Queen Soraya of Iran was divorced by Shah

At that time of their separation, Soraya issued a statement to the Iranian people from her parents’ home in Germany.

Stating, “Since His Imperial Majesty Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi has deemed it necessary that a successor to the throne must be of direct descent in the male line from generation to generation to generation, I will with my deepest regret in the interest of the future of the State and of the welfare of the people in accordance with the desire of His Majesty the Emperor sacrifice my own happiness, and I will declare my consent to a separation from His Imperial Majesty.”

 

On 21st March 1958, Iranian New Year’s Day, the Shah announced his divorce to the Iranian people in a TV and radio broadcasted speech that was broadcast, adding he would not remarry in haste. His voice shook with emotion, clearly he had been crying.

 

Life of Beguiling queen Soraya after Divorce

Divorce meant not only leaving her country (she was exiled to Switzerland) but also the man she loved deeply. At 26 years old, she was forced to start a new life in a new country all alone.

The Shah still loved his ex-wife; he granted Soraya the title Princess of Iran and made sure she received a monthly $7000 payment from the State of Iran. They continued to meet in Europe after their divorce, even though Soraya had started a film career.

 

Soraya became a style icon and socialite famous for her collection of jewellery and her royal past. She had a brief career as an actress (known only as Soraya) and starred in the 1965 Italian movie “The Three Faces” and became the companion of its director, Franco Indovina.

 

She had always harbored a fantasy to be a film star. Despite taking acting lessons, she only managed to appear in two films. Through her new connections, she met the married Italian director Franco Indovina and they started a love affair.

 

For a short moment, it looked as if life and love were smiling again to Soraya. But Indovina died in a plane crash, and Soraya succumbed to depression. She ended her artistic career and took up residence in France. Occasionally, she attended social events in the French capital but became an increasingly rare presence as time went on.

 

Heart-broken Soraya relocated to Paris and bought an apartment on the posh and happening Avenue Montaigne, which sold at her death for $3 million. Soraya travelled, was fond of frequenting the Plaza Athene Hotel near her home. 

She also made friends with her celebrity hair stylist Alexandre Zouari who introduced her to the young, glitzy crowd. But still lonely and depressed, she was called the “Princess with the sad eyes” by those who met her. In 1991, she wrote her second autobiography, Le Palais Des Solitudes (The Palace of Loneliness).

 

Princess Soraya bequeathed her £50 million fortune, including her engagement ring, a 1958 Rolls Royce, countless furs and costly paintings that were all auctioned off to her younger brother and only sibling, Prince Bijan Esfandiary, but he too died only a week later at his home in Cologne.

 

In the 1980s, during the Islamic Revolution when Iran reduced her revenue, she sold a number of her jewels, including a Harry Winston diamond necklace.

The necklace sold at an auction at Christie's in Geneva in November 1988.died in Paris on October 25, 2001, 21 years after the Shah of Iran. Her brother, Bijan, was the legal inheritor of her estate. But when he died, the entire estate was passed on to the German state.

 

She died in 2001 at the age of 69 in Paris. Her body was found by her cleaner. Her story inspired and impressed many people. French songwriter Francoise Mallet-Jorris to write “Je veux pleurer comme Soraya” (I Want to Cry Like Soraya), a rose was baptised with her name and an Italian/German television movie about the princess’s life, Soraya (the Sad Princess), was broadcast in 2003, starring Anna Valle as Soraya and Erol Sander as the Shah.

Since they had no living relatives and he had made no will, the entire fortune went to the German state government (and not Iran) where it was used to pay for street lighting, rubbish collection and other public amenities in North Rhine Westphalia where the Prince lived at the time of his death.

 

Perhaps the Irani people were right when they claimed their Queen was more German than Irani.

The End

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