“A work that really deserves to be read because, through the almost daily reconstruction of the life of such a popular and beloved sovereign, it throws beams of light on the events of her era.” Francesco Perfetti

For more than 20 years Luciano Regolo has been conducting research on the House of Savoy and now brings back to the bookstore, entirely revised and enriched, the biography of Queen Helena. The book contains numerous unpublished works and is based on first-hand sources, consulted with the permission of the royal family, such as an epistolary of Elena, autographs of Victor Emmanuel III, the Olivieri Archive, the Queen’s secretary, and the Jaccarino Archive, the testimonies of Nicholas Romanoff and Simeon of Bulgaria. The result is a detailed portrait of Italy’s second sovereign, whose Montenegrin soul is emphasized. From her childhood in Cettigne in the warmth of the Petrovich Njegosh family to her youth in Petersburg where she was courted by the future president of Finland Mannerheim and a candidate for marriage to Tsar Nicholas II. Her meeting with Victor Emmanuel took place in Venice in 1895, and an understanding between the two was among the most successful in the history of European royal dynasties. Brilliant anecdotes, new revelations about her private and public life, her passions for music, poetry, and medicine, as well as cooking, fishing, and photography,tireless commitment to social work and support for the development of health care give us back the image of a vital, intelligent and curious woman, a conscious and caring mother and queen. But also revived in these pages are her relationships with the protagonists of an era: Mussolini, Hitler, or Don Orione and the future Pope John XXIII. The author masterfully dances between public life and the behind the scenes confirming himself as a journalist and dogged researcher with the rigor of the historian and the freshness of the narrator.