Italy's Chamber of Deputies voted yesterday to allow the male heirs of the Savoy family to return to their homeland after more than half a century in exile.
The vote clears the way for the return of Prince Victor Emmanuel (64), the controversial heir to the Italian throne, and his flamboyant banker son, Emmanuel Filiberto (30). The family have formally pledged allegiance to the Italian republic and parliamentarians have now recognised that they no longer pose a threat to democracy.
The move was welcomed by most shades of political opinion, as well as by the Italian royals themselves. The Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, said it was long overdue. The male royals will have to wait for three months for the law to go into effect, hoping that in the meantime no one manages to gather the half million signatures needed to call a referendum on the issue. Members of the anti-monarchist Mazzini Society and of the Neo-Bourbon Movement - a monarchist organisation that supports a rival Bourbon claim to the throne - have said they will campaign for a referendum, but few people believe they will be successful.
The parliamentary vote abolishes a ban on entry into Italy for the male royals, restoring their full political rights and allowing them to vote and stand for election. The family's Italian properties, which were confiscated after the war, will not be returned however.
Italians voted to abolish the monarchy in a referendum in 1946, disgusted by King Victor Emmanuel III's complicity with fascism and by the family's precipitate flight from Italy in the closing days of the war. The referendum was won by only 2 million votes, amid allegations of official US interference in support of the republic, so the fathers of Italy's 1948 constitution took the precaution of banning the claimants to the throne from re-entering Italian territory. With strong nostalgia for the monarchy in many circles of society, it was feared that the return of the royals could destabilise the country's fragile post-war democracy.
The return of the royals was not helped by a series of gaffes by the accident-prone Prince Victor Emmanuel. His suggestion that Mussolini's race laws were not actually that bad, his membership of the secretive P2 masonic lodge, a manslaughter case in Corsica, and his activities as an arms dealer all failed to endear him to the Italian public.
All that is water under the bridge now, and the two princes are likely to be much in demand on the aristocratic cocktail circuit and in television chat shows when they set foot on Italian soil in the autumn.