Sneaky's Daily Did You Know....? - For Better or Worse

Probably the wedding with the greatest number of ill omens was that of Amadeo, the Duke D’Aosta of Italy, to Princess Maria del Pozzo della Cisterno in 1867. It is hard to imagine a longer list of catastrophes.

The wardrobe mistress hanged herself and, for some unknown reason, the palace gatekeeper cut his own throat (no small feat in itself). Then the colonel leading the wedding procession collapsed from heat exhaustion and the king’s aide fell from his horse and died from his wounds.

After the wedding, a stationmaster was crushed to death under the wheels of the honeymoon train. And, presumably in despair at all these goings on, the best man shot himself. It sounds as though suicide was all the rage in Italy at the time.

You would think that all this might augur badly for the future of the couple and so it proved. The Princess soon found that her new husband had an eye for the ladies and little idea of fidelity; her complaints to the king were ignored, it being suggested that the behavior of the Prince was no business of hers.

In 1870, Amadeo was elected king of Spain, only to find himself without popular support and unable to prevent uprisings by various political factions. He abdicated in 1873 and went back to Italy. Poor Maria della Cisterna died in 1876, perhaps worn out by the Prince’s turbulent lifestyle.