To add insult to injury, most Sicilians and other southerners regard "our" royal family to be the Bourbons who ruled until 1860 --defeated by the Savoys' supporters (Giuseppe Garibaldi comes to mind). Yet the Savoys have a place in Sicilian history. Indeed, it was in Sicily that they earned their right to be called kings, during the brief reign of Vittorio Amadeo II as King of Sicily from 1713 until 1718, when, after levying new taxes, he exchanged this realm for the Kingdom of Sardinia, taking most of the Sicilian treasury with him. Before the eighteenth century, the Savoys had been counts and then dukes and princes, albeit sovereign ones. Even before their alliance with Fascism, the Kingdom of Sicily, the unitary state created in their name, could not be said to have been free or democratic, and poverty was rampant.

If we consider the period before the unification of Italy (1860), it is not true, as is often claimed, that the Statuto (constitution) of Carlo Alberto of Savoy was Italy's first constitution; that distinction must go to King Ferdinando II of the Two Sicilies, the Neapolitan sovereign, who, like his Piedmontese counterpart, acted in response not to empathy but to the violent riots of 1848.

Until their deposition by referendum in 1946 (establishing the Italian Republic), the Savoys could be said to have reigned with sovereign authority, over one dominion or another, for almost a thousand years. The head of the dynasty and his heirs were actually exiled from 1946 until 2002, when a special act of parliament changed the constitutional law banning them from their own country. It has been said that people often get the government they deserve. Sometimes they get the king they deserve. King Umberto II died in exile in 1983. He was called "The May King" for having reigned briefly in that month in 1946 before the referendum, held during the Allied occupation (the first election in which Italian women could vote). His only son, Prince Vittorio Emanuele, Duke of Savoy (shown here with his consort, Princess Marina), resides in Switzerland but visits Italy occasionally. Vittorio Emanuele has a son, Emanuele Filiberto, who is married and has one daughter. If Italy still had a monarchy, Prince Vittorio Emanuele (Victor Emmanuel) would be its king --unless, of course, the Italians chose to change their dynasty.

Several important changes took place during the Savoy reign in the years after 1860. As King of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II was reasonably efficient if not enlightened. The referendum electing him with 99 percent of the vote was fraudulent, and pro-Bourbon riots continued in Palermo into the 1860s, but if pure democracy was lacking his governments at least managed to curb the Vatican's influence in Italian affairs. The Waldensian and Anglican churches in Palermo were built during this period, whereas previously the Bourbon government prohibited any but Catholic churches. The Kingdom of Italy confiscated church property and later supported the establishment of public schools. For many years the unification of Italy, the Risorgimento, was itself claimed as one of the great achievements of the House of Savoy, but Italy's new federalism (regionalism) contradicts this, and it was Umberto II who (as viceroy during the Allied occupation) signed the decree establishing Sicilian autonomy. In fact, the Italian unification wars of 1860-1871 were unnecessary; Germany united herself as a federation with no need for this kind of action.

In the economic sphere southern Italy suffered terribly during Savoyard rule. Until 1860 Naples was the wealthiest city in Italy. By 1900 it was eclipsed by Milan, Turin and Rome. In 1860 Palermo was, by any standard, more prosperous than Turin, the Savoys' capital.

Truth be told, one is hard-pressed to think of many actual improvements to the nation or its people during the 86 years that the Savoys ruled a united Italy, but in the immediately preceding centuries of Spanish and Austrian rule the same social conditions existed. For genuine prosperity we must look to the thirteenth-century reign of Frederick II. Most Savoyard programmes or "reforms" were no different, and neither better nor worse, than those initiated in other European countries during the nineteenth century. The war in Ethiopia in 1896 was disastrous, and so was the one in the 1930s. The conquest of Libya was no better, and it is merciful not to recall Italy's mediocre role in the two World Wars. At home, hunger and poverty were by no means alleviated by Savoyard or Fascist policies. Beginning about 1880, millions of Italians fled Italy in search of a better life in the Americas, and the trend continues today. Australia, Argentina and even Germany and the United Kingdom have immense Italian populations descended from immigrants who arrived in the decades immediately following the end of the Second World War.

No doubt can exist that Vittorio Emanuele III was gravely mistaken in signing the Fascists' anti-Semitism laws, accepting the Ethiopian crown (restored to Haile Selassie with British force in 1941) and declaring war on the Allies. He was, however, at least nominally, a "constitutional" monarch with little real choice in matters of government. Long before the rise of Mussolini, many of the worst "Savoyard" policies were, in reality, instituted by mediocre ministers such as Cavour and Crispi rather than the kings themselves, and yet the king is ultimately responsible for these policies --whether they provoke the deaths of children in Ethiopia (with mustard gas) or the persecution of Jews in Italy.

Rightly or wrongly, the House of Savoy has become the object of most of the Italians' venomous resentment of the Second World War, even if virtually every family in Italy has a nonno or aging papà who participated, usually without question, in Italian atrocities in Libya, Ethiopia, Greece, Albania, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia. The rest of the world laughs at the ridiculous figure of the incompetent Fascist soldier, always mightier in the face of Balkan or African civilians than when facing British or American adversaries. Many older Italians harbour memories of lost loved ones and bombed cities. It's a heavy weight to be borne by a single family, even a royal one.

But the Savoys are one of "our" royal families, if non-reigning, and such an ancient dynasty deserves at least to be remembered, if not with nostalgia or affection, then perhaps in the interest of the eternal Italian hope that tomorrow will be a better day. The members of the family living today are part of the fragile fabric of Italian society, which would be something less without their presence.

About the Author: Palermo native Vincenzo Salerno has written biographies of several famous Sicilians, including Frederick II and Giuseppe di Lampedusa.