from Telegraph.co.uk
Heir to Italian throne prepares for first royal wedding in 70 years
Marriage to a beautiful French actress could be a first step in ending Prince's exile. Charlotte Eagar meets him in Rome **
In Britain, they channel their energies into gardening and riding. In Holland, they travel by bicycle to prove that they are of the people. But, conforming to a national stereotype, the Italian royal family, exiled from their homeland for 60 years, prefer fast cars and beautiful women.
Emmanuele Filiberto, 30-year-old Prince of Venice, great-grandson of Italy's wartime King Vittorio Emmanuele III, and heir to the Italian throne had his family not been banished, races cars for Mitsubishi.
His fine-boned fiancee, the French actress Clothilde Courau, 34,will be six months pregnant when she walks up the aisle in Rome on Thursday to be married. In a very Italian way, nobody is sure how many people will turn up to a wedding only agreed upon last month. "Did we ask the Pope?" Emmanuele (as he likes to be called) asks his press officer.
"You can't invite the Pope to a wedding." "OK. Mainly I am inviting friends. I don't want this to be too royal. We have invited Silvio Berlusconi [the Italian Prime Minister]. He has not replied yet, but then I sent the invitations out only last week."
Short notice or not, until last year it would have been impossible for the couple, who met competing in a celebrity pentathlon in Monte Carlo three years ago, to be married in Rome. The House of Savoy, the former Italian royal family, had been banished since the monarchy was abolished by referendum after the Second World War. The king was considered by many Italians to have abandoned his people when he fled Rome in September 1943, after surrendering to the Allies.
However, the Italian parliament revoked the act of banishment last year. In December, for the first time in their lives, Emmanuele Filiberto and his father returned from exile in Switzerland. "It was incredible, coming back," he says. "I am Italian. I feel Italian but I never knew Italy until then.
"I am longing now to live in Italy, to discover Italy. Clothilde, the baby and I will discover Italy together. I want to raise my baby in Italy. I have citizenship now."
Ah yes. The baby. "At the beginning, my parents were quite shocked. We even had some arguments but they began to understand my point of view. They realised I was happy so they accepted the marriage.
"It would be a lie to say that the baby didn't make the decision to get married easier," he says. "People say [Clothilde] did it on purpose and so on, but today when you don't want to have a baby you don't have a baby." However, he does concede that it was "a surprise, but a wonderful surprise".
He wants the marriage celebrations (cocktails for about 2,000 guests, then a private dinner for 200 at the Roman palazzo of a long-term Savoy supporter) to be a "popular wedding". "It's a thank you for the Italian monarchists."
The last royal wedding in Italy was held in 1930, when Umberto II - Emmanuele's grandfather and the last king - married Maria Jose of Belgium. This time round, the Queen did not receive an invitation but the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles did. He likes the Prince very much. "I met him in Saudi Arabia," he says. "They are not coming but they both wrote lovely letters."
Holding the wedding in Italy is bound to attract hostile attention from anti-monarchists. Although the December visit was a quiet affair, - the family flew in, saw the Pope, and left again - the grand homecoming three months later did not go entirely smoothly. In Naples, where Prince Victor Emmanuel was born, and from where his family sailed into exile in 1946, noisy demonstrations were staged by two traditionally opposing factions: anti-monarchists on one hand, and supporters of the Bourbon Kings of Naples, whose family was deposed when Italy was united in 1861 under the House of Savoy. Emmanuele brushes the protests aside. "A big fuss was made, but actually there were only about 20 people against us. It was fine."
Italians believe that Emanuele is heir to a vast fortune running into hundreds of millions of pounds, most of which was accumulated through a Lloyds of London payout after the family took out insurance against losing the throne. It has forfeited its claims on its palaces and estates in Italy and is backtracking on its demands for the return of the crown jewels.
In general, the family do not seem to be hated in Italy - just not respected. Prince Victor Emmanuele's reputation has never recovered since he was accused of killing a German tourist who was shot in Corsica in 1978, even though the prince was cleared by a French court after spending 23 days in jail while the death was investigated.
Rumours abound about the family, mainly because they are unknown quantities to most Italians. Emmanuele, according to the chatter, is gay ("I would say so outright if I was, but I am not," he responds) and a bit dim. He is a consultant to a Swiss bank, but Italians are keen to know why he worked for three years as a commentator on an Italian football programme, broadcasting by satellite from Switzerland. His answer suggests that he is actually quite shrewd: "So [Italians] would know who I was: just a normal guy."
Do "normal guys" wear monogrammed ("EF"), striped shirts? In Italy, stylish ones do. And despite being brought up abroad, Emmanuele seems terribly Italian - in his clothes and his actions. He talks of settling down happily with Clothilde but seems reluctant to give up racing fast cars. He also admits that in December, when his bride is due to give birth, he will be at the jet ski world championships in Africa.
Clothilde is not happy with that. "I have tried everything to convince him not to do it," she says. "Every woman in the world will understand: being pregnant, your husband in Africa, on a jet ski, risking his life. And I'm going to be by myself, learning Italian, living in Rome. I hope I am not too stressed for the baby."
Emmanuele is currently based in Geneva, but he and Clothilde intend to live in Rome. He looks mildly shifty when asked if he plans to go into politics. "I don't think so, but maybe I will move into the humanitarian side." As for thrones, he shrugs. "We'll see. Italy has been a republic for 60 years. That doesn't mean I must forget who I am and the name I bear, but I must look forward."
Emmanuele was previously engaged to Natasha Geitling, an American who worked at Sotheby's. When he met Clothilde at the pentathlon, he had to do all the chasing. The star of 25 films, she has been twice nominated for a Cesar, France's answer to the Oscars. "We fenced against each other," he remembers. "I said, 'You really have the eye of the tiger'. And that started long months of running after her." Clothilde says that Emmanuele pressed hard for the marriage. "It's because I love him that I find myself in this situation." And she gestures at her bump.
"Everything is so new in my life now.You can't compare this" - she gestures again at the bump - "with being an actress. This is a life."
) there is nothing mentioned about a fiancee. 
. Also, I've seen somewhere that Emanuele considers marriage to be very important in his life, so if he is at all that romantic, I'm quite sure that he would choose to have that kind of wedding.
