Queen Soraya, born in 1932 to Esfandiary-Bakhtiari, was a local Iranian tribal nobleman with land and farms. Her father, who was also Iran's ambassador to West Germany in the '50s, met Soraya's mother, Eva Karl, while traveling in Germany in the mid-20s, and moved back to Isfahan, Iran after their marriage in 1926.
The newlyweds live in the German community of Isfahan and live a comfortable life. After marriage, the couple had a son and a daughter, the protagonists of this story, Soraya and Bizhan. When Soraya was more than 8 months old, the family of three moved back to Germany, and in 1937 Hitler began to pull Zhuangdin, and when his parents saw that the situation was not good, they quickly ran back to Iran with their children, and only dared to return after the end of World War II. Her childhood was summed up as her parents loved that the family had money, and her parents could hide.
In 1950, Pahlavi just divorced his first wife, Princess Fawzia of Egypt, because of emotional discord and no son, and wanted to marry again. It just so happened that the best friend of the Queen Mother Tadj ol-Molouk recommended Soraya, saying that this girl is very beautiful, elegant and versatile. The Queen Mother saw the photo and quickly arranged for her son to meet Soraya.
Pahlavi's eldest sister Shams was worried that Soraya's expectations of her brother were too high, so she first gave Soraya a vaccination, saying that her brother was not very handsome, and the two fell in love at first sight and looked at each other. In the middle of the night, Pahlavi told Soraya's father that he wanted to marry Soraya and wanted to know what she thought. Soraya's answer was yes, and after receiving Soraya's affirmative answer, the court informed the media that Soraya's picture was published in the newspaper. That same year they were officially engaged, and Pahlavi gave Soraya a 22.37 carat dove egg engagement ring from Harry Winston.
In the weeks after their engagement, the king and Soraya met almost every day, riding horses, playing tennis, flying airplanes, talking about everything, and getting closer and closer. The wedding was originally planned for December 27, 1950, but was postponed due to Soraya's sudden typhoid fever. A roadside agency said that when she was sick, Pahlavi would put a piece of jewelry on her pillow every day.
My mood at this time
The wedding was finally officially held on February 12, 1951. At the wedding, Soraya wore a 40-pound white satin wedding dress customized by Dior, with a white coat and veil, delicate and wonderful textured luster, long trailing tail, decorated with pearls and 20,000 feathers, embellished with 6,000 small diamonds.
The wedding was extravagant and grand, with 2,000 guests, 1.5 tons of flowers from the Netherlands to decorate the palace, circuses from Rome performing for guests, and wedding gifts from many celebrities and politicians.
The hem of the wedding dress that stood up was cut
According to the direction of the script, the two have lived happily ever after, but there are always many unsatisfactory things in reality. Soraya's first challenge after entering the door was the difficult mother-in-law & sister-in-law, because they were unhappy that Pahlavi paid more attention to his wife than to them. Moreover, the roadside agency said that Soraya would also compete with his stepdaughter Shahnaz, who was eight years younger, and had a temper tantrum, feeling that Pahlavi paid more attention to his daughter than her.
She and her stepdaughter
The peaceful life ended in 1953, civil strife broke out in Iran, and Pahlavi fled with Soraya to a hotel in Rome. It was not until the intervention of the United States and Britain that the turmoil was suppressed, and Pahlavi dared to return to Tehran, and this experience of sharing hardships made the relationship between the husband and wife better, and Pahlavi also loved Soraya more. But there is one problem that has always plagued them - that Soraya has not been pregnant since she got married, and it was diagnosed because Soraya was unable to bear children. In 1954, Prince Ali, the sole heir of Pahlavi's brother, was killed in a plane crash, which made Soraya's situation even more difficult.
In Soraya in Rome
At this time, the Queen Mother began to divorce her son, and began a new round of choosing a daughter-in-law, and Pahlavi was impatient, so he gave Soraya an ultimatum to let her live in Europe for a period of time, firstly, because the climate and environment were good, and secondly, because the medical treatment there was more developed, which might cure her infertility.
On March 21, 1958, the Iranian New Year, Pahlavi officially announced her divorce, and Soraya later told reporters in an interview that her husband had no choice but to divorce her.
Pahlavi probably felt guilty and loved her in his heart, not only gave her a large sum of money and jewelry, but also gave her the title of princess, and ran to see her several times after the divorce. After the divorce, Soraya was rich, good-looking and status, so she became the focus of paparazzi chasing, and later played tickets to make several movies/filmed and fell in love with an Italian director Franco Indinova, and soon got engaged. Just when he was about to get married in 1972, the director crashed. The director's death hit her very hard and made her suffer from depression.
She and the director
In 1979, when the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown, Soraya corresponded with him for the last time, saying that he still loved him and wanted to see him, at this time Pahlavi, who was suffering from cancer, wrote back that he also missed Soraya, but before they met, Pahlavi died in Egypt in 1980, and in 1988 Soraya went to Egypt to see Pahlavi's tomb.
After Pahlavi's death, she had a bad financial situation, had to sell a lot of jewelry to survive, coupled with depression, always worried that her jewelry would be stolen, so she rarely went out.
She died at home in Paris in '01, leaving a large inheritance to her brother Bizhan, but a week after Soraya's death, Bizan also died, and Bizhan, who had no children. So some people who claimed to be illegitimate children of Soraya or Bijan appeared, and they were all turned out to be fake. Due to the lack of legal heirs, most of the property was awarded very dramatically to Bizhan's driver. Some of it was put into the construction of public facilities (this operation, I am also quite fascinated
Soraya and her brother
In 2002, Soraya's objects were auctioned off in Paris and the money raised was donated to charity. All items sold for more than $8.3 million, including a wedding dress for $1.2 million, an engagement ring for $838,350, and a mink shawl for more than $4,000. The buyers, some of whom were of Iranian origin, bought the items in memory of the former queen.
Finally, ending with her jewelry, Pahlavi made a good shot
Soraya's legend and bumpy life are embarrassing, just as when she divorced, a French composer wrote her life in a touching song called "I Want to Cry Like Soraya".