Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: Did King Victor Emmanuel II have a wife?
In 1842 he married his first cousin once removed Adelaide of Austria (1822–1855). By her he had eight children:[4]
In the third part of the letter, the prophecies of the House of Savoy are contained. Savoy's reign is likened to a parade of horse-drawn carriages. There are actually two. In the first of them, each carriage was pulled by eight smaller horses (i.e., the Kingdom of Sardinia) and, in the second, each carriage had five larger horses (i.e., the Kingdom of Italy). So far, the total of the rulers of the House of Savoy is eleven. Eight of them were the Kings of Sardinia, from Victor Amadeus II to Victor Emmanuel II, and the other four were the Kings of Italy, from Victor Emmanuel II to Umberto II. According to the author, the total would be eleven, if one counts twice Victor Emmanuel II, who was both the King of Sardinia and the King of Italy. The nun predicts that, between the fourth and fifth “big horse-drawn carriage” (i.e., between the fourth and fifth Kings of Italy), there would be a pause, during which the carriage was driven by “black horses”, which the author interprets as a republican or oligarchic government. According to the interpretation of this prophecy by Baschera, Italy would now be in this moment of pause so, in the future, there could be a fifth King of Italy, the twelfth and last king of the House of Savoy. He would be represented by a horse with a white cross and reign for a short time. 
Princess Mafalda of Savoy (2 November 1902 – 27 August 1944) was the second daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife Elena of Montenegro. The future King Umberto II of Italy was her younger brother.
After being removed from office and placed under arrest by the King in 1943, with the Kingdom of Italy's new non-fascist government switching sides from the Axis to the Allies, Italian Fascism returned to republicanism and condemnation of the monarchy. On 18 September 1943, Mussolini made his first public address to the Italian people since his rescue from arrest by allied German forces, in which he commended the loyalty of Hitler as an ally while condemning King Victor Emmanuel III of the Kingdom of Italy for betraying Italian Fascism. On the topic of the monarchy removing him from power and dismantling the Fascist regime, Mussolini stated: "It is not the regime that has betrayed the monarchy, it is the monarchy that has betrayed the regime" and that "When a monarchy fails in its duties, it loses every reason for being...The state we want to establish will be national and social in the highest sense of the word; that is, it will be Fascist, thus returning to our origins". The Fascists at this point did not denounce the House of Savoy in the entirety of its history and credited Victor Emmanuel II for his rejection of "scornfully dishonourable pacts" and denounced Victor Emmanuel III for betraying Victor Emmanuel II by entering a dishonourable pact with the Allies.
The king subsequently met with Garibaldi at Teano, receiving from him the control of southern Italy. Another series of plebiscites in the occupied lands resulted in the proclamation of Victor Emmanuel as the first King of Italy by the new Parliament of unified Italy, on 17 March 1861. He did not renumber himself after assuming the new royal title, however. Turin became the capital of the new state. Only Rome, Veneto, and Trentino remained to be conquered.
However, Victor Emmanuel retained the title of king until his abdication in May 1946. Umberto then formally ascended the throne as Umberto II. It has been said that the abdication had been imposed by opponents, but the royal house, too, had an interest in the manoeuvre. It was convenient for the House of Savoy, in fact, to have a popular king "on stage" at that crucial moment. Umberto was more acceptable to the Italian people: he and his wife Maria José were young, elegant and cultivated, and presented a stark contrast to the old, rough Victor Emmanuel who was unknown for any particular activity, apart from his collection of coins (114,000 items). Umberto was relatively well received by the people from the moment of his crowning, even if his wife (a foreigner) was kept at some distance. He was commonly called "Il Re di Maggio" (the King of May), with reference to his brief rule of forty days.
Victor Emmanuel II (Italian: Vittorio Emanuele II; full name: Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Tommaso di Savoia; 14 March 1820 – 9 January 1878) was King of Sardinia from 1849 until 17 March 1861. At that point, he assumed the title of King of Italy and became the first king of a united Italy since the 6th century, a title he held until his death in 1878. The Italians gave him the epithet of Father of the Fatherland (Italian: Padre della Patria). The monument Altare della Patria (or Vittoriano) in Rome was built in his honor.
Umberto was born at the Castle of Racconigi in Piedmont. He was the third child, and the only son, of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and his wife, Elena of Montenegro. As such, he became heir apparent upon his birth, since the Italian throne was limited to male-line descendants only. Umberto was given the standard military education of a Savoyard prince. During the crisis of May 1915, when Victor Emmanuel III had decided to break the terms of the Triple Alliance by declaring war on the Austrian empire, he found himself in a quandary as the Italian Parliament was against declaring war; several times, the king discussed abdication with the throne to pass to the Duke of Aosta instead of Umberto. 
Umberto was the only son of the five children of King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena. In an effort to repair the monarchy's image after the fall of Benito Mussolini's regime, Victor Emmanuel transferred his powers to Umberto in 1944 while retaining the title of king. As a referendum was in preparation on the abolition of the monarchy in 1946, Victor Emmanuel abdicated his throne in favour of Umberto in the hope his exit might bolster the monarchy. However, the referendum passed, Italy was declared a republic, and Umberto lived out the rest of his life in exile in Cascais, on the Portuguese Riviera.
While Garibaldi conquered Southern Italy, the Kingdom of Sardinia invaded the Papal States, conquering most of Central Italy after the Battle of Castelfidardo. Sardinian troops then entered the Kingdom of Two Sicilies from the north and joined Garibaldi's forces. After the Battle of the Volturnus, the only organized Bourbon force left in Italy remained at Gaeta. On 21 October, a plebiscite confirmed the annexation of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to the Kingdom of Sardinia by an overwhelming majority, while on 26 October, Victor Emmanuel II and Garibaldi met at Teano in northern Campania, where Garibaldi shook Victor Emmanuel's hand and hailed him as "King of Italy". The last Bourbon stronghold at Gaeta finally surrendered after a long siege in February 1861. With the capture of Gaeta, a unified Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed on 17 March 1861. King Victor Emmanuel II of Savoy was then declared King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy.
In addition to his morganatic second wife, Victor Emmanuel II had several other mistresses:
Prince Hermann Friedrich of Leiningen (born 16 April 1963) is the younger son of Prince Karl of Leiningen and his wife Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria. Hermann was born in Toronto, Ontario, as Hermann Friedrich Fernando Roland. Through his mother, Hermann is a grandson of King Boris III of Bulgaria, a great-grandson of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and great-great-grandson of King Nicholas of Montenegro. Through his father, he is a great-great-great grandson of Queen Victoria (thus in the line of succession to the British throne - as of May 2018, he was 151st), as well as Tsar Alexander II of Russia. According to Marlene Eilers, Hermann of Leiningen belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church. His paternal grandmother was Grand Duchess Maria Kirillovna Romanova of Russia and his maternal grandmother was Princess Giovanna of Savoia, daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy.
In the words of the 1910 New Catholic Dictionary: 'Present day popes have no mind to resuscitate their deposing power. As Pius IX said to the deputation of the Academia of the Catholic Religion, 21 July 1871: 
"Although certain Popes have at times exercised their deposing power in extreme cases, they did so according to the public law then in force and by the agreement of the Christian nations who reverenced in the Pope the Supreme Judge of Christ extended to passing judgment even civiliter on princes and individual states. But altogether different is the present condition of affairs and only malice can confound things and times so different." ' Pius IX had excommunicated King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy in 1860 when Victor Emmanuel accepted the annexation of Romagna, and Victor Emmanuel had captured Rome from Pius in 1870.
The issue of the rule of monarchy or republic in Italy was an issue that changed several times through the development of Italian Fascism. Initially Italian Fascism was republican and denounced the Savoy monarchy. However, Mussolini tactically abandoned republicanism in 1922 and recognized that the acceptance of the monarchy was a necessary compromise to gain the support of the establishment to challenge the liberal constitutional order that also supported the monarchy. King Victor Emmanuel III had become a popular ruler in the aftermath of Italy's gains after World War I and the army held close loyalty to the King, thus any idea of overthrowing the monarchy was discarded as foolhardy by the Fascists at this point. Importantly, Fascism's recognition of monarchy provided Fascism with a sense of historical continuity and legitimacy. The Fascists publicly identified King Victor Emmanuel II – the first King of a reunited Italy who had initiated the "Risorgimento" – along with other historic Italian figures, such as Gaius Marius, Julius Cæsar, Giuseppe Mazzini, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, Giuseppe Garibaldi and others, for being within a tradition of dictatorship in Italy that the Fascists declared that they emulated. However, this compromise with the monarchy did not yield a cordial relationship between the King and Mussolini. Although Mussolini had formally accepted the monarchy, he pursued and largely achieved reducing the power of the King to that of a figurehead. The King initially held complete nominal legal authority over the military through the "Statuto Albertino", but this was ended during the Fascist regime when Mussolini created the position of First Marshal of the Empire in 1938, a two-person position of control over the military held by both the King and the head of government, that had the effect of eliminating the King's previously exclusive legal authority over the military by giving Mussolini equal legal authority to the King over the military. In the 1930s, Mussolini became aggravated by the monarchy's continued existence due to envy of the fact that his counterpart in Germany Adolf Hitler was both head of state and head of government of a republic; and Mussolini in private denounced the monarchy and indicated that he had plans to dismantle the monarchy and create a republic with himself as head of state of Italy upon an Italian success in the then-anticipated major war about to erupt in Europe.
After being removed from office and placed under arrest by the King in 1943 and the Kingdom of Italy's new non-fascist government switching sides from the Axis to the Allies, Italian Fascism returned to republicanism and condemnation of the monarchy. On 18 September 1943, Mussolini made his first public address to the Italian people since his rescue from arrest by allied German forces, in which he commended the loyalty of Hitler as an ally while condemning King Victor Emmanuel III of the Kingdom of Italy for betraying Italian Fascism. On the topic of the monarchy removing him from power and dismantling the Fascist regime, Mussolini stated that "[i]t is not the regime that has betrayed the monarchy, it is the monarchy that has betrayed the regime" and that "[w]hen a monarchy fails in its duties, it loses every reason for being...The state we want to establish will be national and social in the highest sense of the word; that is, it will be Fascist, thus returning to our origins". The Fascists at this point did not denounce the House of Savoy in the entirety of its history and credited Victor Emmanuel II for his rejection of "scornfully dishonourable pacts" and denounced Victor Emmanuel III for betraying Victor Emmanuel II by entering a dishonourable pact with the Allies.
Maria Pia was the daughter of Victor Emmanuel II, the first King of Italy, by his wife Adelaide of Austria. Her sister Maria Clotilde was the "princesse Napoléon" as wife of Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte and her brothers were King Umberto I of Italy and King Amadeo of Spain.
Later that same year, Victor Emmanuel II sent his forces to fight the papal army at Castelfidardo and drove the Pope into Vatican City. His success at these goals led him to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Then, Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Sicily and Naples, and Sardinia-Piedmont grew even larger. On 17 March 1861 the Kingdom of Italy was officially established and Victor Emmanuel II became its king.
Prince Vittorio Emanuele of Savoy-Aosta, Infante of Spain, Count of Turin (24 November 1870 – 10 October 1946) was a grandchild of King Victor Emmanuel II and a member of the House of Savoy. He was a cousin of Victor Emmanuel III.
The Victor Emmanuel Railway (VER) was created on 25 May 1853 by decree of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia. It was authorised to run through Savoy from Culoz, at the boundary with France, via Chambéry and then through Piedmont, from Susa to Turin and onward to Buffalora at the boundary with Austrian territory. The Piedmont section was built by the VER itself. The Savoy section was built by Thomas Brassey and various partners but quickly purchased by the VER.
Italian-Egyptian relations were so strong and deemed so important that when the King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III abdicated in 1946 after Italy's defeat in World War II, Egyptian King Faruk invited Victor Emmanuel III to live in Alexandria. Victor Emmanuel III died in Alexandria in December 1947 and was buried there, behind the altar of St Catherine's Cathedral.
At one point, there was an avenue in Paris named Avenue Victor-Emmanuel III, but the king's support of the Axis Powers led the road to be renamed Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue following the end of World War II.
From 1860 to 1946, the following titles were used by the King of Italy:
The rest of Victor Emmanuel II's reign was much quieter. After the Kingdom of Italy was established he decided to continue on as King Victor Emmanuel II instead of Victor Emmanuel I of Italy. This was a terrible move as far as public relations went as it was not indicative of the fresh start that the Italian people wanted and suggested that Sardinia-Piedmont had taken over the Italian Peninsula, rather than unifying it. Despite this mishap, the remainder of Victor Emmanuel II's reign was consumed by wrapping up loose ends and dealing with economic and cultural issues. His role in day-to-day governing gradually dwindled, as it became increasingly apparent that a king could no longer keep a government in office against the will of Parliament. As a result, while the wording of the Statuto Albertino stipulating that ministers were solely responsible to the crown remained unchanged, in practice they were now responsible to Parliament.
As the Allies and the Resistance gradually chased the Nazis and Fascists off the peninsula, it became apparent that Victor Emmanuel was too tainted by his earlier support of Mussolini to have any postwar role. Accordingly, Victor Emmanuel transferred most of his powers to his son, Crown Prince Umberto, in April 1944. Rome was liberated two months later, and Victor Emmanuel transferred his remaining powers to Umberto and named him Lieutenant General of the Realm. Within a year, public opinion pushed for a referendum to decide between retaining the monarchy or becoming a republic. On 9 May 1946, in a last-ditch attempt to save the monarchy, Victor Emmanuel formally abdicated in favour of his son, who became Umberto II. It did not work; the Italian constitutional referendum, 1946 was won by republicans with 54% of the vote. Victor Emmanuel went into exile in Egypt, dying there a year later.
Italy became a nation-state belatedly on 17 March 1861, when most of the states of the peninsula were united under king Victor Emmanuel II of the House of Savoy, which ruled over Piedmont. The architects of Italian unification were Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour, the Chief Minister of Victor Emmanuel, and Giuseppe Garibaldi, a general and national hero. In 1866, Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck offered Victor Emmanuel II an alliance with the Kingdom of Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War. In exchange Prussia would allow Italy to annex Austrian-controlled Venice. King Emmanuel agreed to the alliance and the Third Italian War of Independence began. The victory against Austria allowed Italy to annex Venice. The one major obstacle to Italian unity remained Rome.
The castle was used extensively by the Savoyards, and was the first castle occupied in 1798 by the French armies, who retained it until 1814. Returned to Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia and later to his distant nephew Charles Albert of Sardinia, Prince of Carignano, it became the residence of young family princes who studied here. King Victor Emmanuel II preferred it to the Royal Palace of Turin, and had numerous apartments furnished according to his tastes. In 1849, it was from this palace that emerged the famous Proclamation of Moncalieri, written by Massimo D'Azeglio and signed by the king Vittorio Emmanuel II.
Maria Clotilde was the eldest of eight children born to Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia by his first wife and cousin, Archduchess Adelaide of Austria. Her father would later become the King of a united Italy as Victor Emmanuel II.