The Duke of Castro is married to Camilla Crociani, whose father, Italian businessman Camillo Crociani, was convicted in the Tangenopoli (Lockheed) bribery scandal but fled to Mexico to avoid his 2 1/4 year prison sentence. The businesses he owned passed to his wife Edoarda's control (but this was not known for many years) - recently Edoarda (a former actress, etc) sold the 98.5% of Vitrociset, the company her husband built, to the Italian aerospace company Leonardo, which already owned 1.5%. Vitrociset had been involved in the aerospace, defence, and air traffic control business but had declining revenues. This followed a decision by the High Court in London requiring the repayment to an off-shore trust fund set up originally by Camillo Crociani of some $200 million that had allegedly been improperly removed to prevent Camilla's sister Cristina (Cristina was the plaintiff in the case against her mother and sister) benefiting. At the same time the son of Camillo Crociani's first wife has sued his stepmother in the Roman courts, as he claimed to be a beneficiary of his father's estate and that he had been deprived of this (which he claimed he was due under the civil code on inheritance); this led to the sequestration of properties in Rome and Sardinia owned by Camilla's mother. The Castro couple and their daughters live mainly in Monte Carlo.
An attempt to bury the hatchet was made a few years ago. The Castro's have only two daughters where the current Duke of Calabria has several sons.
Unfortunately the Duke of Castro decided he felt betrayed and declared his eldest daughter his heiress. So we're back to square one.
Like the Savoy dispute i hope it will settle down in the next generation as one line has no sons and the other does. As both kingdoms have not been able to update their line of succession to gender-neutral the lines with sons automatically end up winning.
Just what exactly do such persons do, anyway? What are their precise responsibilities? The reason for my asking is that Prince Ranieri, Duke of Castro (1883-1973), one of two disputed claimants of the defunct throne of Two Sicilies, *handed over the responsibilities of dynastic headship* to his son, Prince Ferdinando, Duke of Castro (1926-2008), in 1966.
His nephew and rival claimant, Prince Alfonso, Duke of Calabria (1901-1964), of course, had no reason for so doing, since he didn't long survive his uncle Ferdinando Pio, Duke of Calabria (1869-1860), the last undisputed head of the royal house of Bourbon-Two Sicilies. Instead, his own son Carlo, Duke of Calabria (1938-2015) inherited his claim upon his death. To the best of my knowledge, the dispute between the descendants of Alfonso and Ranieri has not yet been resolved, with neither faction surrendering its claim to headship. If only Prince Ruggieri, Duke of Noto (1901-1914) had lived ...
I find it interesting that Ferdinando Pio, the titular king of Two Sicilies for a quarter of a century, was born in Rome but for years made his home in his wife's native land of Bavaria. His brother-in-law Rupprecht (the older brother of his wife, Princess Maria Ludwiga) had become the head of the house of Wittelsbach upon the death in 1921 of his father Ludwig III, the last king.
As such, there were two quasi *royal courts* functioning in Bavaria between the death in 1934 of Ferdinando's father, Alfonso, Count of Caserta, and his own death in 1960 (Crown Prince Rupprecht, who was the same age as himself, had died in 1955 and been succeeded by his eldest surviving son, styled Duke Albrecht of Bavaria). But not to worry: they were separate royal houses; so dispute was not an issue.
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