She Had a Crown but Lost Everything That Truly Mattered | The Tragic Story of Queen Soraya

She Had a Crown but Lost Everything That Truly Mattered | The Tragic Story of Queen Soraya

Though Queen Soraya infamously divorced the Shah of Iran in 1958, their twisted love story had an even darker end. The pair never stopped loving each other, but they were more star-crossed than Romeo and Juliet. Years after the split, the Shah was on his deathbed when Soraya sent him a letter. It ended in a more horrific tragedy than either could have imagined. Soraya was groomed for a royal destiny from the very start. The only daughter of Iranian nobleman Khalil Esfandiary and his wife, the German aristocrat Eva Karl, Soraya grew up in luxury and spent her adolescence shuttling between Berlin and Isfahan while attending the best finishing schools. Despite that, she had a notoriously blunt demeanor and bad temper, and could snap quickly when someone annoyed her. But she was pretty, so whatever. In fact, she was so pretty that in 1948, the Queen Mother of Iran, who was on the lookout to get her son Shah Mohammad Reza a new wife, decided she was queen material by simply seeing a single photo of her. Ah, what a fairy tale.

But like all fairy tales, it was a little creepy too. The Queen Mother was so into Soraya, she sent over one of her daughters to see what the girl was made of. The Iranian royal family didn’t mess around. Soraya might have barely graduated from long division, but they invited her to their palace in Tehran all the same. On the surface, it was a little casual meet and greet to see how everyone got along, but in reality, they were formally auditioning Soraya as queen. She was swept away by her promised fairy tale, and it all happened in just one instant. The second that the Shah walked into the room, he wore his crisp pressed military uniform, and the sight had Soraya love-struck. She described him as magnificent, aflutter with young love. Soraya wasn’t at all ready for what came next. If she was googly-eyed over the Shah, the feeling was more than mutual. He was completely obsessed and was ready to propose there and then. But his red flags were there from the beginning. For one, Mohammad was firmly in his 30s and over a decade older. Secondly, her new in-laws were notoriously dysfunctional. In an effort to make him more manly, the Shah’s father didn’t show him much love, and his mother was smothering and jealous. But that wasn’t even the worst part. Mohammad Reza had also been married before. His first wife was the equally beautiful Princess Fawzia of Egypt, and their union ended in horror and infamy.

Fawzia had been unsurprisingly miserable in the toxic family dynamic. Together, they’d had one daughter, not a son as they’d hoped. During his first marriage, he was an absolutely rampant cheater, and his private life was littered with heaps of glamorous mistresses and clandestine raids in luxury cars. Bad idea or not, Soraya said yes to the Shah’s proposal. To this day, there’s some confusion about just how old she actually was on her wedding day. Some people believe the palace lied and said she was 18 when she was really 16. The wedding was set for the fast-approaching date of December 27, 1950, until a horrific event occurred. Soraya fell violently ill with typhoid on the very eve of her wedding. As a result, the palace had no choice but to delay the nuptials. Yet, when he heard about his fiancee’s illness, the Shah responded with a surprising gesture. Though he was disappointed to delay the royal ceremony, he actually pulled out all the stops for his delirious bedridden bride. It’s said that he came to Soraya’s bed every day for the entirety of her sickness just to place a jewel on her pillow. What a player. For all his kind understanding and pillow jewels, the Shah and his family really wanted to get this wedding moving, so much so that they reset the date to just six weeks later.

Was it a case of being so in love he couldn’t wait, or did the Shah just really want a male heir ASAP? In any case, it was much too soon, and Soraya paid a high price. Soraya, who was still pretty much a child, don’t forget, was nowhere near well enough to walk to the altar when the time came. On the morning of her wedding, she was so weak that she could barely stand. Did this stop the Shah? No. Today, Queen Soraya’s wedding dress is an iconic part of fashion history. Designed by Christian Dior, the silver lame gown was a pearl-studded confection trimmed with marabou feathers. Yet, what most people don’t know is that Soraya’s chills were so intense, she had to wear a wool vest and socks under her finery to stop her from shaking. The lavish dress weighed an astonishing 46 pounds, and the ailing and underdeveloped bride nearly collapsed under its weight. It got so bad that even the Shah had to take notice. Minutes before they walked down the aisle, he cut off the dress’s train just to make sure his queen could make it through the ceremony. But they did, and they were desperately in love with each other. But then Soraya’s dark side came out. When she was in a good mood, no one could be sweeter or more charming, but if you crossed her, you better watch your back. After the couple bickered one evening at a public dinner, she stunned the guests by picking up a priceless vase and smashing it against a wall. After yet another fight, she banned the Shah from their marriage bed for weeks on end, forcing him to sleep outside her door on a cot. These events sent tongues wagging, but it’s likely no one even knew about their biggest issue. Soraya definitely brought out the Shah’s fiery side, as their many fights attest to, but even her youthful anger couldn’t change the Shah’s reserved ways. Heartbreakingly, thanks to his love-starved childhood, Mohammad was often stiff and shy, even in private and even with his wife. With all the pressure and dysfunction, Soraya began to rebel. Today, Queen Soraya’s beauty and elegance have made her an icon, but that doesn’t mean she was a good queen. In fact, for all that she was in love with the Shah, there wasn’t much else about being the ruler of Iran that she liked.

Soon enough, she disdained royal customs, often refused to wear formal clothes, and sharked her boring duties. Unsurprisingly, this backfired on her. The Shah might have thought the world of his new wife, but pretty soon his court had different ideas. They were already suspicious of her European heritage, so her royal tantrums and less-than-stellar devotion to the throne earned her the scornful nickname “that German woman.” And they sure didn’t like what they saw next. In the 1950s, Queen Soraya was embroiled in yet another scandal, this time on an international scale. Visiting friends in America, she waterskied in Miami while wearing a revealing bikini. It was an absolute catastrophe at the conservative palace, and the photo was even banned in Iran. This may have been the point that the family started plotting against her. The Shah’s first wife had already had very icy relations with her in-laws, so it was no surprise when Soraya didn’t warm to them either. But their cruelty toward her was unprecedented. They were straight up awful and began to get jealous of the Shah’s devotion to his wife. But Soraya had her own jealousy issues, and they were about to get out of control. Although Mohammad didn’t have his coveted male heir yet, he did have his daughter Princess Shahnaz from his previous marriage. With her in-laws constantly accusing her of stealing the Shah’s love, Soraya went and made the exact same accusation to Princess Shahnaz, who by the way was only eight years younger than her. She hated whenever the girl was around and felt she took too much of her husband’s attention. But this disdain for Shahnaz may have come from a fear about her own ability to have children. After all, one of her main duties as queen was to give the Shah an heir, and yet three years had passed without a pregnancy. With a sense of dread, the Shah asked Soraya to travel to America for a top-notch medical checkup. Incredibly, the initial news was good. Doctors in New York claimed that the stress of the past few years had made it difficult for her to get pregnant, but there was nothing to worry about when it came to fertility. Tragically, however, this wasn’t to be the last word. The couple still had a bad feeling that just wouldn’t go away, so they traveled to Boston for a second opinion. The results were heartbreaking. Their worst fears were confirmed. Soraya was indeed infertile and could never give birth to an heir. It was earth-shattering news. The royal marriage already had its difficulties, but Soraya’s fertility issues made things nearly impossible. By 1954, the couple were heading for a breakdown. Their fights got louder and longer as they tried to figure out a way out of their predicament. But that October, they went one step closer to ruin. In the autumn of 1954, tragedy struck.

The Shah’s brother Prince Ali perished in a plane crash at the age of only 32. It was now never more important for the royal family to have a male heir to succeed the Shah. Desperate, Soraya began one of the most harrowing periods of her life. Ever since she had received her infertility diagnosis, Soraya had undergone a battery of tests and treatments to try to get pregnant. After Prince Ali’s plane crash, she submitted to even more, but nothing seemed to work. During this trying time, Soraya got no support from her in-laws. In fact, they were downright vicious. Still jealous of Soraya’s status, the Queen Mother and the royal princesses actively spread gossip around the court about her and her barren womb. Nonetheless, Soraya had one more hope left, even if it did come from a bizarre place. Soraya had never gotten along with her stepdaughter Princess Shahnaz, but she soon found herself desperate for the girl’s help. You see, Shahnaz had just gotten married to Ardeshir Zahedi, the well-healed son of a former prime minister, and if she could give birth to a male grandson for the Shah, maybe this whole nightmare would just go away. Unfortunately, the Shah despised his daughter’s choice of groom, and this led him to make a damning pronouncement. Mohammad Reza swore that Zahedi could not continue the dynasty and that he would never accept a grandson from the union as heir. The royal couple was back at square one. But the Shah did have another scandalous idea. Once Mohammad Reza realized that Soraya would likely never bear him children, he proposed taking a second wife. Now, this wasn’t uncommon in the Iranian royal family, and in fact, the Shah’s own father had several wives in his day. But Soraya was jealous, volatile, and couldn’t even stand to see the Shah talking to his own daughter, so it surprised no one that she point-blank rejected his idea. Fiercely trying to keep her marriage and her position as Iran’s only queen intact, Soraya begged her husband to change his country’s entire constitution. According to her, everything could be fixed if the Shah just amended the law to let one of his half-brothers rule after him. In response, he told her that to change the constitution, he would have to ask the Council of the Wise Men.

And if that sounds like a completely made-up thing, that’s because it was. There was no such council. The Shah just didn’t want to say no to Soraya or give up his marriage. It was right around this time that her mother-in-law became a bonafide enemy at the gates. Yep, the Queen Mother now began pestering her son to divorce Soraya and leave her behind. In March 1958, Soraya’s life with the Shah came to an abrupt halt. After years of trying and countless pressures, marital negotiations between them broke down completely. On March 14, Iran officially announced that the royal couple was divorcing and that Soraya would no longer be their queen. But there was much more to the story than that. Although the official divorce announcement made everything seem black and white between the Shah and his husband, it wasn’t. Soraya had been living in Europe away from the Shah at the time of the broadcast, and when she heard the news, she claimed that the announcement completely blindsided her. According to her, just nine days before the palace put out its announcement, Mohammad Reza had called her up and begged her to let him take a second wife, or he’d have no choice but to divorce her. The Shah’s reaction to his divorce was pitiful. When he spoke to the Iranian people during the announcement, he wept openly. With all this pain and suffering, it was supposed to be the end of the road for the royal couple, but Soraya’s tragic love story wasn’t over yet. She was supposed to now fade into obscurity and live a normal life, but from the beginning, that’s not what happened. As Soraya stepped down from her royal title, the Shah gave her a parting gift of a luxurious penthouse suite in her beloved Paris, a hefty monthly allowance, and other more modest presents like a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a juicy Bulgari ruby.

They were ostensibly farewell gifts, but they had some big ulterior motives. Soraya and Mohammad Reza just couldn’t quit each other. Before long, the situation got scandalous, and they reportedly met in private several times after the divorce. As we’ll see, their reunion didn’t even end there. But before that, Soraya had to live her worst nightmare. The Shah was now desperate for an heir, and his next actions proved it. In 1959, just a year after their acrimonious divorce, Soraya had to watch the Shah remarry the beautiful, young, and probably fertile Farah Diba in a lavish ceremony. Afterward, the entire world sat and watched to see if Farah would produce a royal son at long last. The answer was crushing for Soraya. The new queen of Iran didn’t struggle in the slightest to give the Shah children. In fact, in October of 1960, almost exactly nine months after the wedding, she gave birth. Then it got even crueler. Farah gave birth to a healthy baby boy, the Crown Prince Reza. After ending her tenure as the queen of Iran in tragedy, Soraya had a strange second life as a film star. Hollywood had always fascinated her, and with her legendary beauty, she snagged roles in classics like The Three Faces. But with Hollywood fame came Hollywood drama. While filming The Three Faces, Soraya started a steamy affair with one of the directors, the Italian dynamo Franco Indovina. Obviously, Soraya wanted to forget all about her first life as a queen and distract herself with a passionate rebound. It was as much as she deserved. But there was just one big problem. Soraya always jumped into a romance with both feet, and in the end, Indovina became more than just a rebound. Soraya named him as the second love of her life, except she was getting ahead of herself. Indovina might have her boyfriend, but he was also very married to another woman. And yep, the state of affairs ended in disaster, but not for the reasons you might think. In 1972, Soraya had been through enough pain to last a lifetime, but fate wasn’t through with her yet.

That year, she got the most agonizing news of her life. Her illicit lover Indovina had perished in a fiery plane crash. The shock was simply too much for her. Indovina’s passing left her bereft and severely depressed, and her film career stalled. She eventually retreated to her penthouse and Parisian high society, intending to live the rest of her life quietly once more. Though she was in for a surprise, even while she was married to the Shah, Soraya complained bitterly that he was willing to throw her aside for the sake of his crown. She hopelessly wished he would behave like her friend King Edward VIII, who gave up his own throne in a gesture of commitment for his divorced lover Wallis Simpson. Little did she know at the time, but Soraya almost got her wish. In 1979, Soraya was still reeling from her immense losses and dragging her past behind her. Then her life took another dark twist. She found out that Shah Mohammad Reza was now dying of cancer and would be gone within months. Although they had been apart for more than 20 years, Soraya couldn’t help writing him a letter. Its contents were heartbreaking. In her heartfelt writings to the Shah, Soraya exposed her deepest, longest-held secret: she had never stopped loving him. But Soraya didn’t leave him with just words; she also swore that if he would have her, she wanted to see him one last time before he passed. In his response, Mohammad Reza confessed that he too still loved her and that he was desperate to say goodbye to her in person. To get around his wife and see his long-lost love, Mohammad Reza wanted to wait until he could meet Soraya secretly and alone in Cairo. To Soraya’s great heartache, this illicit meeting never went through. The Shah passed before the star-crossed lovers could manage to arrange their meeting. Soraya’s brief seven-year reign as queen was tumultuous as she dealt with the grief of infertility. The Shah was facing a political crisis. The Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh insisted on taking certain powers away from the monarchy, attempting to consolidate his control.

The Shah refused, leading to Mossadegh’s resignation and disorder from his supporters, some even calling for the assassination of the Shah while he grew depressed over the crisis. Soraya reacted in the exact opposite way. She reportedly went full Lady Macbeth. She was so sick of her husband moping around his palace that she demanded he do nothing less than launch a coup against the government. He refused, and her reply was brutal. She said he disgusted her, later confessing that she could no longer bear the weak man he’d become. Throughout her reign, many Iranians accused Soraya of prejudice against their culture. Unfortunately, the truth was even worse than they imagined. Though Soraya always struggled with her nomadic upbringing and never felt at home anywhere, she also explicitly favored Western European culture over Iranian customs. Still, for all this, no one could say she deserved her heartbreaking end. By 1980, Soraya had loved and lost three times in her life, twice to the same man. After the Shah’s passing, she was a thoroughly broken woman, and she spent the rest of her life in the chic neighborhood of Champs-Élysées in Paris, keeping up her social circle of duchesses and celebrities while staying under the radar. Yet, when the former queen of Iran’s end came, it was anything but elegant. On October 26, 2001, Soraya was found cold and lifeless in her apartment in Paris. Chillingly, the reasons for her demise are undisclosed, and questions linger to this day about her ultimate fate. No one has ever come forward about the cause or the circumstances leading up to her death, putting a huge question mark at the end of her life. Yet, there’s something even eerier: just a week later, there was more tragedy. Soraya’s younger brother Bijan also died after commenting that his sister’s death left him nobody to talk to. This cluster of family deaths has led some to suspect foul play, which only deepens the mystery of her end. Soraya’s star-crossed story has attracted plenty of Romeo and Juliet comparisons, and people remain fascinated and touched by her royal fall from grace. Her history earned her the tragic nickname “the sad-eyed princess.”