Rome
The man who would have been king if Italy hadn’t abolished its monarchy after World War II has been placed under house arrest in Rome on sex and other charges. Investigators believe that Victor Emmanuel—crown prince of the Savoy dynasty—had procured prostitutes for Mafia bigwigs and other high rollers at a casino in Campione d’Italia, an Italian enclave in Switzerland. “I’m a sex maniac,” the prince, 69, said in a phone-tap transcript published in the Italian press. Victor Emmanuel has embarrassed royal supporters before. He was acquitted of manslaughter after shooting a German tourist in a fit of rage during a 1978 yachting trip off Corsica. And in 1997, he declared that fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s anti-Semitic racial laws “weren’t so terrible.”
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