“A few days later, when she entered his office to meet him again, King Zog left everything and stood up to…”/ Unknown book by French journalist, about Queen Geraldine Appony

By Alda BARDHYLI

Memorie.al/ “The king’s complexion, hair, and mustache are blond. He dresses elegantly, has a natural charm, although sometimes he is nervous. His courage is undeniable, just like his intelligence and intuitive capacities…”! Countess Géraldine Margit Virginia Olga Mária Apponyi de Nagyappony, or as she is now known to everyone, Queen Geraldine, would often recall these words spoken by Jozef Suari. The girl who had spent her adolescence and early youth in one of the most beautiful castles of Hungary, in Zebegény, together with her sister Virginia, had often dreamed of the young man who would steal her heart.

His demeanor must have resembled the tales of men she had heard in the conversations of the Apponyis. With the imagination of a girl enticed by the unexpected and the image of a man who seemed interesting through the stories told about him, she drew in her mind her own portrait of King Zog. With a sweet unease within herself, the countess traveled to Albania to meet him. It was the last days of December, and the King had organized a ball for the New Year.

Dressed in an elegant long gown, her hair lightly styled, the Hungarian countess anxiously awaited seeing the man for whom she had traveled from afar. Raised amidst reading, she strongly believed in the power of the first meeting. If his eyes would immediately pierce through her body, then there would be a story between them. When Princess Sanije told her that the moment had come to meet the King, she hesitated. He was only a few meters away from her, somewhere at the far end of the hall crowded with people.

“We were reaching the end of the hall, when suddenly I saw before me a tall, slender, very elegant man, who was conversing with a head of a foreign mission. He turned towards me, and meeting his gaze for the first time, I felt a remarkable unease. He had sky-blue eyes, piercing and captivating…”, Geraldine would later recall that moment.

The King would smile at her, thanking her for coming from afar, and asking her about the journey. But Geraldine could not give any answer. Suddenly she felt herself seized by a cramp of emotions, feeling that she had just met her future. “I could only stammer a reply. Many people were approaching to greet him, but the sisters, the princesses, surrounded us as if to protect us from the curiosity of the crowd.

The King introduced them one by one, then handed me a glass of sparkling champagne. Our fingers touched, and precisely at that moment, the lights went out. The shock had been so strong that I dropped the glass; it shattered into a thousand pieces, just as the twelve strokes of midnight were ringing out”, Queen Geraldine would later recall.

It was the year 1938, and a girl raised in salons felt seized by the anxiety of a meeting she had so greatly anticipated. The King immediately understood her silence and, to get her out of the situation, invited her to dine…! On an evening that would last long, Zog and Geraldine seem to have found each other immediately. Beneath the glow of a royal dinner, she was the most beautiful radiance that night in the Palace. Many historians or biographers have tried to construct a picture of that meeting, which would forever change the life of the King of the Albanians.

But the most heartfelt account is Geraldine’s own, who until the end of her life carefully preserved, like pearls of a precious rosary, the details of that evening. Josephine Dedet is one of the best biographers of Queen Geraldine’s life. Passionate about history, this French journalist was immediately drawn to the figure of the Albanian queen when she first read about her. When she was little, her story seemed like a fairy tale. Dedet’s parents were friends with Geraldine’s French half-brother, Guy Giraud.

Josephine Dedet: “They fell in love at first sight”!

“She always spoke of him with deep love and passion. They had a difficult life in exile, but love helped them get through it with courage and daring.” For the first time, Dedet would meet her in Ranburg (South Africa) in 1996. Before this meeting, they had exchanged letters, to which the queen responded with great courtesy. Josephine asked her about everything – childhood, the meeting with the king, Albania, and life in exile. “Thanks to the long letters exchanged between us, we had begun to grow close to one another.

Finally, in 1996, I went to meet her in South Africa, where she lived with her son, Leka, and his family, and with her sister, Countess Virginia Apponyi, whom I had also met previously in France,” says Dedet. During the week she stayed there, Josephine would receive more answers to the questions that arose from the letters. When she told Geraldine she wanted to write a book about her, at first she hesitated, because of a book that had come out in Great Britain, which had left her disappointed.

But Dedet’s questions, her devotion to this story, made her receive Queen Geraldine’s blessing. “Geraldine, Queen of the Albanians” is the title of the book that was first published in France in 1997 and would be republished over the years, enriched with other chapters, including the final years of her life spent in Albania. On August 6 of this year, it was the 100th anniversary of Queen Geraldine’s birth.

While in Albania this anniversary passed in silence, for a figure who has become a worthy ambassador of our history, Hungary, her country of birth, would remember her through an event, where the Hungarian edition of the book on her life would also be presented. Under the publication of the Hungarian publishing house “Europa,” on September 8 at the Karolyi Palace, an event will be held in honor of Queen Geraldine, where more than 250 people are expected to attend.

For Josephine, remembrance of a figure like Geraldine is a remembrance of our own historical memory. As she wrote about this woman’s life, she felt how her accounts have the ability to refine a person, with the energy they carry within. Dedet fanatically preserves every detail of her meetings with this extraordinary woman. The most interesting part of the accounts in this book is her life in Albania. Although she lived the life of a Queen in the Royal Palace for only one year, this life would become everything in what later happened to Geraldine’s life.

“Life in Albania for one year left deep marks on her life. She fell in love with the country and during the years of emigration she never forgot it. When I once asked her: ‘Do you ever think about Albania?’ She answered immediately: ‘All the time,’ and this was simply the truth,” recalls Dedet. According to her, her love with King Zog was a rare love. “They fell in love at first sight. She always spoke of him with deep love and passion. They had a difficult life in exile, but love helped them get through it with courage and daring,” says Dedet.

When they married, King Zog was 42 years old and Geraldine just 22. He had been a bachelor for many years and had an ability to see into people. He immediately recognized her heart, while she devoted herself entirely to him. She would be his strength during exile or illness. Raised in a family of high social standing, Geraldine knew the diplomatic language well and used it to navigate many situations in a difficult life such as exile.

For Dedet, it was a fortune to write about this woman, who will remain long in history. The return of the royal family to Albania was also the peace that finally came to Geraldine’s soul. Despite being Hungarian, she would not leave this world peacefully without setting foot in Albania once more.

The book written by Dedet resembles a romance in many of its chapters. The love story of the King and the Queen and their strong bond during the years of exile resemble a story one might find only in books. Dedet has wanted to give through this book everything that happened within this woman’s heart – her beautiful hours of desire, but also of sadness. The hours after the first night of the meeting are described by Dedet as hours filled with foreboding.

“If the initial hesitations have disappeared nicely, she now experiences, without yet defining its exact nature, the torments and agonies of a soul in love. Her awkwardness, the broken champagne glass, the particularly unattractive color of her dress – all these come to her mind and make her blush with shame. After having had the impression here and there that she was living a few privileged moments, she is now convinced that she pleased the King. Finally,” describes Dedet of Geraldine’s first days in the Palace. When she wakes up the next morning, she finds on the table a large bouquet of red carnations in the shape of a heart.

With this gesture, the King had shown that he wanted to win her heart. Days later, when she entered his office to meet him again, he left everything and rose to kiss her hand. This was a gesture he never made. Wanting to avoid excessive questions in a conversation filled with emotion, he directly asked the question that had been tormenting him for days: “Do you wish to be my wife?” “We hardly knew each other, but I could not resist the allure that emanated from his entire being: I already felt myself in love.

Without being able to analyze my feelings, I knew that I had never met a man like him,” she would later recall. She would ask him for ten days’ time to think, and after ten days she would return to the Palace, only to leave from there as his wife…! Geraldine’s memories, for the journalist Dedet, are the beautiful memories of a woman who turned her love for one man into the great love for a country…! / Memorie.al