Was Mussolini’s wilful daughter his éminence grise?

In 1930, when she was 19 years old, Edda Mussolini married Galeazzo Ciano. His father was a loyal minister in her father’s government: it was a suitable match. Five hundred wedding invitations went out to the Roman nobility, to diplomats from more than 30 countries and to all the senior fascists, the gerarchi. After the ceremony the newlyweds left for Capri, Edda driving her own white Alfa Romeo, with servants and luggage following in another car and bodyguards in a third. They set off at top speed. Then Edda came to a sudden halt. She had noticed a fourth car behind them. She might have supposed that as a married woman she was about to get out from under the massive shadow of her father – but no. Following along, unwilling to relinquish his favourite child, came Benito Mussolini, whose rule over his family was as overbearing and ineluctable as his grip on the Italian state.

That day Edda persuaded the Duce to turn back and leave her to enjoy her honeymoon, but she didn’t establish her independence. Journalists dubbed her the ‘most dangerous’ or the ‘most influential’ woman in Europe; but, as Caroline Moorehead candidly admits, it is uncertain how powerful she really was. She had long conversations with her father. ‘They spoke constantly, but just what she said, what she advised, was never written down.’ She was also the wife of the foreign minister, but she and Ciano were at odds. When Mussolini entered the second world war alongside Germany, Edda was ardently in favour of his doing so. Ciano, by contrast, saw intervention as ‘a crime and the height of folly’. It doesn’t appear that Edda’s relationship with him (not a happy one) in any way changed his views.

Mussolini had pinned his hopes on her early. When she was barely old enough to walk she was taken to visit him in prison (he had been arrested for protesting against Italy’s 1911 invasion of Libya – in those days he was a socialist and an anti-militarist).