Princess Fawzieh Fuad Jahanbani

She was born 99 years ago today on 5 November 1921, the eldest daughter of Sultan Fuad I of Egypt and Sudan (later King Fuad I), and his second wife, Nazli Sabri. With dark hair and blue eyes, she was of mixed Egyptian and Albanian descent, and was educated in Switzerland, making her fluent in three languages, Arabic, English and French. Her marriage to Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was a political one, orchestrated by the groom’s father. It was notable at the time for uniting an historic royal family (the House of Ali had ruled Egypt since 1805) with a relatively new one (the Prince’s father had seized power in a military coup in only 1921), and for being a marriage in many ways, it was doomed from the start.