After the birth of her daughter, Princess Shahnaz Pahlavi, she retreated from royal life, refusing to speak in any language but French, and becoming increasingly hostile way of life. She started seeing an American psychiatrist, who diagnosed her with depression. When news of the Princess’s unhappiness reached Egypt, courtiers were dispatched to check on her. After reporting that she was so thin that her shoulder blades were ‘jutted out like the fins of some undernourished fish.’ The reaction of her brother was swift – he urged her to come home, and a divorce was granted three years after she returned to Cairo, in 1948.
