WITH the pretender to Italy’s throne embroiled in a corruption and prostitution scandal, his son Emmanuel Filiberto, 34, is poised to take over as the new hope of the country’s monarchists.

The young prince, holidaying near Gstaad in the Swiss Alps, said this weekend that his father Victor Emmanuel, 69, was considering abdicating in his favour, or appointing him head of the Savoy dynasty. The move would give the royal lineage a fresher, and cleaner, face.

The reputation of the House of Savoy is in dire need of salvation. According to prosecutors in the southern Italian town of Potenza, Victor Emmanuel, the son of Italy’s last king Umberto II, was part of a criminal association that recruited prostitutes, bribed government officials and illegally sold video poker machines to a casino.

He denies the allegations.

A police video allegedly shows the would-be king pocketing €10,000 (£6,750) in banknotes from a Sicilian gambling boss. Telephone transcripts quote him giving advice on how to treat a prostitute who failed to keep her promises. “We have to deal with her by slapping her,” he is alleged to have said.

This is not the first time that Victor Emmanuel finds himself in a spot of legal bother. Accused of killing a German tourist in a fit of rage off the Corsican coast in 1978, he was jailed for nearly two months but then acquitted, escaping with a reprimand for carrying a rifle without a permit.

It was only in 2002 that male members of the Savoy dynasty were allowed back into Italy, ending a banishment that began in 1946 when Italians voted for a republic in a referendum.

In return the Savoys swore allegiance to the Italian republic but some fringe groups advocate their return to the throne. “Monarchy would be good for a country which is in the middle of an identity crisis,” said Sergio Boschiero, president of the Italian Monarchist Union. “This republic is not loved,” echoed Davide Colombo, who has created a royalist website. “We need a king.”

But which king? Emmanuel Filiberto confirmed that his father was thinking of handing over the reins. “My father is an intelligent man, and he has certainly considered it. What’s certain is that I will help him more and more because he is a wounded man. He needs to find himself again and to dedicate himself to his defence.”

Over the past four years, Emmanuel Filiberto has visited Italy 26 times to try to forge a relationship with his countrymen. A former television football commentator married to Clotilde Courau, a French actress expecting their second child, he is more informal than his father.

Many royalists are banking on Emmanuel Filiberto’s youthful charm, though the man who would be king of Italy admitted that was a “remote” prospect. “We’re not in Britain unfortunately,” he sighed.

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