FRIENDS - His Imperial Majesty MARZIANO II

MARZIANO LAVARELLO, also known as, His Imperial Majesty, Marziano II, once upon a time Lavarello Lascaris Paleologo and then Lavarello Obrenovic

 - it seems to have changed from time to time.

Marziano II

One of Giorgio Quintini's oldest friends in Rome was a curious member of the demi-monde of royalty impostors originally named Marziano Lavarello (1921-1992), from a wealthy family of Genoese shipowners. They seldom met, although Giorgio might accompany younger friends to one of Marziano's annual receptions to celebrate the anniversary of his coronation as Emperor of Byzantium (which had taken place in a Methodist church in Rome). The present writer also met Marziano there and found him an affable and harmless camp old gentleman who every now and again would have the imperial anthem played on the only means of audio reproduction he seemed to possess, the telephone answering machine. Giorgio also occasionally encountered him in a louche club they both liked to frequent, where Marziano, conscious of Giorgio's Paleologo descent, would rise and embrace him with the words "Mon cher cousin!" and they would continue in French.

The details of Marziano's life are well documented in internet for anyone who is interested and a scurrilous book was published in 1964 (see below). Unfortunately we have no photographs of Giorgio in the company of Marziano, but we do have many pages of Giò Stajano's novel Le signore sirene in which the pair of them appear as "Passiria" (Giorgio) and "Marsilia" (Marziano):

Giò Stajano also spoke about them together in his memoirs, mentioned elsewhere in this blog. He also mentioned that Marziano, like Giorgio and he himself, turned his hand to Art. Marziano painted on glass and, like that other pretender to the throne of Byzantium, Paul-Théodore Paléologue-Crivez, he exhibited. Thanks to Prince Stefano Pignatelli di Cerchiara, who has ransacked his archives, we can reproduce the cover of a catalogue of Marziano's paintings.

On the following invitation to one of the anniversary receptions Giorgio is granted the title of Prince, so he photocopied it and kept it in his archives.

Below is the normal signature of Marziano Lavarello, from a letter.

And below is his signature in Cyrillic script on a post card to another friend.

In 1964 a certain Salvatore Dino, who went by the name of Dino Salvatore, published a book which was mostly about Marziano and which was designed to create scandal. The volume also promised further revelations about the intimate lives of various well-known people in Italy, but, because of the advance warning, those threatened with exposure were able to take steps to make sure there was no need for the author to expose them. Dino showed a remarkably full knowledge of the world of Marziano. The book is now something of a collectors' item. 

The copy below was annotated by Giorgio at the request of a younger friend who also knew Marziano. He has kindly allowed it to be copied here.

Giorgio's note continues on the following page: "... di Francia e di Navarre (al secolo VICTOR GILLES, famoso pianista omosessuale), che diceva di essere la reincarnazione di MARIA-ANTONIETTA....!"

Italy of the 1950s and 1960s seems to have had some need for this sort of person and society. They were a social success of sorts and were able to negotiate a kind of legal status through the sometimes Byzantine Italian legal system. Thus in 1952 there was a famous legal dual between two "Emperors", the Neapolitan comic actor known as Totò, who had decided he was entitled to rule Byzantium, and Marziano Lavarello, who objected to the usurper. The internet furnishes ample material for budding students.  Here is the decision of one court, recognizing Marziano's wonderful titles and his ability to ennoble others (potentially a profitable business): Con Sentenza della VII sezione n° 23828/48 R.G. 5143-bis Pretura di Roma 10 settembre 1948 si parla dell’Ordine Costantiniano istituito da Costantino nel 312 e si riconosce a Sua Altezza Imperiale il principe Don Marziano II Lascaris Comneno Flavio Angelo Lavarello Ventimiglia di Turgoville il potere di tutti gli atti di sovranità che competono alla Corona Lascarense quale indiscussa ed indubitabile Sovranità ancor se spodestata, ma che conserva a tutti gli effetti le prerogative di Casa Regnante. Si deliba che spetta il trattamento di Maestà e che tra le proprie facoltà vi è quella di concedere Ttitoli Nobiliari e Gradi Cavallereschi [...].

The Lavarello family itself were wealthy ship owners and there was apparently no need for such a grand ancestral apparatus as that discovered or devised by Marziano. In 1957, Angelo M. G. Scorza, author of a 1924 volume on Genoese noble families, had published a genealogy of the family tracing them to a Francesco de Vairolo in 1363.

However, gossip had it that by the time he was born in 1921 Marziano's mother was the special friend of a high ranking prelate of the Roman Church and this is why he grew up in the Vatican surrounded by pomp and circumstance rather than in Genoa. It may partially explain why he decided to look beyond the Lavarello link (they were a junior line) and would later publish his descent from Zeus, via Dardanus, King of Phrygia who lived c. 1,500 before Christ. This is that booklet, written by Graf Prof. Johannes Von Schmitt and published in Essen in 1973.

In old age Marziano lived in reduced circumstances in a small apartment in Via Sicilia, Rome, where he tried to maintain some imperial splendour.

The walls of Marziano's flat were covered in framed and signed photographs of royalty. On close inspection they turned out to have been cut from gossip magazines and were all signed in the same hand, Marziano's own.

Marziano Lavarello, who seems to have squandered a fortune on being "royal" and on being kind to many youngsters whose company he enjoyed, never married and died in Rome on 17. October 1992. He had been born in the city on 17 March 1921. The present writer attended his funeral at the Russian Orthodox Church in Via Palestro, where one of his crowns still remained well into the new century.