Rosa Vercellana

Rosa Vercellana, 1st Countess of Mirafiori and Fontanafredda (3 June 1833 – 26 December 1885), commonly known as ‘Rosina’ and, in Piedmontese, as La Bela Rosin, was the mistress and later wife of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy, but never Queen of Italy.

She was born in Nice, then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the youngest child of Giovanni Battista Vercellana and his wife Maria Teresa Griglio. Four days later she was baptised as Maria Rosa Teresa Aloisia. 

Her father, from Moncalvo in the Province of Asti, had been a standard bearer in the Napoleonic Imperial Guard. After the fall of Napoleon, he was appointed an Officer in the King's Guards and commanded the Royal Garrison in the hunting estate of Racconigi by 1847. There, while living with her family, the fourteen-year-old Rosa met Crown Prince Victor Emmanuel.

She became his mistress and later had two children by him.

Their affair caused a great scandal in 1849 when Victor Emanuel was crowned King of Sardinia. When his Queen died in 1855, the King named Rosa Countess of Mirafiori and Fontanafredda by royal decree in 1858. The King also recognized their two children and assigned them the surname Guerrieri.^,  In 1860 Victor Emmanuel established her in a new residence in a restored castle of La Mandria, near Venaria.

In 1864 the capital of Italy was moved from Turin to Florence and Vercellana established herself there in the villa La Pietraia. Five years later the king fell gravely ill at San Rossore, the royal estate near Pisa. Fearing death, on October 18, 1869 he hurriedly married his mistress, in a purely religious ceremony which conferred no civil rights upon his wife. Telegrams to Rome followed, seeking papal benediction.

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