page_title: Farouk of Egypt
section_title: The "beloved king"
hierarchical_section_title: Farouk of Egypt / The "beloved king"
caption_attribution_description: English: A banquet organized on the occasion of the wedding of King Farouk I and Queen Farida of Egypt. The persons appearing in the photograph are (from left to right): Princess Nimet Mouhtar (1876–1945), Farouk's paternal aunt; King Farouk I (1920–1965), the groom; Queen Farida (1921–1988), the bride; Sultana Melek (1869–1956), widow of Hussein Kamel, Farouk's paternal uncle; Prince Muhammad Ali Ibrahim (1900–1977), Farouk's 2nd cousin once removed. العربية: حفلات الزفاف في القصور الملكية تشهد زفاف الملك فاروق والملكة فريدة وقد وقفت السلطانة ملك إلى جانبهما والأميرة نعمت مختار ومحمد علي إبراهيم.
context_page_description: Farouk I was the tenth ruler of Egypt from the Muhammad Ali dynasty and the penultimate King of Egypt and the Sudan, succeeding his father, Fuad I, in 1936.
  His full title was "His Majesty Farouk I, by the grace of God, King of Egypt and the Sudan". He was overthrown in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and forced to abdicate in favour of his infant son, Ahmed Fuad, who succeeded him as Fuad II. Farouk died in exile in Italy in 1965.
  His sister, Princess Fawzia Fuad, was the first wife and consort of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
context_section_description: Upon his coronation, the 16-year-old King Farouk made a public radio address to the nation, the first time a sovereign of Egypt had ever spoken directly to his people in such a way:
  And if it is God's will to lay on my shoulders at such an early age the responsibility of kingship, I on my part appreciate the duties that will be mine, and I am prepared for all sacrifices in the cause of my duty.... My noble people, I am proud of you and your loyalty and am confident in the future as I am in God. Let us work together. We shall succeed and be happy. Long live the Motherland!
  As Farouk was extremely popular with the Egyptian people, it was decided by the Prime Minister, Ali Maher, that Farouk should not return to Britain as that would be unpopular, though one of the regents, Prince Mohammad Ali, had wanted Farouk to keep trying to be admitted on a full-time basis to the Royal Military Academy as a means of getting him out of the country. Since under Egyptian law women could not inherit the throne, Farouk's cousin Prince Mohammad Ali was next in line to the throne. Prince Mohammad Ali was to spend the next 16 years scheming to depose Farouk so he could become king.  Egypt was in the process of negotiating a treaty that would reduce some of the British privileges in Egypt and make the country more independent in exchange for keeping Egypt in the British sphere of influence. The ambitions of Benito Mussolini to dominate the Mediterranean led the Wafd—traditionally the anti-British party—to want to keep the British presence in Egypt, at least as long as Mussolini kept calling the Mediterranean Mare Nostrum. For both the Wafd and the British, it was convenient to keep Farouk in Egypt so that when he signed the new Anglo-Egyptian treaty, it would not be seen as under duress as it would be if Farouk was living in Britain. Sir Miles Lampson believed he together with assorted other British officials like the king's tutor, Edward Ford, could mould Farouk into an Anglophile. Lampson's plans were derailed when it emerged that Farouk was more interested in duck-hunting than Ford's lectures and that the king had "bragged" he would "have the hell" with the British, saying they had humiliated himself, his family and Egypt for long enough.
  The fact that Farouk had dismissed all of the British servants employed by his father, while keeping the Italian servants, suggested he had inherited Fuad's Italophilia. Farouk especially resented Lampson's attempts to set himself up as a surrogate father, finding him impossibly patronising and rude, complaining that at one moment Lampson would address him as a king and the next moment would call him to his face a "naughty boy". Lampson was 55 when Farouk acceded to the throne and he never learned how to treat the teenage Farouk as an equal. Lampson, a huge man who was 6'5 tall, had grown up in the late Victorian era and had the typical views of an upper-class Victorian Englishman, regarding all non-white peoples whether Chinese, Indians, or Egyptians as "inferior races" who needed to be ruled by the British for their own good. Lampson was charmed by Egypt, which he regarded as a wondrous exotic land, but as his Arabic was not particularly good, his contacts with ordinary Egyptians were only on a superficial level. Lampson was fluent in French and his social contracts were almost entirely with the Egyptian elite. Lampson wrote in his diary about the death of King Fuad: "Slippery customer though he was, he was an immense factor in the situation here and...we could always in the last resort get him to act in any particular line that we wished". About Farouk, Lampson wrote he did not expect to have "...a young immature King on our hands. I frankly don't know quite how that problem is going to be handled".
  Farouk was enamored of the glamorous royal lifestyle. Although he already had thousands of acres of land, dozens of palaces and hundreds of cars, the youthful king often traveled to Europe for grand shopping sprees, earning the ire of many of his subjects. It is said that he ate 600 oysters a week. His perso
caption: A banquet organised on the occasion of the wedding of King Farouk I and Queen Farida of Egypt. The persons appearing in the photograph are (from left to right):
   Princess Nimet Mouhtar (1876–1945), Farouk's paternal aunt;
   King Farouk I (1920–1965), the groom;
   Queen Farida (1921–1988), the bride;
   Sultana Melek (1869–1956), widow of Hussein Kamel, Farouk's paternal uncle;
   Prince Muhammad Ali Ibrahim (1900–1977), Farouk's 2nd cousin once removed.
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