To whom was Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary married from 1951 to 1958?

Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary was the queen consort (shahbanu) of Iran as the second wife of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919— 1980) was the eldest son of Reza Shah Pahlavi, an army officer who became the ruler of Iran and founder of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1925. In 1941 the Soviet Union and Great Britain, fearing that the shah would cooperate with Nazi Germany, forced Reza Shah into exile. Mohammad Reza then replaced his father on the throne on September 16, 1941.

Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary was born in 1932, to a German mother and Iranian father. She married the Shah of Iran in 1951. The first months of marriage were idyllic. The Shah and his wife enjoyed a fairytale romance. But a deeper dive into their marriage reveals it was fraught with tragedy, illness, and an inability to have children. Familial and political pressure mounted on the young couple. They decided that the only solution to the problem was a divorce. The shah conferred on her the title of ''royal princess''.

He married an architecture student, Farah Diba, who became empress, bearing two sons and two daughters in their two-decade marriage. His government collapsed in 1978 -1979 and consequently, the Islamic Republic succeeded in his regime. He died in Cairo, in 1980.

Princess Soraya travelled extensively in Europe and never remarried. She died in Paris in 2001. Her story inspired Francoise Mallet-Jorris to write ''Je Veux Pleurer Comme Soraya'' (''I Want to Cry Like Soraya'').