Concept
Countess Géraldine Margit Virginia Olga Mária Apponyi de Nagy-Appony (Geraldine; 6 August 1915 – 22 October 2002) was Queen of the Albanians from her marriage to King Zog I on 27 April 1938 until the King was deposed on 7 April of the following year. Geraldine was born in Austria-Hungary into the noble Apponyi family. Her family fled to Switzerland in 1918, when the monarchy of Austria-Hungary was abolished. They returned to Hungary in 1921. However, after her father Gyula died in 1924, her American-born mother Gladys took Geraldine and her two siblings to live in southern France. Later Geraldine was educated at a boarding school in Austria. She met the Albanian king Zog I in 1938, and they married shortly afterwards. The Italian invasion of Albania cut short Zog's reign. During World War II, King Zog and Queen Geraldine lived first in France and later in England. Later on, they would live in France again and in Egypt. After her husband died in Paris in 1961, Geraldine took the title Queen Mother and asserted the rights of her son Leka I, Crown Prince of Albania, to rule. She and Leka fled successively to Spain, Rhodesia, and South Africa. Geraldine was allowed to return to Albania in 2002, and she died that year aged 87. Geraldine was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, a daughter of Count Gyula Apponyi de Nagy-Appony (1873–1924), Grand Marshal of the Hungarian Court, of the old and noble Apponyi family which had been great landowners in Upper Hungary since the 13th century. Her mother was Gladys Virginia Stewart (1891–1947), an American, daughter of John Henry Stewart, a diplomat who served as US Consul in Antwerp, Belgium, and his wife Mary Virginia Ramsay Harding (later Mrs. Gustaf Stråle af Ekna), who both came from monied families of the New World, specifically Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina. When Geraldine was three, the Empire of Austria-Hungary collapsed, and the Apponyi family went to live in Switzerland. In 1921 they returned to the Kingdom of Hungary which was stable under Regent Miklós Horthy.
