We were reading a dispatch about the crisis in Iran when news reached us of the death of Guity Wambold. She was the last Qajar princess born in Persia’s Golestan Palace. Her passing, at age 99 at New York, is a moment to reflect on not only what might have been but also what was — a wonderful woman who emerged, from geopolitical upheaval, to embrace America and become the happy matriarch of a modern American family. It happens that we have had a long friendship with Guity’s twin daughters Kristin and Robin and their brother, Ali. Through them we met on occasion Her Sublime Highness, as their mother was properly referred to, and their heroic father, William Wambold, an American flier in World War II who, after the war, was posted as air attache in Tehran, where he fell in love with the Qajar princess and proposed — in the cockpit of a C-47.“What a romantic life you two have led,” we once said to them as the three of us were overlooking a wedding reception on a lawn in the Hamptons. “Oh,” Guity said, “Bill didn’t love me — he just wanted access to our western lands.” She was, of course, joking, as she liked to do. It’s hard to imagine a man more smitten with his own wife than Colonel Wambold, who stayed in the air corps after World War II, expecting war with Soviet Russia.Instead, Colonel Wambold became an Air Force attache, and Guity and he devoted their lives to America’s cause and their children, raising them in, among other places, Morocco, Switzerland, Free China, and France. What a time to be an American officer abroad. They lived it to the hilt — diplomatic receptions, skiing vacations, the Riviera, and a government ‘Goony Bird’ — without taking anything for granted.Or dwelling more than occasionally on le monde perdu. Our favorite exception to this reticence occurred when we were visiting one afternoon, during which it fell to Guity to try to console her daughter Robin, who was going through a difficult divorce. “Now My Dear,” an exasperated Guity finally exclaimed in one of the greatest acts of one-ups-woman-ship we’ve ever heard, “I lost a throne once.”Guity was referring to the twists and turns of history that left her, as it was explained to us, the only child of a union that was to have cemented all legitimate claims to the Qajar throne into an unquestioned, male successor. Her parents were the royal couple who were due to occupy the Peacock Throne until, between 1921 and 1925, a coup and British meddling ended Qajar rule for, it would turn out, a century and counting.Yet Guity emerged as an elegant and resilient woman. “She was unique and therefore lonely, but self-sufficient,” Ali wrote us. On an estate at Tehran that enclosed a park stocked with exotic animals, Guity grew up under the eyes of uncles and her mother, Mahine Banou, who might have been the first Persian woman ever educated abroad. Guity’s father was, as crown prince, honorary commander of the Persian Cossack Brigade, and Guity became a superb horsewoman.And, we gather, a shrewd bridge player. As young parents, Guity and Bill spent several years at Kansas City, where they taught French and their children went to school. They all went on to careers and modern lives, Robin a gemologist and equestrienne, Kristin, an executive of the United Nations, and Ali, an investment banker, including 24 years at Lazard. They embraced both their American and Persian roots.It can be said that Guity lived through four upheavals: In 1941, the expulsion of Reza Shah and abdication in favor of his son Mohammad Reza; in 1943, the sudden and mysterious death in England of Guity’s father, foreclosing any return to power; in 1953, the overthrow of her cousin Mohammad Mossadegh in a coup that restored Mohammad Reza Shah to power; and, in 1979, the Islamic Revolution, after which Guity never returned to her homeland.Our friendship with the Wambolds began on the Alpine ski slopes in 1978, when Bill, Guity, and Robin were still at Tehran and the coup was gathering that left Iran in the Islamist grip. Bill Wambold died in 2000. To us Guity came to epitomize a liberal spirit that has been a part of Persia going back to Queen Esther and Cyrus. We don’t intend any inapt comparisons — only to say that Iran was the worse for Guity’s exile and her fellow Americans the winners.________99 is the age at which Princess Guity died, according to a correction released by the family.
