Soraya Bakhtiari was born in Isfahan in 1932 to a German Protestant mother and Iranian Muslim father. After schooling in Iran and Switzerland, she was a student in London when, aged eighteen, she married the Shah of Iran in 1951. Three months later, a revolution headed by Prime Minister Mosaddeq to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was defeated in a coup d'état organised by the American CIA.

Soraya’s success as Empress – creating sanatoriums, a special women’s and children’s hospital in Tehran, a girls’ summer school on the Caspian Sea, evening literacy classes, and a publishing house translating classic books into Farsi, resulted in her becoming the most popular member of the royal family. The Shah, his mother and sisters bitterly resented having to play second fiddle. However, not having conceived an heir in seven years became the basis for a bitter divorce. The Shah failed to persuade Soraya he should take a second wife. He publicly blamed her for their breakup. Underestimating her popularity, the decline in the Shah’s reputation began. Subsequent mistakes made during his rule accumulated over the years until a demonstration of over six million people protesting against his regime forced him into exile.