53rd Issue: Ernest Perron

My apologies for this issue being quite short, but rest assured there is more coming. I just found this guy's Wikipedia page and thought it was really interesting.

 

 

 

Ernest Perron was a courtier during the rule of Reza Pahlavi in Iran, before the revolution. Above is a picture of Ernest, on the left, with Reza on the right. Ernest worked at the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, a school known for educating the extremely rich and elite students of the world. Kings and Queens send their children there. Reza was a student there in the 1930s, and that’s how Ernest met him. Ernest was super into poetry, and he was a janitor and gardener. He was eccentric and dressed flamboyantly, so he was made fun of and beat up by the students. Basically, they knew he was gay and bullied him for it. One day Reza defended him and they became best friends.

 

Ernest had never been to college or anything like that, but he loved poetry and literature. He was also Catholic, and later on persuaded Reza’s big sister to convert. Ernest introduced Reza to French poetry and authors. Reza took Ernest on trips to the Iranian ambassador to Switzerland’s house, where he introduced him to Persian food and classical music. When Reza went home to Iran in 1936, he brought Ernest with him. Many diplomats and others were a little alarmed that this flamboyant gay young man was Reza’s closest friend. Reza’s dad didn’t approve of him due to his homosexuality, and he actually beat him up and wanted to send him away but his kids persuaded him to keep Ernest around, though he did demote him to gardener.

Ernest wrote articles about Iran to Swiss newspapers, and also worked as a translator for the French embassy in Iran. He also was a messenger, carrying letters back and forth between Reza and his dad, who was living in South Africa at this time. The next year, Ernest became Reza’s private secretary for over ten years. He was the court poet and philosopher, but he also controlled who was allowed access to the Shah. He was the only person at court who could enter the Shah’s bedroom besides his wife and mistresses. Some called him the “court jester” but others thought of him as the “ruthless intriguer”. People tried to stay on Ernest’s good side, so they gave him secret spy information which of course made him more powerful. He was totally dependent on the Shah due to the fact he was a foreigner, but because of that he was completely loyal to him.

The Shah’s second wife couldn’t stand Ernest at all, he had to move out so he went to live with the commercial attache of the Swiss Embassy. He got fired from his job not just because he was hated by the Shah’s wife, but also because he went outside of the bounds of his position and had to be let go. He worked translating for the Swiss Embassy in Iran for most of the rest of his life. After the Islamic Revolution, a book was published that was called Ernest Perron, the Husband of the Shah of Iran. However there is no evidence proving that he was or was not in a romantic or sexual relationship with the Shah. In the early nineties, the theory was thrown around that Ernest had been planted at the boarding school he met the Shah at by the British, to work as a spy. Again, there’s no proof for or against this. We will probably never know.