As if it were not enough that a plague of locusts threatened some 300,000 of his subjects with starvation, Libya's 65-year-old King Idris himself was plagued with family troubles. In the first place, his wife, Queen Fatima, 40, had given him no son and heir. Then too, the entire royal family was jealous of the trust the old King put in his chief adviser, Ibrahim el-Shalhi, who wanted to marry the King off to his own daughter. Last fall a nephew of the Queen shot the adviser dead.
Fatima's nephew was executed for his trouble, but his sacrifice was not in vain.
With el-Shalhi gone, the King's relationship with his family underwent a marked improvement. Fatima herself had obligingly picked out two extra wives for her husband, but King Idris was not to be railroaded. He sent his Premier off to Egypt to shop around for a likelier woman (under Moslem law, the King is entitled to four wives at the same time). Three weeks ago in Cairo, while Queen Fatima waited in a village 115 miles away, Idris married the bride that his Premier had picked for him: black-eyed Alia Abdel Kader Lamloum, a ripened Bedouin heiress of 37. Soon after the ceremony, firmly escorted by Fatima, the aged King departed for home, leaving his new Queen behind.
This week, to the roaring welcome of a 21-gun salute in Tripoli harbor, new Queen Alia will arrive in Libya to take her rightful place at Idris' side. The King's own family have blessed the marriage, and at this point, the word was that even Fatima feels much better about everything: she is pregnant again.