In 1905 Benito's father, Alessandro Mussolini, had become a widower and opened a tavern in Forlì, on Giove Tonante Street, together with Rachele's mother (also a widow), entertaining an affair with her. Benito, meanwhile, having returned from
Switzerland, moved after a couple of years to Forlì, to his father's place, and there he met Rachele again, thereupon commencing a romantic relationship with her. However, the families disagreed about their relationship, and so in 1909 Benito summoned his father and Rachele's mother and, wielding a
revolver, told them that if they did not consent to their marriage, he would kill her and himself. In 1910, Rachele Guidi moved in with Alessandro's son,
Benito Mussolini, and gave birth to their daughter Edda in September that year. In 1914, Mussolini married his first wife,
Ida Dalser. Although the records of that marriage were destroyed by Mussolini's government, an edict from the city of Milan ordering Mussolini to make
maintenance payments to "his wife Ida Dalser" and their child was overlooked. Shortly before his son, Benito Albino Mussolini, was born to Ida Dalser, Rachele Guidi and Benito Mussolini were married in a civil ceremony in
Treviglio, Lombardy, on 17 December 1915. In 1925, they renewed their vows in a religious service (after his rise to power). Many sources agree that Rachele had a stern and authoritarian temperament, sometimes even more so than her husband: she was, for example, opposed to any act of clemency towards her son-in-law
Galeazzo Ciano during the
Verona trial and worsened, because of this, her relations with her daughter Edda, who called her "the real dictator of the house". Moreover, in the last months of 1943 she would go every night for two hours to talk with
Guido Buffarini Guidi, minister of the interior of the
Italian Social Republic, asking him for more severity in order to restore internal order. ==Children==