NAUGHTIEST ROYAL FAMILY
Rebels Without A Cause - The Grimaldis from Monaco
The British Royal family has always monopolized the tabloid headlines. It seems everyone from the Brits and beyond love to read about the family’s scandalous behavior and discourse among the ranks. The monarchy’s strict rules leave little room for error, and one misstep often leads to a public relations nightmare for Buckingham Palace. But they’re not the only Royals accused of naughty behavior. Just a train trip from London, on the French Riviera, is the principality of Monaco. Considered one of the most expensive and wealthiest places globally, it is home to the Grimaldis, Monaco’s Royal Family.
The Grimaldi dynasty has ruled Monaco for seven centuries, but it was Prince Rainier III‘s reign that generated international media attention. The country was struggling financially, and the Prince turned Monaco into a tax haven to attract affluent investors and wealthy tourists. His marriage to film star Grace Kelly in 1956 brought the principality unprecedented press. Grace was known as one of the most beautiful women, and her marriage to the Prince helped cement Monaco’s opulent reputation.
According to popular lore, the Grimaldi dynasty is afflicted by a curse dating back to the 13th Century, when Prince Rainier I kidnapped and raped a young woman who took revenge by pronouncing that “never will a Grimaldi find true happiness in marriage.” While Grace Kelly’s wedding looked like a fairy tale, her marriage wasn’t. Biographer Wendy Leigh, author of True Grace: The Life and Times of an American Princess, says Prince Rainier allegedly had three mistresses within a month of marriage. “Grace was humiliated and she was extremely unhappy. She was surrounded by decadence and Rainier’s disreputable friends,” Leigh wrote.
The couple had three children, Princess Caroline, Prince Albert II, and Princess Stephanie, and the marriage lasted until Kelly’s untimely death in 1982 at the age of 52. Her car veered off a steep mountain road sending the vehicle plunging down a slope. Princess Stephanie, a passenger, escaped with minor injuries, but Princess Grace died of a brain hemorrhage. Her death and accident dominated the front page of newspapers worldwide, but what followed was conspiracy theories, accusations that her teenage daughter was behind the wheel of the car, and that a rift between mother and daughter was the cause of the accident. The details and the circumstances of the accident remain a mystery to this day.
If the relationship between the ruling Prince and his wife kept rumors of infidelity circulating, their three children bankrolled the tabloids. Princess Caroline was a fixture on the nightclub scene and the dating circuit. She was just 21 when she married businessman Phillippe Junot, even though her parents disapproved of the marriage. He was a “commoner” and 17 years older than the Princess. Divorce followed, and Caroline married Italian businessman Stefano Casiraghi who was killed in a powerboat accident, leaving her with three children. Today, she is separated from her third husband, Prince Ernst-August of Hanover.
The youngest child, Stephanie, known as the “wild child,” has had a well-publicized series of unsuccessful relationships, including two with bodyguards. In 1996, she divorced bodyguard Daniel Ducret, with whom she had two children, after photos emerged of Ducret rollicking with a stripper. She also had a fling with another bodyguard, Jean-Raymond Gottlieb, and together they had a daughter. Stephanie has also been linked with actor Rob Lowe and the sons of actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. It was tabloid fodder when Stephanie ran away with the circus and began a relationship with Franco Knie, a Swiss circus director, and elephant trainer. The relationship ended, and Stephanie married Adans Lopez Peres, a Portuguese acrobat and 10-years her junior. The marriage was over in less than a year.
It wasn’t just the girls who kept the gossip columnists on their toes. Now the reigning monarch of Monaco and head of the house of Grimaldi, Prince Albert II was once the most eligible bachelor in the world. He was linked to a fair share of famous women: Naomi Campbell, Tatum O’Neal, Brooke Shields, Kylie Minogue, Janice Dickinson, to name just a few.
But it was the scandal of Albert’s illegitimate children that rocked the palace and trumped all of his sisters’ antics. Albert supports two illegitimate children, Alexandre, whose mother Nicole Coste, was a former Air France flight attendant from Togo, and Jazmine Grace, the result of an affair with Tamara Rotolo, an American estate agent. Rumors of a third love child first surfaced in 2011 as he prepared to marry Charlene Wittstock, a former South African Olympic swimmer. A splash across the tabloids that will remain front and center as Prince Albert II may have to prove he is not the daddy.
The Royal family of Monaco, secluded on the edge of the Mediterranean sea, living on a plot of land just one square mile, has proven this billionaire’s playground is the perfect place for mayhem and salacious headlines.
