The glamorous, gilded family that rules over Monaco is a real-life soap opera

The lives of the glittering Grimaldi family continue to exude the attraction of a royal soap-opera for an audience way beyond the palm-lined streets of Monaco.

With a population of just 38,000, is the second smallest country in the world. It is also one of the richest and most sought-after.   

Today, the flourishing tax haven, has the highest average wealth of £2million per head, the highest on the planet.

The current head of the pocket-sized principality is 64-year-old Prince Albert, married to beautiful former Olympic Swimmer Charlene, 20 years his junior. 

But it was the financial acumen of his father, Prince Rainier, that set Monaco on its current path to riches.   

Together with his wife Princess Grace, formerly Hollywood’s Grace Kelly, they created one of the most unashamedly glamorous families on the planet – and a world combining high society with the high-octane thrill of the Monaco grand prix.

Today, Prince Albert and Princess Consort Charlene, mother of his two children, attract the attention of photographers whenever they step out in public. 

Born in what was then Rhodesia, 45-year-old Charlene is a former Olympic swimmer exuding elegance and healthy good looks.

She draws headlines even when she’s not there: a recent absence from Monaco for unspecified health reasons was the subject of global interest and concern.

Albert’s much-married sisters Caroline, 66, and Stephanie, 58 are admired in their own right.

The annual Rose Ball, created by Princess Grace in 1954 and now presided over by Albert and Caroline, continues to be one of the most glittering events in Europe.  

Then there are Princess Grace’s grandchildren, the children of Caroline and Stephanie – notably Caroline’s daughter Charlotte Casiraghi, a model and socialite often seen attending  fashion shows and sometimes on the catwalk. 

In January 2022, wearing Chanel black tweed, Charlotte rode a horse down the runway for the Chanel couture show in Paris Fashion week.

Yet the wealthy lifestyle is accompanied by a fair degree of drama.

Guests at the wedding of Prince Albert of Monaco in 2011 could not help but notice that his bride, South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock, cried through much of the ceremony.

And they didn’t look like tears of joy.

Numerous photographs showed Charlene dabbing at her eyes, ignoring Albert’s audible entreaties to stop crying. Charlene later proffered the explanation that she had been ‘overwhelmed’ by the proceedings but her awkward demeanour added to rumours that the couple’s relationship was in trouble well before their wedding day.

In the ensuing decade, the union of Albert and Charlene has been buffeted by pessimistic rumours, from claims of the prince’s alleged extra-marital affairs to speculation about his wife’s long absences from the couple’s home. 

The House of Grimaldi has ruled the pocket-sized principality since the 13th century. It was Albert’s father, Prince Rainier, who really put Monaco on the map, however, developing its capital, Monte Carlo, as a glamorous haven for the rich. 

The world became fascinated by Rainier’s love life, when the highly-eligible bachelor began dating Oscar-winning actress Grace Kelly, to whom he had been introduced by another actress, Olivia de Havilland, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955.

Grace had been born into a wealthy Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia; her father was John B Kelly, an Olympic oarsman. She enjoyed early success in films, winning an Oscar for her role as the dowdy wife of an alcoholic in The Country Girl. She appeared in a series of classic Alfred Hitchcock films, including Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief.

Within a few months of their initial introduction, Grace accepted the prince’s proposal, and after making her last film, the musical High Society, gave up acting for her most challenging role: as Rainier’s wife.

In what the international press called ‘the wedding of the century’, the couple were married in a civil ceremony on April 18, 1956, with a religious service the following day, in which the former film star became Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco.

During the following years Grace devoted herself to Rainier and to establishing various charitable and cultural foundations in Monaco – although she later admitted it had often been difficult to separate Grace Kelly the actress and Princess Grace, the wife of a head of state. The couple had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie.

But all was not to end happily for the family, with some doom-merchants lamenting that they were destined never to enjoy fulfilling lives, supposedly being the victims of a curse imposed on the House of Grimaldi in the 13th century.

According to the legend, a Grimaldi prince kidnapped and raped a beautiful maiden, who became a witch to get her revenge. She cursed the prince’s family for future generations saying, ‘Never will a Grimaldi find true happiness in marriage.’

And indeed in 1982 Prince Rainier’s seemingly idyllic life was shattered by the death of his wife Grace, killed in a car accident at the age of 52. It was a shocking blow for the prince and his family, and a terrible time for the people of Monaco, who had taken the charismatic princess to their hearts.

The worst affected by the crash, during which Princess Grace had lost control of her car after suffering a stroke, was her youngest child Stephanie, then aged 17, who was in the car and was traumatised by media speculation that she, not Grace, had been in the driving seat when the car span off the road.

‘I was not driving, that’s clear,’ Stephanie said in an interview 20 years after the fatal crash. The princess said she had had to bear the double trauma of ‘losing my mother at a very young age, and being at her side at the moment of the accident. You cannot imagine the suffering I have endured, and that I endure still.’

Indeed, after the accident Stephanie’s grieving seemed to cloud her decisions, especially in her choice of men, falling for characters guaranteed to rile her father, and with failed attempts at careers as a model, singer and fashion designer.

Her first wedding was in 1995, to a former fishmonger Daniel Ducruet, with whom she had fallen in love while he was employed as her bodyguard. The couple had two children, Louis and Pauline, before Prince Rainier reluctantly gave his permission for them to marry, but within a year the union was over, prompted by tabloid pictures of Daniel canoodling with a woman who had once held the title of ‘Miss Bare Breasts Belgium’.

Two years later Stephanie gave birth to a daughter, Camille, refusing to disclose the father’s identity. She then began a liaison with an elephant trainer, Franco Knie, moving her three children into his circus trailer. Following the end of that relationship, she was married in 2003 to a Portuguese acrobat, Adans Lopez Peres, but within a year that romance too had soured.

In November last year (2022) she was said to have been ‘very upset’ to learn of the death of a former boyfriend, model Mario Oliver, who she had dated in the 1980s. He had been found dead at a villa in the Dominican Republic after being attacked by burglars who stole a safe deposit box and several Rolex watches.

While her mother’s sudden death led to unwise turns in her early life for Stephanie, her eldest sister Caroline had already made a major miss-step which had upset both her parents. In 1978, at just 21 she fell in love with a French playboy, Philippe Junot, who was 17 years her senior. The two were married with a lavish wedding for 600 guests but their turbulent relationship ended in divorce after two years.

Just a year after Princess Grace’s death, Caroline – who had assumed much of her mother’s responsibilities as Monaco’s First Lady – was married for the second time, to Italian entrepreneur Stefano Casiraghi, who she had met at a nightclub in Monte Carlo.

Within a few months of their marriage, Caroline gave birth to a son, Andrea, followed two years later by a sister, Charlotte, and one year later, a brother, Pierre.

But just when Caroline’s happiness seemed complete, her life was shattered when Stefano, 30, was killed when his powerboat overturned during a racing competition off the coast of Monaco. A socialite and speed boat racer, he had been planning to retire from the sport after this fatal defence of his world offshore title.  

Widowed at just 33, Caroline chose to turn away from public life, retreating with her children to embrace a quiet, headline-free existence at a secluded villa in Saint-Remy in France; ‘she wanted to move away from the gossip and hoopla of Monaco,’ explained her brother Albert.

But within five years a romance pushed her back into the international spotlight. This time her beau was an old family friend, Prince Ernst-August of Hanover, a direct descendant of King George III. He was still married, and a father of two, when the rumours began that he and Caroline were in love, and their affair was confirmed when he abandoned his 16-year marriage to live with Caroline.

On her 42nd birthday in January 1999 Caroline married for the third time (making the Monegasque royal a Princess of Hanover) and within six months she had given birth to a daughter, Alexandra.

But unlike the even-tempered Caroline, Ernst had a volatile personality, drawing media attention with public displays of anger, whether aimed at staff or the photographers who dogged the couple’s life – he once broke a TV cameraman’s nose with his umbrella.

Ernst’s tempestuous outbursts, often fuelled by heavy drinking, took their toll on his health and in 2005, Ernst August, who was 51, was admitted to hospital with acute pancreatitis and fell into a coma. Two days later his father-in-law, Prince Rainier, died aged 81.

By then his marriage to Caroline was under considerable strain, and although he admitted in an interview that he had received treatment for his problems with alcohol, it was reported in 2009 that Caroline had left the couple’s manor house in Le Me-sur-Seine (which they had bought from their friend Karl Lagerfield) and returned to live permanently in Monaco.

Caroline and her sister Stephanie are expected to make a number of public appearances with their brother this year as the Grimaldis celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Prince Albert’s father, Prince Rainier. This year also marks the 30 years since Monaco joined the United Nations.

In a tribute to his father, Prince Albert said: ‘He made Monaco a modern and dynamic constitutional monarchy, outward-looking and active on the international stage. ‘We believe that “Tomorrow” is not a vain word, but the future prospect of our common desire.’