At 11:30 that morning, the couple was married in a private ceremony held in the Mirror Room at the Palace. It was attended only by close friends and family, including Rainier and Albert, Caroline’s aunt Antoinette, Caroline’s three children, and Ernst’s two.
For her own reasons, Stephanie was not there.
Once their vows were taken, Caroline became Her Royal Highness Caroline Princess of Hanover, Duchess of Brunswick and Luneburg.
Not surprisingly, there’d been speculation about the wedding for months. The media decided that it would happen momentarily, not just because they’d photographed Caroline and Ernst in the royal box at the Circus Festival, but because they’d cottoned onto the rumor that she was expecting her fourth child. The Palace refused to confirm or deny that rumor, even though it was true.
Before any wedding could be planned, however, the couple had to secure certain permissions. They needed Rainier’s consent. And because of Ernst’s status as a member—albeit distant—of the British royal family, they also needed authorization to marry from the Queen of England.
Presumably, they bothered to ask.
Technically, there was no way she could have refused.
Photo Section 2
Breakfast with Caroline and with Frank Sinatra in the gardens of the palace apartments.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco, G. Lukomski)
Toddler Stephanie with Grace in the garden.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie in 1973.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Clockwise from top: Grace and Rainier with Caroline and Stephanie in 1975.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Caroline as a teenager with her father.
(courtesy Frank Spooner Pictures Ltd.)
Albert and his mother.
(courtesy G. Lukomski, Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
At the finish line of the London to Brighton Vintage Car Rally
in Rainier’s 1903 De Dion-Bouton. The Grimaldis watched
the start and the finish together, but for most of the race, Grace, Stephanie,
and Caroline sacrificed glory for the warmth of a modern car.
(courtesy Popperfoto Ltd.)
Rainier sometimes fancied himself a drummer.
A playful Grace did not.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco, G. Lukomski)
Stephanie with Grace at a Red Cross Ball.
(courtesy Popperfoto Ltd.)
This photo of Grace shooting a gun at a local fair
ran the day after President Kennedy was shot in November 1963
and was interpreted as tasteless, although it was taken hours before the assassination.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco, G. Lukomski)
Above: Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis at the Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo.
(courtesy SBM)
At the Red Cross Ball with Frank Sinatra.
(courtesy SBM)
One of Grace’s favorite portraits.
(courtesy Sam Levin)
Rainier and Grace out on the town.
(courtesy SBM)
Grace loved needlepoint.
(photos courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco, G. Lukomski)
Grace wrote a book about flower–arranging.
(photos courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco, G. Lukomski)
Reading poetry—here with actor John Westbrook—
was the closest Grace could get to a show-businesscomeback.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Diana’s first public appearance after the announcement
of her engagement to Prince Charles was at a Princess Grace’s
poetry reading. Grace was especially sympathetic to
Diana’s discomfort at the public attention she was suddenly exposed to.
(courtesy Reg Wilson, Royal Opera Press Office)
Grace’s last Circus Festival in December 1981, with Cary Grant, Caroline, and Rainier.
(courtesy Frank Spooner Pictures Ltd.)
Grace’s final Red Cross Ball in July 1982.
(courtesy Popperfoto Ltd)
A family in mourning.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Gracia Patricia, November 1929–September 1982.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Caroline with her late husband Stefano Casiraghi,
their sons, Pierre and Andrea, and daughter, Charlotte.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Stephanie with her father, walking their dog in Paris.
(courtesy Gilles Merme, Frank Spooner Pictures Ltd.)
Albert with Rainer.
(courtesy Photo Archive, Palais Princier, Monaco)
Chapter 26
Albert—
Friends and Lovers
The greatest problem, Albert found growing up—echoing his father’s and sisters’ sentiments—was recognizing true friendship. “I don’t think there’s any clear-cut recipe. You just have to feel the person out. You watch them in certain situations. I was going to say you test them, but that’s not really what I do. I find it’s interesting to see a person’s reaction to a given situation. Of course, it’s not always fair to define the terms of friendship because a lot of friendships are based on helping each other. But when it starts becoming a one-way street, when that person is asking you for a lot of favors, I suppose that’s when you have to start taking a longer look at that friendship.”
Which is not something that, as an adult, got any easier to deal with. “I know Dad had a lot of wonderful friends but many of them have since died so I guess it’s especially tough for him. It’s difficult for him to make new friends. Even if he has a lot of acquaintances, it’s not the same as an old friend he knows and can trust.”
He noted that while his father managed to cope with being alone and working alone and not seeing other people for a certain period of time, it was different for him. “I can’t. I need to have people around.”
Another troublesome area was his constant need to be aware of his own visibility. “Someone told me once that my mom was working a lot more than my dad because she was seen giving prizes and going to charity meetings. They saw her more often than they saw him so they assumed she was working more than he was. Some of the functions that we do, in fact most of the functions we attend, I consider work because I wouldn’t necessarily choose to be there if I didn’t have to be there. But there’s a big difference between representation kind of work and sitting behind a desk. I’m understanding that not everyone makes that distinction for us.”
Once Grace was gone, Albert moved back into the private apartments at the Palace. “Otherwise my father would be living alone.”
He didn’t mind. It’s a very comfortable place to live and, anyway, he enjoyed spending time with his dad. “We talk a lot.”
Albert knew that his father appreciated having the company.
Rainier was also very understanding when, on certain nights, Albert announced that he wouldn’t be home.
He kept an apartment in town—when Rainier was a young man, they were called “love nests”—because Albert and Rainier both believed it would be inappropriate for him to bring women back to the private apartments to spend the night.
Like his father, when Albert reached a certain age, he, too, got labeled, “most eligible young man in the world.”
But the title confounded Albert. “It’s funny, but I’ve never seen myself as the most eligible bachelor in the world. It still surprises me when I read that. People are always trying to fix me up. I have a whole file of mothers trying to marry off their daughters, complete with pictures. It’s hysterical. I also get pictures of girls practically offering their services. But the worst is when an old friend of the family says, why don’t
you come for dinner because I’d love you to meet so and so. I can’t stand that.”
His name was romantically tied—real or otherwise—to Cathy Lee Crosby, Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Sharon Stone, Brigitte Nielsen, Fiona Fullerton, Kim Alexis, Lisa Marie Presley, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Italian television presenter Gabiria Brandimarte, and actress Catherine Alric, who allegedly returned his apologetic flowers, along with his luggage, with a note which read, “Love without faithfulness is like a flower without sun.”
Granted, meeting women was never very difficult. “At discos or restaurants or at parties or on the beach or even on the street, I say hello to girls. Why not? I like that sort of thing.”
But forming a serious relationship that he could take seriously was quite another. “I always have to ask myself, is she with me because of me or because of who I am. When I meet women it’s, okay, she seems nice, but what is she really here for? What is her hidden agenda? Also, I know very well, that when the time comes the woman I marry will have to withstand not only pressure from the media, but also from local people. She’s going to be under intense scrutiny and will have to withstand inevitable comparisons to my mother. That’s not an easy burden for anyone to live up to.”
Nor was easy for him to deal with the media’s obsession with one very specific question—when will Albert get married?
“It’s been very annoying,” he said. “It is very unpleasant, and I don’t know what to say now to calm everybody down. I’m sure everyone will know in time when the real one will be here. It’s a question of timing. You don’t feel ready or you don’t feel confident or you haven’t met the right person. Maybe it’s my desire to be independent that has also prevented me from having a steady relationship. But I won’t get married just to please people.”
Rainier said often, “I would like him to take things in hand and at the same time to set up a family. This is important.”
But all parents say that about their unmarried offspring and Albert insisted, “I will make the right decision when the time for that decision is right. I will marry when I find the right person.”
For the record, there was no requirement that Albert marry a Catholic, but his children have to be raised in the faith because they will be next in line. Should he never produce an heir, the line would pass through Caroline to her son Andrea.
Rainier long ago resigned himself to Albert’s timetable, although there were moments when he displayed mild impatience. Like when Time magazine asked him, “Are you worried that Albert is still single?”
He responded, “No. He is very choosy. And the example of his sisters’ divorces affected him. But he will have to found a family, that’s important.”
Unfortunately for Albert, hand-in-hand with being such an eligible bachelor, came the dangers of being a target for women with their own agenda. A passionate encounter in 1986 with a German model led Albert into the embarrassment of a paternity suit. A court ordered blood test proved he wasn’t the father.
Also, as is the case with many men who reach a certain age and are not yet married, rumors circulated that he was gay. And those rumors proved hard to shake off because many people wanted to believe he was.
Credit to Albert, however, he didn’t lose a lot of sleep over those rumors. “I was hurt by the allegations. Those kinds of things are never very pleasant. But I learned to shrug them off. The people I care about know the real me. I stopped paying attention to that stuff a long time ago. When I first heard those rumors, I protested whenever I could. Seeing how that merely gave more attention to the rumors, I finally gave up because there is very little we can do.”
GqH
After graduating from Amherst with a degree in Political Science, Albert served six months in the French Navy, as junior officer on the helicopter carrier Jeanne d’Arc. He spent the next five months in the management trainee program at Morgan Guaranty Trust in New York. He followed that with a short management apprenticeship at Wells, Rich and Green Advertising in New York and a training program in Paris in the marketing department at Moet Chandon.
“The stay at Moet was my father’s idea. He wanted me to get a feel for the way a major French conglomerate operated. But the look into banking and advertising was my idea. I then returned to New York in the spring of 1986 to spend some time in a law firm, doing all sorts of paralegal stuff.”
Albert was not only the first prince to attend high school in Monaco, he was also the first to have been trained in the ways of the corporate world. “I think banking and marketing are part of what my job is all about, although it’s hard for me to give a clear-cut program or to express my ideas and tell you what I’ll do when I take over.”
Reluctant to be too specific, he believed Monaco should continue developing tourism, light industry, real estate, and banking. He was equally interested in exploring new areas of expansion. “I’d like to see Monaco become a major European financial center but we have to be careful how we go about that and with whom we’re going to do it.”
While none of his plans were in any way conflicting with the options his dad had chosen in recent years, he cautioned, “If I express them too strongly, people will think that I want to push him aside.”
With no firm indication coming from Rainier when it would happen, except to say, “It will happen when we both feel ready for it to happen,” rumors of Albert’s immediate ascension to the throne regularly cropped up.
On the eve of the 700th anniversary of Grimaldi rule, Rainier told Time magazine, “I don’t want to hang on, but I want to find the appropriate moment, when Prince Albert and I feel that he is ready to take over. Now we are in a period where he is acquiring the experience to run what is in effect a big business.”
People claiming to be close to Rainier took that to mean it would happen on Rainier’s 50th anniversary in 1999. It didn’t. But then, that’s what they’d predicted when Rainier turned 70; had promised it would happen in 1997 as part of the 700th anniversary celebrations; and guaranteed it was in the works for 1998 when Rainier turned 75.
Throughout those years, whenever he was asked about it, Albert found himself in a no-win dilemma. “If I say, I’m ready now, then it will be interpreted that Albert wants to kick his father out of here, and that’s the last thing I want to do. If I say I don’t know, then they say that Albert is so weak and so shy, he’s not interested. I’m no ogre for power, trying to kick him out. When it’s time, I’ll be there.”
Anyway, he’d grown comfortable with the status quo. Learning his trade at his father’s side was a working relationship that both of them enjoyed. And for many of those years, both of them had come to terms with the inevitable, that succession would happen when it happened. Neither Rainier nor Albert ever hid their hope that succession would happen while Rainier was still alive, so that father could sit in his easy chair in Roc Agel and look down from the mountain to be there when son needed advice. But just as marriage had to be Albert’s call, succession would always be Rainier’s, and deep down both of them understood that it might only happen with Rainier’s death.
In that lengthy 1997 Time interview, Rainier expressed his full confidence in Albert, certain that the Grimaldis would endure. “We’ve handled ourselves very well up to now even though a certain press likes to exploit all kinds of things. Members of royal families are human beings like other people, with their faults and their good qualities. I get very annoyed at the tendency to mix up information and indiscretion. But I think the Grimaldis have worked a lot for the principality. Our great strength is the union between our family and our people.”
He later said, in a speech to his people, “It is a proud principality, altruistic, and confident in its future, that I would like to leave for Albert,” and called on his people, “To assure me and to assure him of your support, your faith and determination.”
That prompted all sorts of speculation that Rainier was really saying, Albert wasn’t ready, that Albert still had a lot to learn. But some insiders felt th
at wasn’t at all the case. They argued that Albert was more than ready by the time of the 700th anniversary. Rainier’s stepping aside then was a viable option, as it was the following year on the 50th anniversary of his reign. That he didn’t abdicate said more about Rainier than it did about Albert. No one knew the workings of the principality better than Rainier and no one knew better than him that those waters were filled with sharks.
That he didn’t step aside when all the indications were right to do so was because he so feared what those sharks might do to his son.
GqH
So while he waited for the ultimate promotion to ruling prince, Albert presided over several charities, including the Red Cross, was head of the tourism board, and chairman of the 700-year Celebrations Committee.
In 1985 he became a member of the International Olympic Committee and in 1994 was named president of the Olympic Committee of Monaco. He attended more than 300 official engagements a year, both at home and overseas, doing everything from handing out prizes to school children to cutting ribbons at fairs, from representing Monaco at the enthronement of Emperor Akihito of Japan and at the funeral of Norway’s King Olav, to accompanying Monegasque trade delegations around the world, drumming up business for the principality.
He said he never minded most of the work he did as prince-in-waiting—admitting that he even enjoyed a lot of it—but that he was never totally comfortable in the limelight. “I bear it.”
Grace of Monaco Page 24
