Buckingham Palace and its loyal followers were delighted when Diana gave birth to the first of their two sons, William Arthur Philip Louis on 21 June 1982. Her natural aptitude towards motherhood not only delighted her new family, but was greeted with delight by her adoring public who were not used to such a hands-on approach by a member of the royal family. However, by the time their second son, Harry, was born two years later, details of their not-so-happy marriage had become public knowledge. There were even rumours that Harry was not Charles’s son and cruel headlines ran the story ‘An heir and a spare’, intimating that he was the result of some illicit liaison. There is no doubt that they had both been unfaithful to each other. Charles, who had been quite open about his long-term love affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles, who was the wife of one of his dearest friends, was not prepared to stop seeing her even after his betrothal to Diana. He had been in love with Camilla since he had been a young man of 23 and it would appear that nothing would sway his affections. Diana, who it is believed truly loved Charles at the beginning, almost called the wedding off when she discovered an expensive bracelet intended for Camilla to show her where his true affections lay.
Diana cleverly hid from her public the torment she must have been going through. No one except her closest associates were aware of the emotional breakdowns and suicide attempts that went on behind closed doors. Diana was a people person and she resolved that she would not let her unhappy marriage be her undoing. Instead she threw herself into her royal duties: touring the Commonwealth; visiting drug abuse centres; inspecting troops; visiting hospitals where lepers were being treated and became a patron of the National AIDS Trust among hundreds of other official duties. She became the people’s princess and she was adored wherever she went.
The news that all was not well was met with shock horror when a tell-all biography of Diana’s private life of hell hit the shelves in 1992. The palace had tried their hardest to hide the ever-widening divide between the prince and princess, but now it had become public knowledge and there was worse to come. British intelligence, aware that the news was out, decided to release to a London newspaper a taped telephone conversation between Diana and one of her close male friends, James Gilbey. The Sun’s reporters knew they were sitting on dynamite and on 14 August the so-called ‘Squidgy’ tapes were splashed all over the tabloid. The next day they offered a phone line for the public to listen to them – they received over 60,000 calls. They listened to Gilbey passionately declaring his love for the princess in which he lovingly referred to her as his ‘squidgy’.
Still reeling from the scandal of the tape, the realm then had to face a counter-attack that sent more shockwaves through Buckingham Palace. In September 1992 an Australian publication printed a transcript from an alleged sexually explicit telephone conversation between Charles and Camilla, in which Charles said something about wishing he was a tampon so that he could be inside her. This latest revelation left the prince and princess with no other choice but to give the prime minister leave to announce their official separation.
Added to the already considerable misery of their dirty laundry being washed in public, the House of Windsor had to face another disaster before the end of 1992. On the night of 21 November a fierce fire raged through Windsor Castle, threatening one of the world’s greatest collections of art. It took 250 firefighters 15 hours and 1.5 million gallons of water to douse the flames, while the queen and the duke of York desperately helped rescue priceless works of art. Over 100 rooms were damaged in the fire, which in itself became the topic of an intense public debate. As the castle was owned by the British government and not the royal family, it meant that the taxpayer would have to meet the £40 million restoration fee. However, to settle the dispute the queen agreed to meet 70 per cent of the costs and opened Buckingham Palace to the public to try and generate extra funds. The queen was visibly distressed by everything that had taken place in 1992 and described it has her Annus Horribilis, which no one can deny was a most miserable year for the Windsor family.
For a while Diana withdrew from the public eye and her official duties but it wouldn’t be long before she was back making headline news. In June 1994 Prince Charles agreed to a television documentary in which he admitted he had committed adultery. In October the same year three more new tomes arrived on the shelves of high street bookshops, detailing the obvious sham of Charles’s and Diana’s marriage. One of the damning books was a memoir by life guard officer James Hewitt, who claimed he had had a torrid five-year affair with Princess Diana.
In November 1995 Diana decided to come forward with her side of the story, and in an interview on a BBC news show, Panorama, she openly admitted that it was Charles’s on-going affair with Camilla that had led to her health problems and the eventual downfall of the marriage, and that it was true about her affair with James Hewitt. She added at the end, and probably to the delight of all her fans, that she did not intend to ‘go quietly’.
With the foundations of Buckingham Palace visibly cracking, a British bookmaker set odds at 5:1 that the monarchy would collapse by the turn of the century. In the meantime, it was the messy job of the royal solicitors to try and work out some sort of amical agreement to release Charles and Diana from their marriage vows. In July 1996 everything was finalised and although, technically speaking, Diana would no longer be a member of the royal family, she would be allowed to keep the title of the princess of Wales and some of the royal perks that went with it. It went without saying that she would still have a major say in the raising of her two sons.
Diana definitely left the palace a much stronger and wiser woman, and with a $26 million settlement to boot. Her name and pictures were always splashed all over the newspapers, whether it was to do with her constant charitable endeavours or her personal affairs. She openly admitted that the constant intrusion by the press affected her deeply and that had it not been for her two sons, she would have left her native country a long time ago.
No one could believe it when the news broke on 13 August 1997 that Diana and her latest beau, millionaire Dodi Fayed, had been killed in a car crash in a Paris tunnel. The chauffeur of the Mercedes car was also killed as a result of being pursued at high speed by paparazzi on motorbikes. Although Diana was cut from the wreckage and rushed to hospital, doctors were unable to save her life. The whole of Britain went into shock and hundreds of mourners gathered at the princess’s London home of Kensington palace to lay flowers at the gates. Diana’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones survived the crash and tests later showed that the driver, Henri Paul, had taken both drugs and quite a large amount of alcohol just prior to the accident.
In the period when Britain was mourning the loss of their princess, some members of the royal family were criticised for their visible lack of concern, which once again showed the monarchy in a poor light. There has been much controversy and conspiracy theories regarding the death of Princess Diana and today the matter has never been truly resolved. There is no doubt she will never be forgotten for as Tony Blair so rightly said ‘People everywhere . . . they liked her, they loved her, they regarded her as one of the people.’
House of Grimaldi
There was a time when Monaco was little more than an unwelcoming rocky peninsula, but today it is a thriving principality thanks to the ancient sovereign House of Grimaldi. Monte Carlo, the main city of Monaco, is today best known for the chink of the chips on the gambling tables and the beautiful women basking on its sun-kissed beaches. Much of Monaco’s current popularity is due to the marriage of its ruler, Prince Rainier, to the beautiful Hollywood actress Grace Kelly. A fairytale wedding, a beautiful castle, and three children – and yet the House of Grimaldi had its fair share of scandal.
grace kelly and the prince
Grace Kelly was born on 12 November 1929 into the family of a self-made millionaire, so money was never a problem throughout her life. She attended a Catholic school, but against her parent’s wishes pursued a career in acting. She graduated from the Amer
ican Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and quickly received not only television parts but offers from Hollywood. Her first movie was Fourteen Hours (1951), where she played only a minor role, but her first major picture came the following year with High Noon, in which she played the young bride of a sheriff played by Gary Cooper. After that the offers flooded in, and in 1954 she appeared in an incredible five films, taking the leading role in each one. This was to be the year that changed Grace Kelly’s life completely. She won Best Actress Award for her part in The Country Girl and after attending the Oscars in Hollywood, flew to the south of France to attend the Cannes film festival.
Grace met the wealthiest bachelor in the world, Prince Rainier, at the Cannes film festival in May 1955, when she was asked to be photographed next to him for the magazine Paris Match. She was 26 years old and he was just coming up to his 32nd birthday. After the photo shoot, the prince invited Grace back to his gardens and the first sparks of a romance were kindled. By December that year, their engagement was announced with a wedding scheduled for April 1956. However, before the wedding could go ahead the prince made several harsh demands. He wanted a substantial dowry from the Kelly family, and after much haggling they finally agreed to pay $2,000,000. Grace was also required to take a fertility test; Rainier’s previous girlfriend had proved to be infertile and he subsequently broke off the engagement. Grace also had to give up her career in films and finally had to sign an agreement to relinquish any rights to their children should the relationship end in divorce.
Grace’s last film was a remake of the 1940s The Philadelphia Story and having tied up any loose ends in the United States, she set sail for France to join her fiance. Their engagement had already caused a lot of interest in the media and Monaco was buzzing, waiting to catch sight of their new princess. Grace, her family and 50 of her friends arrived on 4 April 1956 on board the USS Constitution. The prince’s yacht sailed out of the harbour to pick them up and take them back to the beautiful, pink, 235-roomed palace high on the hills of Monaco overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
The first part of the wedding ceremony took place on 18 April in the throne room of the palace. It was a civil ceremony, which was required by Monegasque law. The religious ceremony took place the following day in St Nicholas Church. Because Grace had been forced to break her seven-year contract with MGM studios, they were given the rights to film the wedding, which was to be later released as a movie. The wedding was a stunning spectacle with Grace looking every part the princess. Guests at the wedding included Cary Grant, Aga Khan, Gloria Swanson, David Niven, Aristotle Onassis, Ava Gardner and several heads of state and diplomats.
Officially now Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco, Grace and her new husband sailed off in his luxurious yacht the Deo Juvante II with stops in Villegranche, Spain and Corsica. On arriving back from the honeymoon, Grace found out that she was pregnant and although she struggled with her new lifestyle for a while, she threw herself into renovating the palace and creating a brand new nursery. Princess Caroline was born on 23 January 1957 and the prince and his subjects were delighted to have an heir to secure their principality. Prince Albert was born a year later on 14 March and Princess Stephanie seven years later on 1 February 1965. Grace was a devoted mother and an exceedingly popular princess, but like most families the raising of children proved to be quite traumatic on more than one occasion.
princess caroline
Princess Caroline was the golden child who wanted for nothing. She was beautiful and the press followed her wherever she went. This unfortunately caused a scandal when she was 21 years old, as she was pictured topless at the Monte Carlo Beach Club, which was the place where the rich and famous loved to hang out. The prince and princess were seething and tried to confine their daughter to the palace grounds by cutting off her allowance, but she was a wilful young woman who was not about to be tamed.
Before the incident at the beach club, Caroline had started an affair with an infamous French playboy by the name of Philippe Junot against her parent’s wishes. Although they did their best to keep the couple apart, Caroline was defiant and, because she had already reached the age of consent, agreed to marry Junot.
While Princess Caroline prepared to marry Junot, who was 17 years her senior, on 28 June 1978, reporters from all over the world tried to think of ways of trying to break the security surrounding the wedding. The prince was making every endeavour to keep the affair totally private but it was becoming more and more difficult. Because Monaco was such a small principality, everything that happened to the royal family was headline news, and the media didn’t want to miss out on such a prestigious story. Right up to the end the prince was hoping that his daughter would change her mind, but Caroline was adamant that the wedding was to go ahead and admitted afterwards that she had gone through with it ‘to spite mama’.
The marriage was a disaster and only lasted for 831 days. No sooner had the couple returned from their honeymoon, than Caroline found out that her rake of a husband had made approaches to some of the seedier tabloids to sell some nude photographs he had taken of his wife on honeymoon. The divorce was a long and painful affair, with Caroline applying to the Catholic church for a Papal annulment. This was not granted until 12 years later.
Hardly over the traumas of her marriage break-up, Caroline was forced to overcome an even greater tragedy when her mother was killed in a tragic car crash on 13 December 1982. Grace was driving with her daughter Stephanie, when their car careened off the winding roads of France leading to Monaco. Although Stephanie was able to get out of the car once it had stopped rolling, her mother wasn’t so lucky. Apparently, Grace had suffered a minor stroke, which had caused her to lose control of the vehicle, and the following day she was pronounced dead. Caroline suddenly stepped into her mother’s shoes and blossomed into the principality’s new first lady. She took on a number of high-profile roles and fulfilled each new role with a sense of duty, a side not previously seen in her character.
On 29 December 1983, Caroline found love again and married 23-year-old Italian Stefano Casiraghi, the son of a wealthy businessman. The wedding, compared to her first one to Junot, was a low-key civil ceremony, possibly due to the fact that Caroline was already pregnant with their first son Andrea Albert Pierre, who was born on 8 June 1984. In 1986 Charlotte Marie Pomeline was born and one year later, Pierre Rainier Stefano.
Despite outward appearances, friends of Caroline’s say that it was not a happy union. Casiraghi continued to have an affair throughout their marriage with the daughter of a famous European aristocrat. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he accrued massive debts and Caroline was forced to put up a considerable amount of her late mother’s jewellery to try and stop the banks from foreclosing on her husband’s business. Then tragedy struck again when Caroline’s husband was killed in a speedboat racing accident.
Caroline retreated from public life with her three children and took to wearing black all the time. She lost a considerable amount of weight and rumours were going round that she was suffering from an eating disorder. Two years later Caroline was back in with Vincent Lindon, a French actor and the son of a rich industrialist. The relationship lasted for five years, but the couple never married.
In 1999 Caroline was hitting the headlines once again with a very controversial romance with Prince Ernst August of Hanover. He was a direct descendant of King George III and already married with two children. Gossip spread fast that they were having a secret relationship, which was confirmed when the prince divorced his wife of 16 years and became Caroline’s constant companion.
The couple married on Caroline’s 42nd birthday in a quiet civil ceremony, which gave her the title of Princess of Hanover. The couple have since had a child, Alexandra, and Caroline now concentrates mainly on charity work and has won herself a lot of respect in her home of Monaco.
princess stephanie
Stephanie, the youngest of the Rainier children, was a headache to her parents and rocked her family with s
candals. She was beautiful and sensuous and bickered constantly with her older sister. Perhaps one of the more resourceful of the Rainier children, Stephanie managed to bounce back after each new escapade. Even from an early age she showed signs of some of the traits that have secured her reputation today.
Stephanie finished high school in 1982, but was not interested in going on to higher education. She had a flair for design and became an intern in the Dior house of fashion. However, the fatal accident in September 1982 that killed her mother temporarily put a stop to her career. There were rumours that Stephanie was actually driving the car, but that has never been proved and she is the only person who has a clear idea of what actually happened that day. However, she has continued to remain silent on the subject, leaving the cause of the accident a complete mystery. Affected badly by the trauma of her mother’s death, Stephanie has had a very turbulent private life. She tried her hand at fashion designing, modelling, being a recording artist and even owning her own business. Her boyfriends have included a racing car driver, Hollywood actors, businessmen and many others, and yet it was her relationship with her own bodyguard, Daniel Ducruet, that caused the worst scandal. Prince Rainier became concerned when photographs were released of Stephanie lying around a pool naked, with none other than her bodyguard. Ducruet, 33, was a former Monaco policeman who was obviously doing far more than just protecting Princess Stephanie.
In 1991 Stephanie fell pregnant and Ducruet immediately dumped his girlfriend, Martine Malbouvier, who had a four-month-old son by the bodyguard. Prince Rainier was heartbroken and said to a friend, ‘How could Stephanie do this to me? I have forgiven her for much of her wild behaviour, but this is too much.’ He disowned his grandchildren, Louis, who was born on 26 November 1992 and a little girl, Pauline Grace born on 4 May 1994.
Infamous Scandals Page 27
