Joy, Tragedy & Immortal Glamour: The Monaco Royals' Sensational Story

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To be a young royal is to be the subject of an endless slew of stories about either how fabulous you are or who you’re not getting along with.

Meghan Markle is still undergoing trial by fire, the rhapsodic talk of her pregnancy and continuing positive effect on the monarchy’s stodgy image intermingling with tales of her estranged family members’ latest opinions and dirt on her relationship with Kate Middleton.

Kate knows, too, that one day you’re perfection personified as a future queen and the next you’ve pissed off PETA.

And this doesn’t happen to only the British royal family.

Charlotte Casiraghi, the ultra-glamorous daughter of Princess Caroline and granddaughter of the late Princess Grace of Monaco, has been in the publishing business herself and knows just how the rumor cycle works.

“Mademoiselle Charlotte Casiraghi and Monsieur Dimitri Rassam, harassed by the scandal press, formally deny all unfounded rumors of their separation which are being circulated,” read a statement released by a publicist for the couple this week in response to a report making the rounds in Britain, France and Spain that they had split up, less than three months after welcoming a son together.

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“The explanation of this cynical and false information is simple: to portray conflict where there is not and never was, with the goal of monetizing it, because the announcement of a separation always motivates good sales,” the rep continued, per People. “Given the harmful nature of this rumor for themselves, their children and loved ones, they have agreed to ask their lawyer to initiate all legal proceedings, where possible before criminal courts.”

Reminiscent of Princess Anne‘s daughter, Zara Tindall, Casiraghi is a member of Monaco’s royal family and currently 11th in line to the throne, but does not sport a title and has proceeded to live her life not at all out of the spotlight (she made Vanity Fair‘s International Best Dressed List at 21), but not exactly under the sort of microscope that follows those a bit closer to the crown. (Incidentally, she and Tindall are both accomplished equestriennes, too.)

At the same time, Casiraghi’s family has commanded hearts and minds for a century as well, so mass interest in their lives has simply been passed down from generation to generation.

Perhaps fascination with the Monaco royals would have remained more of a continental pastime, but that all changed in 1956 when Prince Rainier III married American actress Grace Kelly, who gave up her lofty perch in Hollywood for love. 

A piercing spotlight has been pointed at this storied playground for the rich and famous nestled on the French Riviera ever since.

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Sixty-two years before Meghan Markle confirmed that she was putting her acting career behind her to marry Prince Harry, Kelly jolted the world with her announcement that after five prolific years as one of the biggest movie stars in the world, and a year after winning a Best Actress Oscar, she was switching jobs.

She had met Rainier in 1955 when she was in the South of France for the Cannes Film Festival and Olivia de Havilland more or less set them up with the help of her second husband, Paris Match editor Pierre Galante.

“I’m tempted to think it was destiny,” de Havilland told People in 2017. The Gone With the Wind star actually didn’t know Kelly personally, but they were all on the same train together and “it was an idea that struck [Pierre] for the first time while dining on the train after he learned Grace Kelly was a fellow passenger.” Galante and his editor-in-chief, Gaston Bonheur, were mainly thinking that getting those two together would make for a magnificent photo opportunity.

“Grace struck me on first encounter as a rather reserved, self-possessed, well brought up young woman,” de Havilland continued. They talked “on the small platform between the dining car and the next carriage when I overtook her to ask if she would agree to a meeting with Prince Rainier.”

At least Meghan didn’t need permission to meet Prince Harry on a blind date. Kelly, however, while perfectly happy to meet the prince, told de Havilland she had to check with MGM first, as she was under contract with the studio and close watch was kept on anything she did in the public sphere. (The loyalty didn’t always run both ways, as Kelly had once been suspended from MGM for refusing to make a movie with a script she thought was sub-par; she gave her Oscar-winning performance in The Country Girl while on loan to Paramount.)

A comedy of errors ensued, from a power outage at her hotel that prevented her from blowdrying or otherwise heat-styling her freshly washed hair to, creepily enough, a minor traffic accident when a car full of photographers hit the car she was riding in, to Prince Rainier not even being there when she arrived for their 3 p.m. meeting. She proceeded to tour the palace and, when he showed up and offered her a tour, told him she had already had the tour, thank you.

So Rainier—the only son of Prince Pierre of Monaco, Duke of Valentinois, and Monegasque Hereditary Princess, Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois, and the first direct heir to the throne since 1758—asked if she’d like to see his private zoo. Photographers trailed dutifully behind them as they walked the grounds of the palace, which dates back to the 12th century and was captured by the Grimaldis in 1297. (The Monaco royals are the House of Grimaldi.)

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After that, Grace was driven back to Cannes, and that evening, when she saw Rainier again at a cocktail reception, “instead of offering her hand for a handshake, Grace extended her hand as if offering it to be kissed,” de Havilland recalled. “She was in a state of enchantment.”

Kelly went back to America and, after months of exchanging letter, Rainier went to visit her family’s home in Philadelphia that Christmas. Their engagement was announced on Jan. 5, 1956.

The betrothed couple gave an engagement interview and Rainier was the one to answer the question of whether Kelly was done acting. The answer was yes. 

Incidentally, still being signed with MGM, she agreed to the studio getting exclusive filming rights to her wedding to get out of her contract. 

Kelly set sail for Monaco on April 4, 1956, with 60 pieces of luggage; her poodle, Oliver; and her ivory silk and taffeta wedding gown by MGM costume designer Helen Rose, who had worked with Kelly on several pictures and went on to dress Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Butterfield 8.

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The wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III after their whirlwind-by-any-standard courtship was not just the royal wedding of its day, coming nine years after the future Queen Elizabeth II married Prince Philip, but was deemed the “wedding of the century.”

They had a civil ceremony at the palace on April 18, 1956: “Miss Kelly, wearing a beige, lace dress with a close-fitting hat, was noticeably nervous throughout the proceedings,” the BBC reported. The newlyweds went to the front balcony and waved to the roughtly 500 people who were gathered outside. 

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That was followed the next day by their formal religious ceremony at the Cathedral of Monaco (the Mass was held in French) and lavish lunchtime reception attended by the Clooney of their day, Cary Grant, as well as Ava Gardner and Gloria Swanson. (De Havilland did apparently get an invitation, but was pregnant and unable to go.)

And with that, the former Grace Kelly of Philadelphia and Hollywood became Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco.

At least 1,500 reporters covered the wedding and Kelly later remarked that they all should have received battle ribbons for their efforts. Rainier recalled, “We both agreed that we should really have got married in a little chapel in the mountains.”

“There was so much pressure I didn’t remember it all,” he reflected to UPI in March 1981. “It was really hectic. I had to go and see a film of the wedding later on to realize what really happened.” (Thanks to MGM, he had one with all the Hollywood bells and whistles.)

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She considered herself a hands-on mother, who of course employed nannies but decided ahead of time to make sure they were around her own age, not wanting to be bossed around by anyone older and potentially overbearing. Grace’s father-in-law, Prince Pierre, has told her that Rainier’s nanny was so domineering, he was never allowed into the nursery to see him and his sister, Antoinette.

A story has been told about Grace, when she couldn’t get little Caroline to stop biting people, biting her own daughter’s arm to illustrate what she was doing. It worked.

“I’m afraid I’m very severe at times,” she once said, per Spada. “Outsiders might think I’m too hard on the children. But I give them just as much love as I do discipline, and it seems to work out very well.”

Kelly was actually considered not very strict at all, and instead would instantly excuse herself from a group if she heard one of her kids needed her, and her son and daughters were frequently seen running about the palace.

Caroline, however, told Isabelle Rivère and Peter Mikelbank for their 2017 book Albert II of Monaco, the Man and the Prince, that they felt closer to their nanny, Maureen Wood, than to their mother when they were little. “When [Wood] was leaving Roc Agel [the family’s farm in the hills above Monaco, to go on vacation], Albert and I would yell ‘Don’t go, don’t go!’ We were sad for days. Most often than not, our mother would end up calling her to ask her to come home earlier than planned.”

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As it turned out, though, being an endlessly captivating full-time royal was not as entirely fulfilling as Grace might have envisioned it being at 26.

In 1961, Alfred Hitchcock, who had made three films with Kelly, got word that she was interested in starring in Marnie, a psychological thriller about a kleptomaniac with a traumatic past. 

On March 19, 1962, the palace stated that yes, Princess Grace would be making this picture with Hitchcock, but surely that would be her last film. Her salary was reported as everything from $1 million to a percentage of the box office to a badly needed infusion of cash for the royal family.

“How can she be accused of this when her own family fortune is supposed to be so large?” Hitchcock said in an interview. “I think the trouble is that too many people, including the English, love stories about failures.”

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