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Rumours ‘Prisoner Princess’ Charlene of Monaco just can’t escape

The story of “runaway” Princess Charlene of Monaco has never been more complicated or more mysterious than it is right now.

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Do little girls still dream about being princesses?

It’s a heady vision: The dashing prince, and being whisked off for a life of love and luxury to be handfed grapes while reclining on a chaise. Is there an adoring peasantry somewhere in the blurry, imaginary background? Why not? Hell, chuck in a pumpkin coach while we’re at it.

It’s a shame that there’s no Fairy Godmother waiting in the wings to whisk Princess Charlene of Monaco away, though.

Princess Charlene of Monaco only sees husband Albert ‘by appointment’

If there was ever a cold, blunt antidote for the princess fantasy of 100001 childhoods then it’s the photos from early December of she and husband Prince Albert and their 10-year-old twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella.

Charlene’s is a story that proves that women who marry princes aren’t any more likely to get happily ever afters.

New photos of Princess Charlene, Prince Albert and Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella show a cold side to the princess fantasy. Picture: Pierre Villard/PLS Pool/Getty Images
New photos of Princess Charlene, Prince Albert and Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella show a cold side to the princess fantasy. Picture: Pierre Villard/PLS Pool/Getty Images
The family attend the inauguration of the new Mareterra district in Monaco. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP
The family attend the inauguration of the new Mareterra district in Monaco. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP

Take the tangled web of children Prince Albert (aka His Serene Highness Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco, Marquis of Baux) has managed to have with women who are not his South African wife.

If creating a line of succession is the major job requirement of a crown prince, then the 66-year-old has certainly gotten in plenty of scandalous practice over the decades.

Charlene’s is a story that proves that women who marry princes aren’t any more likely to get happily ever afters. Picture: Pierre Villard/PLS Pool/Getty Images.
Charlene’s is a story that proves that women who marry princes aren’t any more likely to get happily ever afters. Picture: Pierre Villard/PLS Pool/Getty Images.

In August 1993, Albert was visiting Wyoming when an extraordinary scene played out in the full public glare. A woman emerged from the crowd with a toddler, who approached him and announced, “Albert, this is your daughter”.

The woman was Tamara Rotolo, a waitress from California who had met the prince during a three-week holiday in the French Riviera, becoming pregnant with a little girl, their daughter Jazmin Grace Grimaldi.

Princess Charlene and her children at the inauguration of the Christmas village in Monaco. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP
Princess Charlene and her children at the inauguration of the Christmas village in Monaco. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP
The family launch Christmas Illuminations on Place du Casino on November 30, 2024 in Monaco, Monaco. Picture: Pierre Villard/PLS Pool/Getty Images
The family launch Christmas Illuminations on Place du Casino on November 30, 2024 in Monaco, Monaco. Picture: Pierre Villard/PLS Pool/Getty Images
Princess Charlene at the 2024 World Rugby Awards ceremony at the Sporting Monte-Carlo complex in Monaco. Picture: Frederic Dides/AFP
Princess Charlene at the 2024 World Rugby Awards ceremony at the Sporting Monte-Carlo complex in Monaco. Picture: Frederic Dides/AFP

In 1992, she had unsuccessfully filed a paternity suit, which was thrown out due to a lack of jurisdiction.

The Wyoming scene made headlines, but Albert refused to admit paternity before getting back to busily squiring a bevy of models and curvy sorts about the place and living up to his playboy reputation. The man had oats aplenty to sow.

Jazmin Grace Grimaldi pictured in 2006. Picture: AP
Jazmin Grace Grimaldi pictured in 2006. Picture: AP
Prince Albert had plenty of oats to sow. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP
Prince Albert had plenty of oats to sow. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP

Then, in 2000, he was introduced to South African champion swimmer Charlene Wittstock and it seemed like the royal might have met The One.

Romance blossomed, she traded the pool and all that chlorine for life in the tiny principality, idling away her days marinating in pampered ennui, while the staff at Paris Match readied themselves for the seemingly inevitable royal wedding.

Albert and Charlene made their official debut together at the Turin Winter Olympics in February 2006. Only months later, scandal would engulf them.

The couple pose as they bathe in the Mediterranean Sea in Monaco in 2009.
The couple pose as they bathe in the Mediterranean Sea in Monaco in 2009.

In April of that year, the principality’s longtime ruler Prince Rainier passed away and Albert acceded to the top position.

However, only a month after that, Albert was hit by his biggest PR crisis yet – a French-Togolese flight attendant named Nicole Costes sensationally revealed to a magazine that Albert was the father of her son Alexandre, who had been born in 2003 – after he had met Charlene.

Alexandre Grimaldi attends the photo call for the GQ Men Of The Year 2024 in Milan. Picture: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
Alexandre Grimaldi attends the photo call for the GQ Men Of The Year 2024 in Milan. Picture: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

In July 2006, Albert finally acknowledged that Alexander was his, moving Nicole and the little boy into a villa in a nearby town in France.

He also finally did the right thing by Tamara and Jazmin, admitting she was his daughter. The press and cameras descended on the small Californian town where they lived, with bodyguards having to escort Princess Grace’s granddaughter to school.

(While Albert agreed to support both Jazmin and Alexandre financially, given both were born out of wedlock, neither was able to officially serve as heir).

Things then finally seemed to calm down for Albert and Charlene, with him presenting her with a massive pear-shaped diamond and the opportunity for a lifetime of ribbon cutting as a princess. She said “oui”.

Except the next bit was anything but storybook when, only weeks before their 2011 wedding, it was reported that Charlene had repeatedly tried to flee the principality to go back to South Africa. Some media reports even alleged that, at one point, her passport was taken away from her by royal officials while they convinced her to stay.

The bride ended up walking down the aisle in July 2011 – only to be seen crying in the church. (She later said of that moment, “Everything was just so overwhelming and there were all the mixed emotions because of the rumours, and obviously all this tension built up and I burst into tears”).

Prince Albert speaks to his new bride, Charlene Princess of Monaco, with a tear on her cheek during their wedding service in 2011. Picture: AP
Prince Albert speaks to his new bride, Charlene Princess of Monaco, with a tear on her cheek during their wedding service in 2011. Picture: AP
The tears kept coming. Picture: Miguel Medina/AFP
The tears kept coming. Picture: Miguel Medina/AFP

For a while after the $100 million plus wedding, things seemed to move along nicely with Albert and Charlene welcoming twins Jacques and Gabriella in 2014, finally giving Monaco a legal heir. (Even though Gabriella was born first, Jacques will be the Sovereign Prince thanks to rules around male primogeniture. What? It’s the 21st century? Not in this moneyed enclave). On it went, with Christmas and Easter portraits and the family trotting out to do their duty at Monaco’s national day and the Grand Prix. Très bien and all that.

Prince Albert of Monaco kisses Princess Charlene during a meeting with South African President Jacob Zuma on July 6, 2011. Picture: Rajesh Jantilal/AFP
Prince Albert of Monaco kisses Princess Charlene during a meeting with South African President Jacob Zuma on July 6, 2011. Picture: Rajesh Jantilal/AFP

But then came December 2020 and the bombshell news that Albert was set to be hit with a third paternity claim, this time by an unnamed Brazilian woman who alleged that she had had a daughter in 2005 after an affair with the prince, even though he was in a relationship with Charlene at the time. Lawyers for the royal called the paternity suit a “hoax”.

In March, Charlene travelled back to South Africa for royal duties and then again in May – and stayed. She would end up not returning to Monte Carlo for six months, with she and Albert spending their 10th wedding anniversary apart. It was claimed that years in the pool had reportedly left her with ear, nose and throat problems which had required emergency surgeries and which prevented her flying.

For obvious reasons, speculation about the state of the couple’s marriage went into overdrive.

While in South Africa, Charlene posted to her now-deleted Instagram account some unusual photos, including one of her reading the Bible.

In October of that year, it was reported that Albert had applied for “sovereign immunity” in his third paternity suit. Since then, the case has disappeared from the news altogether.

A month later, in November 2021, the princess flew back to Monaco only to then check herself into a treatment facility outside of the city state. Albert told People that his wife was suffering from profound “exhaustion, both emotional and physical”.

She was suffering ‘a deep general state of fatigue’ after her return from South Africa. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP
She was suffering ‘a deep general state of fatigue’ after her return from South Africa. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP

He said that her return “went pretty well in the first few hours, and then it became pretty evident that she was unwell”, vehemently denying that their marriage was to blame for Charlene’s struggles.

A few weeks later, Gabriella and Jacques poignantly appeared on the palace’s balcony carrying homemade signs saying “We Miss You Mommy” and “We Love You Mommy”.

Prince Albert, Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques stand with a message for Princess Charlene on November 19, 2021. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP
Prince Albert, Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques stand with a message for Princess Charlene on November 19, 2021. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP

In 2022, Charlene gradually returned to official royal life – however, her often slightly glum-looking appearance never fails to set tongues wagging. What remains undimmed is the fascination with her story, which has been far from easy or magical, and the constant swirling gossip about what is really going inside one of Europe’s oldest royal houses. (The House of Grimaldi was founded in 1160).

According to Tatler, “Since recovering, Princess Charlene was also reported to be living in Switzerland and would only see her husband by appointment”.

However, both Albert and Charlene have vigorously defended their relationship, with her telling a South African news site, “There’s nothing wrong with our marriage and I find the rumours to be draining and exhausting. I simply cannot understand where they come from. It feels to me like certain media or people want to see us split”.

Prince Albert and Jazmin Grace Grimaldi attend the Princess Grace Awards 40th Anniversary Gala at The Pierre Hotel in New York City. Picture: Dominik Bindl/Getty Images
Prince Albert and Jazmin Grace Grimaldi attend the Princess Grace Awards 40th Anniversary Gala at The Pierre Hotel in New York City. Picture: Dominik Bindl/Getty Images

The Prince also told Italy’s Corriere della Sera: “Charlene is always by my side and supports me in leading the principality. We are a working couple and sometimes that only allows us to see each other at the end of a long day full of appointments.”

Outside the Palace, at least Albert seems willing to not entirely neglect Jazmin and Alexandre, most recently attending the Princess Grace Awards in New York in October with his eldest daughter.

Albert, Jazmin and Alexandre also occasionally turn up in Instagram posts together.

The Charlene story is as much about how horribly outmoded the rules of royalty are. If all that was required for an heir was a child, then Jazmin should be preparing to assume the role. Instead, she lives in Los Angeles and was a regular presence on the picket line during the Hollywood actors strike in 2023.

You have to wonder, how different might the royal family of Monaco look if the requirement to produce a new ruler only in the confines of marriage had been done away with? How different might Charlene’s life look?

Romantics among us would like to think she’d be exactly where she is, married to Albert and mother to her twins, but if Jazmin and Alexandre were on the official royal books, it would surely help lighten not only the work but the psychological load she is bearing.

Instead, the future of the House of Grimaldi rests heavily on her head.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles

Originally published as Rumours ‘Prisoner Princess’ Charlene of Monaco just can’t escape

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Original URL: https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/rumours-prisoner-princess-charlene-of-monaco-just-cant-escape/news-story/8084382616b958ce4239cc13c1a0cc90