Troubles and tears: the life of Monaco’s royal couple Prince Albert and Princess Charlene
After Prince Albert and Princess Charlene’s reunion, the state of their marriage is being questioned as paternity rumours swirl.
It’s ten years now since Charlene Wittstock married Prince Albert of Monaco in a £53 million three-day extravaganza. And while the marriage between the blonde, beautiful South African swimmer and Grace Kelly’s only son hasn’t ended in tears, it very publicly began with them.
“There were all the mixed emotions because of the rumours and obviously the tension built up and I burst into tears,” Her Serene Highness Princess Charlene later explained, after greeting cheering crowds outside the cathedral with a tear rolling down her face. “And then I burst into tears some more because I was thinking, ‘Oh no, now the whole world has seen me cry.’ ”
The rumours concerned Albert, now 63, who has been dogged by a series of paternity suits. An American estate agent claimed that he was the father of her daughter, Jazmin Grace. Albert admitted paternity after DNA testing in 2006. In May 2005 an air hostess, Nicole Coste, claimed that Albert was the father of her son Alexandre, born in 2003, three years after Albert met Charlene. Shortly before he ascended the throne after the death of his father, Prince Rainier, in 2005, Albert confirmed that Alexandre was indeed his biological son. Then in December 2020 a Brazilian woman claimed he was the father of her 15-year-old daughter, allegations Albert denies. In public, he and Charlene put on a united front. His lawyers declared it a “hoax”.
“When my husband has problems, he tells me about it,” she told a French magazine. “I often tell him, ‘No matter what, I’m a thousand per cent behind you. I’ll stand by you whatever you do, in good times or in bad.’”
In January, when Albert went on an official visit to Paris to meet President Macron and his wife, he went alone. Charlene, now 43, was said to be unwell. In May, she left her husband and children in Monaco to fly home to South Africa. She has not been seen in the Principality since.
“Initially I was supposed to be here for 10 to 12 days,” she told a South African radio station in July. “Unfortunately, I had a problem equalising my ears and I found out through the doctors that I had a sinus infection, and quite a serious one . . . I cannot force healing, so I will be grounded in South Africa until the end of October.”
The official line is that she is pursuing her philanthropic work, which includes attempting to halt the hunting of white rhinos. She lives in a large villa on a game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, visited often by her two younger brothers. Unofficially, says Paris Match, she is like “a wounded animal”.
“It’s been a trying time for me,” she admitted to a South African TV station over the summer. “Albert is my rock and strength and without his love and support I would not have been able to get through this painful time.”
In the world of Monaco high society, it has not gone unnoticed that their princess has missed the two highlights of the social scene, the grand prix and the Red Cross Ball. Albert’s former lover Nicole Coste did not. She was invited to the ball, held in July, along with their son, now 18. That same month, Charlene celebrated her tenth wedding anniversary alone, 5,000 miles away. She posted romantic photos on Instagram thanking family and friends for their love and support.
“This will be the first time that I will not be with my husband on our wedding anniversary, which is difficult and saddens me,” she said in an official statement. “However, Albert and I had no choice but to follow the instructions of the medical team, even if it was extremely difficult.”
She spoke every day to her husband and children, she said, but Covid travel rules made a reunion difficult. In August, in an answer to rumours of an impending split, Albert and the children flew to South Africa.
“I am so thrilled to have my lovely family back with me,” she wrote on Instagram, alongside photographs of understated joyousness, including two of her in an awkward embrace with Albert. A video taken last month for a local TV station shows her looking thin and anxious. She misses her children, she says, but makes no reference to Monaco and little to her husband. Questions about whether she will return continue to gain pace, with Paris Match describing “disappointed Monegasques” talking about “her anger, her whimsical moods, which are as changeable as her hair”.
“Are Charlene and Albert on the verge of divorce?” asked the magazine Madame Figaro. “The couple are going through a new crisis,” Paris Match noted. “It’s been six months since they appeared together at a public event.”
Charlene Lynette Wittstock was born on January 25, 1978, in Bulawayo, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the eldest of three children. Her father was a sales manger, and her mother a swimming instructor. When she was 12, the family emigrated to South Africa, where the young Charlene became a keen swimmer. In 2000 she was part of the Olympic team that competed at the Sydney Olympics.
According to the official website of the Principality of Monaco, she met Albert at an international swimming event in Monaco later that same year, when she was 22. The couple went public with their romance in 2006. On June 23, 2010, they announced their engagement. Albert presented his fiancee with a pear-cut diamond engagement ring and the couple attended the wedding in April 2011 of Prince William and Kate Middleton, shortly before their own.
In the run-up to their own wedding, the French weekly L’Express questioned her commitment to the marriage. Once, while she was in France for a wedding dress fitting and stopped in at the South African embassy. Again, during the Monaco Grand Prix. And finally, on her way to South Africa, when she was intercepted at Nice airport and returned to Monaco. There, according to a senior Monegasque detective, “the Prince’s entourage could persuade her to stay”.
On July 1 they were married in a civil ceremony and again the next day in a religious ceremony attended by guests including the Earl and Countess of Wessex and Naomi Campbell. The bride wore a white off-the-shoulder gown by Armani Prive embroidered with 40,000 Swarovski crystals. According to one guest, a friend of Charlene, “Everyone found the whole event to be very romantic.” According to ABC, Charlene wept during the marriage service. Another newspaper noted that as the newlyweds emerged from the cathedral, Prince Albert begged in a whisper: “Don’t cry, don’t cry.”
The groom later appeared to admit that the honeymoon had been spent in separate hotels, citing “practical reasons”. Later that year Charlene confessed that she felt “very lonely”.
In May 2014 it was announced that she was pregnant, and in October that it would be twins, who were born in December.
Numerous photographs were taken over the years of Charlene apparently looking miserable. She was said to prefer living in a flat above a luxury chocolate shop lent to her by Princess Caroline, Albert’s sister, to life in the royal palace. Today, Monaco’s website posts official updates and photographs of Prince Albert visiting Montpellier and Alpes-Maritimes on his own, and receiving the president of Georgia, on his own. For now, his wife remains on her own in South Africa.
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