THE YEARS OF GRACE

19

GRACE BECAME A PRINCESS before she had a chance to understand what the term really meant. When she returned from her honeymoon in July 1956, pregnant and suffering from morning sickness, everyone familiar to her had departed for America. (To her friend Judith Kanter, she wrote: “We’re preggos! Ecstatic!! Rainier will make the announcement soon . . .”) Rainier had not disappointed her. He had been a kind and caring lover and an even more interesting man than she had expected, surprising her at every turn with his insight and knowledge. Yet, once back in Monaco, she was acutely aware of how far away she was from those people who had meant a great deal to her, the women friends whom she had always been able to confide in and the creative people in films and theater with whom she had worked.

To another friend she wrote that it seemed as if they had gone home and she had been left behind. For most of her life, despite her new position and eventually her own family, she held on to the past and to her old friends. And though she had given her word to Rainier that she would not act again, her letters home gave the impression that this was only a temporary situation, for she discussed films being made in the near future that she thought might have good roles for her and books that she hoped might be developed for the screen with her in mind.

The announcement of the expected birth of an heir to the throne was made by Rainier on August 2. He took the occasion as an opportunity to convey to Monégasques his position in his continuing struggle against Onassis’s control and the National Council’s resistance to his plans:

“The significance of this awaited event is clear to all of you. However, I find it indispensable to link this guarantee of the Principality’s surviving in its independence and privileges, to the absolute necessity of establishing an era of total trust and confidence.

“The projects for economical and technological development which have received my approval are neither unreasonable, imprudent, nor opposed to the true interests of our country. They answer new needs which stem from a normal and desirable evolution of our general economy. . . . In light of this news [the imminent birth of an heir]. . . it seems impossible that we should not strengthen our trust in the future. . . . One chooses one’s future and then starts building it. I ask you to trust in the choice I have made for Monaco’s future, and also to remember that the Principality has endured, and will only endure, as long as its Sovereign Prince has full and complete exercise of power.”

Grace had learned on her honeymoon about Monaco’s domestic conflicts: the ongoing battle her husband was having with Onassis and Antoinette’s envy and constant threat to his peace of mind. Grace and Rainier had returned from an almost idyllic honeymoon cruise to the realization that their wedding, which they believed would not only help Monaco’s economy and bring the Principality to the attention of the world but unite Monégasques closer together—a wedding that had placed them under much stress and pressure—had been followed by infighting and accusations. Rainier was now seen as an opportunist, using the marriage as a means of publicity, not just for Monaco but for his personal financial benefit. And where Grace had previously been surrounded by a circle of warm, concerned friends and respectful associates, she now was treated as an outsider by Rainier’s family and by Monaco’s society matrons who were mostly French and spoke their own language in Grace’s presence even though they were aware that she did not yet fully understand it.

Before World War II the non-Monégasque population had been mainly Italian. After the war there had been great prejudice toward the Italian population of the Principality and the more important Italian families—even those who had lived in Monaco for several generations—reemigrated to Italy and the French population tripled. Frenchmen took over many of the highest positions in business and government, from the directorship of the Casino to the members of Rainier’s Cabinet and personal staff. There was a fair-sized English colony but they kept pretty well to themselves and were not, as a general rule, involved with the Palace, the Casino or the French society. At the time of Grace’s marriage there were only forty-two Americans resident in the Principality. She would later seek her countrymen and countrywomen out. But in the beginning she tried hard to become a part of her husband’s social world.

Despite her title and privileged situation, Grace began her married life as many brides have done, redecorating her husband’s family home, which in this case happened to be an enormous ancient palace with antiquated plumbing, insufficient heat and furniture, and stonework and plaster that were in desperate need of repair. The royal apartments, which constituted only 5 of the Palace’s 225 rooms (mostly offices and state rooms), were arranged railroad style, in a direct line, so that you had to walk through one room to get to the next.

Rainier backed her up in the changes she wished to make. Heavy curtains were soon replaced by lighter fabrics. Giant pots of flowers were much in evidence. Faded and dark wallpaper was replaced. The room adjoining their bedroom (where Rainier had formerly kept his recently born lion cubs and which had first to be fumigated)¹ was turned into a bright, cheery nursery with a Disney motif of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Her child, she was told, would have to be born at home, and so the private study was converted into a modern delivery room. This left only a sitting room, dining room and master bedroom for Grace and Rainier, but plans were already being drawn for a new wing to be added. It would overlook the sea and would include a terrace and an outdoor swimming pool.

While she awaited the approach of motherhood, Grace studied French and Monégasque history. Only now did she learn that she was the second American Princesse de Monaco. Researching her predecessor became one of her most enthusiastic projects, although a difficult one because so much had been destroyed. Grace discovered that Alice had been a highly accomplished woman and a great patron of the arts, who had made Monaco a center for opera, ballet and the theater. Her marriage to Albert had ended badly, it was true, but Alice’s cultural influences on Monaco were not to blame. Anyone could see from reading their histories that Alice and Albert were ill matched, whereas she and Rainier had much in common. They laughed at the same things, had a strong desire for a close family life, and knew what it was to fight for privacy and to deal with difficult family members.

A sad tradition of unsuccessful marriages plagued the Grimaldis, but Grace had great faith in her love for Rainier, his for her and their ability to surmount all obstacles. Most of Rainier’s predecessors had entered into marriage for dynastic and financial reasons. Grace refused to believe that her husband had married her for those purposes. Marriages to rich women had endowed the Princes de Monaco with many additional titles and estates, and they had tended to live in France rather than in their Principality, to which they paid only occasional visits. Even Albert I had most often chosen to be in Paris or at Marchais when not at sea, and this had also been true of Rainier’s grandfather, Louis II.

But Rainier had come to the throne with a determination to live among his people. Marchais, of course, was still occupied by his mother, and he had little desire to visit her. The house in Paris, now his, held no happy memories for him, he had sold the house he had once shared with Gisèle, and he was, at heart, a man who loved the sun, the sea air and outdoor sports.

Although she struggled with intense loneliness at the outset, for she could not seem to win over the women in Rainier’s social set and could not turn to his family for companionship, Grace enthusiastically endorsed her husband’s decision to make Monaco their primary residence. A great part of Rainier’s attraction for her had been his title and the idea that she would be a princess. This is not to say she did not love him for himself. But first had come the exhilarating idea that a prince desired her, and then the amazing revelation that she could become a royal highness. A distinct romantic haze had been cast over her emotions during the decision-making days of their relationship. At that time Rainier had made it clear to her that he intended to be an active monarch and that Monaco would be their home. Grace fully accepted the plan. She would not only be a princess, she would be one of the few in the world with subjects and the power to rule, or at least to be a considerable influence on her husband’s reign.

She would emulate Alice’s contribution in developing a Monégasque cultural life, but she was equally determined to help Rainier with his plan to bring foreign businesses to Monaco, to construct sufficient housing for workers and hotels to accommodate a larger influx of package-tour visitors and to establish a convention center.

Onassis had miscalculated. The movie-star princess would lend her glamour and public appeal to Monaco, but she would use it to help Rainier achieve his goals—which were now hers—and these were completely at odds with those of the Greek, who wished to recapture the lush sense of luxury that would be a magnet for the rich and famous and allow them to enjoy each other’s company. And he was adamant in his argument that to lower Monaco’s standards would be a disaster, for it would fail to attract new clientele and almost certainly drive out the old.

Because of the tremendous publicity engendered by the wedding, and the attraction of a chance to glimpse H.S.H. Princesse Grace (in full royal regalia if possible), Monaco was enjoying a new prosperity and a new group of visitors. Onassis had brought in the Greek shipowners; Grace’s presence had lured Hollywood film personalities—Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, David Niven, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra; and emigré royalty was back at the tables. Still, since Onassis controlled the Casino and the S.B.M., Rainier had to rely upon him for the major portion of his income, and he was not content to continue in this fashion.

“Onassis’s seignorial view of his role in the principality was increasingly at odds with Rainier’s vision of a ‘new Monaco,’ ” states a book published in 1990 on Onassis’s business affairs and written by a team of investigative reporters. “Each had the power to frustrate the other’s designs. As the largest shareholder, Onassis could appoint his men to the SBM board. Rainier not only had the right to appoint two directors of his choice, he also had veto power over Onassis’s appointments and did not hesitate to use this prerogative. There were frequent shifts of personnel in the company as each set of administrators failed to live up to Rainier’s rising expectations.

“At Onassis’s suggestion, the company acquired a special ne gotiator who shuttled between the palace and Onassis’s headquarters in the hope of finding common ground between the two parties. This device was a failure. By nature conspiratorial, both Onassis and Rainier attempted to secure the exclusive services of the unfortunate mediator with the result that one of them was invariably disappointed.”

Rainier did, eventually, get Onassis to agree to build an artificial beach just beyond the Casino, a heliport and a new luxury hotel. But when it came to the contract stage, Onassis inserted a provision that for his own efforts Rainier would have to revoke his veto power and any interference in the management of the Casino or the S.B.M. Rainier refused and the relationship between the two men became more acrimonious. “The prince had always believed in divine right,” a Palace staff member recalled, “and he now wished to apply it to corporate practices. If Monaco was to become a modern business, there should be no doubt about who was in charge.” Rainier had made this clear from the day he had announced Grace’s pregnancy.

Ma Kelly arrived for Christmas with an American gynecologist and obstetrician, Dr. Hervet, to await the birth of her daughter’s royal child. On January 23, 1957, a day of torrential rain, Caroline-Louise-Marguerite Grimaldi was born. Informed by telephone of the arrival of his new granddaughter, Jack Kelly exclaimed, “Hell! I wanted a boy!” Rainier, on the other hand, was far more enthusiastic about having a daughter. United States citizenship is granted to any child born abroad with at least one American parent if such citizenship is claimed before the age of eighteen. When asked by the press whether the new princess would be encouraged to do so, Rainier snapped back, “She is Monégasque and nothing else.” Princesse Caroline was also heir to the throne.

Fourteen months later, on March 14, 1958, Grace gave birth to a son, Albert-Alexander-Louis-Pierre, who replaced his sister in the royal succession and was now Hereditary Prince de Monaco.

Rainier proved to have a much more domestic nature than any of his predecessors. He enjoyed being with Grace and the children and gave freely of his time to them. Grace had made a definite place for herself in their small kingdom, devising new ways to help the old and the needy while adding her glamorous presence to all gala state occasions. She was also actively involved in the opera; Raoul Gunsbourg had recently died in Paris, and Grace worked closely with the several men it had taken to replace him. She was intent on establishing a theater repertory company and a school of ballet. Yet her and Rainier’s life was not as idyllic as it appeared.

The Prince of Monaco is an absolute monarch with the power to change any law or the taxation of his subjects as he so wishes. However, there are eighteen members on the National Council elected by male Monégasque citizens (Monégasques were, and remain, about 17 percent of the population of the Principality) to serve a term of five years each. They convene for six weeks, twice yearly, to review the budget and any new legislation sent to them from the Prince and drawn up by his personal staff, which consists of three ministers (finance, foreign affairs and domestic issues) chosen by him. The National Council has the right only to recommend new laws or to suggest changes in old or new laws or to alter the budget. Their suggestions are returned to the Prince, but he is under no obligation to accept or incorporate them. Sometimes, however, pressures can exist which make it expedient for the Prince to compromise or to give way on certain issues to assure there will not be undue unrest in the Principality caused by one of his edicts.

In 1956 Jean-Charles Rey, who had been behind Antoinette’s bid to overthrow Rainier and place her son, Christian, on the throne, was the most powerful member of the National Council. He had initiated an independent party in Monaco (which held no vote and could only apply pressure through Rey) which urged the establishment of a constitutional monarchy subject to the approval of the Council and circulated a petition for Monégasque women twenty-one years or older to have a vote and to be elected to the National Council. Not long after Albert’s birth, Rainier finally became aware of his sister’s long secret alliance with Rey. With the advent of a Hereditary Prince, Antoinette had lost all hope of one day placing her son on the throne. She seemed determined now to diminish the power of her brother and his heir and she worked through Rey and his growing strength on the National Council to achieve her aim.

In the spring 1957 session of the National Council Rey led the opposition, greatly increasing their numbers to a majority, in disputing every one of Rainier’s new measures and his budget, including a rise in real estate taxes (Monégasques pay no personal income tax, but are assessed on real estate) and raises in the yearly monies being paid over to himself and for the running of his household. Rainier made minor adjustments in legislation dealing with education and health, but passed all his other changes into law. But Rey still had several unexpired years on his National Council term, and Rainier was concerned that he could create an atmosphere of unrest in the Principality. He feared that to remove him from the Council and from Monaco could boomerang as Rey was now open about, and even flaunting, his relationship with Antoinette and her approval of his actions on the Council.

“[Rey’s] visits grew more and more frequent to our home,” Christian de Massey recalls. “He was often present at lunch and dinner. As he grew more confident, he installed his own butler and chef. . . . I remember that when I was playing with the footman, Rey would appear in the kitchen or at the gardener’s cottage snapping orders at the staff, screaming at them that they should not waste valuable time playing with me . . . they shared my contempt of Rey, and that gave us a common bond.”

Grace had made friends with Antoinette’s children, and Christian in particular adored her. Through them it was not too difficult to assess how deeply their mother was involved with Rey. By the summer of 1958, the problems between Rainier and his sister and her lover had reached an impasse. At Rainier’s request (Grace not having the right to do so), Grace asked Antoinette to relinquish her rooms at the Palace. This Antoinette did, but the humiliation added fire to her resentment, and for three years her children were not permitted to see their Uncle Rainier or any member of his family, including her own father.

Within the next year, not only did Rainier’s problems with Rey reach the breaking point but his difficulty with Onassis intensified into open hostility with Onassis using his controlling interest in the S.B.M. to display his power. “I am the boss here now,” he remarked to Louis Vuidet, the manager of the Hôtel de Paris restaurant, when he was told that any changes in the hours of opening and closing (Onassis wanted to extend the closing time) had to be approved by the Palace.

The project closest to Rainier’s heart at this time was an extravagant plan to build a floating laboratory for his friend Professor Jacques Cousteau, the great oceanographer, to pursue his underwater research. It would be named after Albert I and also be a suitable tribute to the birth of his son, Albert II. Onassis would have no part in it, and the Council, under Rey’s strong influence, refused to allocate any money for the “Marinarium,” as it was called.

On January 29, 1959, Monégasques were startled to hear Rainier declare on the radio, “I cannot tolerate any pressure whatsoever which might undermine my complete rights.” He then announced that he had suspended the Constitution, dissolved the National Council, and abrogated the rights of political assembly or demonstration. These edicts were, according to Dr. Joseph Simon, president of the National Council, “a veritable coup d’état.” Both Louis II and Albert I had used the same tactics to remind their subjects that they were absolute monarchs by hereditary divine right. “The divine right of kings exists nowhere else in the world,” Christian de Massey comments. “This arrangement in Monaco rendered our family absolute administrators of power. They could virtually make up the law as they went along. . .”

“For a year, the National Council has hindered the administrative and political life of the country [and] a certain Council member has been intriguing ceaselessly for many years for the purpose of furthering his own ambitions,” Rainier proclaimed to the press. Grace attempted to win over disapproving foreign reporters by assuring them that “six months of princely rule would settle down Monaco’s problems.” She was furious when she heard from friends in the States that Rainier had been called a dictator in the American press and read articles in the French papers that repeated this accusation, but he had flagrantly disregarded the Constitution of 1911 (as had Albert I and Louis II). He claimed that he was acting on behalf of his subjects (although in what way was unclear) and that his plans were for a more prosperous Monégasque economy and to earn international respect for their small country through the work of the esteemed Cousteau. But, in fact, the progress of this scientific endeavor was greatly powered by his own self-interest.

A wave of discontent rose, stirred up whenever possible by Rey, who spoke quite freely to American and French journalists. But after Rainier threatened to expel Rey from Monaco, his sister’s lover no longer made public his views on the wrongness of Rainier’s actions. His autocracy assured, Rainier established the Monaco Development Corporation with state money. He touted the climate and tax-free status of the Principality in the hope of luring major foreign investors. Work was begun on Cousteau’s floating laboratory; a tunnel was excavated for a new train route to pass under Monaco and leave the streets above clean and accessible; and corporate headquarters for hundreds of foreign companies were given tax-free status. The result was a boom for Monaco, and Grace’s plea for Monégasques to “trust her husband and everything would be all right” appeared to be good advice.

What Rainier had not considered was how Charles de Gaulle and the French government would react to having a tax-free state bordering their own, one in which French citizens could fairly easily establish residence to avoid paying French taxes. In October 1959, de Gaulle gave Rainier six months’ notice of his intention to abrogate the convention guaranteeing friendly relations between the two countries. As the deadline approached, France installed temporary customs barriers at Monaco’s frontier and threatened to cut off its gas and electricity supplies if Monaco did not accede to its demands.

During this period Rainier had the additional stress of a marital crisis, as Grace began seriously to entertain the idea of resuming her career—at least for one film. Rainier was opposed to the possiblity, and life at the Palace was a series of difficult confrontations. Grace was frankly bored with dealing with domestic issues and the role of Princess Bountiful. She could not see how appearing in a film, provided the role she play was that of a woman of good character, could have local repercussions. Rainier understood that his subjects would view the Princesse de Monaco’s return to acting as a diminution of his own standing as a man and a monarch—and he desperately needed their support in his battle with de Gaulle.

Cary and Betsy Grant visited the Grimaldis at this time and returned to Hollywood bearing the secret news to Alfred Hitchcock that Grace might be agreeble to doing a movie. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had recently offered her the role of the Virgin Mary in their upcoming production of The King of Kings, an idea which the horrified Pope Pius XII, when consulted by Rainier, declared would be sacrilegious, for Grace was obviously not a virgin.) Hitchcock sent Grace a copy of a screen adaptation of Winston Graham’s novel Marnie, a psychodrama about a rich man who marries a kleptomaniac. The story contained scenes of violence, was sexually explicit and was played against a criminal background. It seemed to be an unsuitable choice but the idea of working with Hitchcock again and the promise that Grant would play opposite her attracted Grace.

Rainier, faced with Grace’s determination, eventually agreed, although he did elicit a promise from the producers that the script would be rewritten and Grace would not appear in any scene that was even mildly offensive in language or content or contained sexual overtones. On March 16, 1960, he issued a statement that he and Her Serene Highness would spend the summer in Hollywood where the Princesse would star in Marnie and that they would return to Monaco in November. Monégasques reacted to this with disbelief, and in the end, they decided the matter, for there was a rush to judgment in the local and the French press. Numerous published interviews with Rainier’s subjects made it perfectly clear that they could not regard a woman who was also a working Hollywood actress as Her Serene Highness. Rainier withdrew his agreement immediately, creating a cold atmosphere in his home but regaining the support of his people.

The Kellys had never been good losers, and Grace was no exception. However, she understood that her husband was under fire and that the very survival of Monaco was at stake in the confrontation he was having with de Gaulle. She therefore accepted his final mandate on her career plans and stood beside him in his decisions regarding France and the Principality.

As de Gaulle’s April deadline to his ultimatum drew near, Rainier had no option but to capitulate. A pact was agreed which guaranteed that French citizens who lived in Monaco could not evade French taxation. There was a sudden exodus of capital, and two thirds of the sixteen billion francs held by Frenchmen in Monte Carlo was transferred into Swiss bank accounts. Overnight Monaco’s prosperity evaporated as its escaping Frenchmen either canceled their orders for new apartments and offices or sold them at rock-bottom rates.

The National Council was reinstalled, with Rey still one of its members, in time for the spring session. But the former agitator seemed more compliant and Rainier’s next budget was accepted without much contest. Rainier turned his attention to Onassis. It now became a matter of principle and expediency to get Onassis to sell his shares in the S.B.M. It was to be a test of force and not an easy one at that.

When Jack Kelly died of cancer in June 1960, at the age of seventy, Grace was inconsolable. Since her marriage she had returned home once a year, but to her great disappointment her relationship with her father did not improve. Kelly’s disapproval of Rainier grew during his last year, and he was obdurate in his view that Grace’s success in her career and marriage was nothing more than an accident of fate. When Grace had visited Philadelphia in the summer of 1959, she had intended to confront her father over their differences. She found him in poorer health than she had expected, and the words went unspoken.

Her frustration over this inability to talk to her father might well have been increased by thoughts of her aborted career. The years 1959 to 1960 were unhappy ones for her, and the public nature of her life at the Palace caused her to spend more and more time at the old farmhouse Rainier had purchased for them as a second home shortly after Albert’s birth. Situated on the peak of Mont Agel above the Monte Carlo Golf Club, on one of the highest and most precipitous sections of the Corniche, it sprawled over the French side of Monaco’s frontier. The road leading up to it curved sharply in hairpin turns and there were few guard rails. The drive terrified Grace because of her poor eyesight. Nevertheless, she fell in love with the farmhouse, its spectacular views, its privacy, the expanse of land where the children could play unobserved, the proximity of the Golf Club (golf was one of her favorite sports) and the casual life there. Whenever she could she would take the family up to the farmhouse, usually driven by Rainier or their chauffeur, to oversee the extensive alterations being made and to relax. When she had difficult personal problems, she would go up alone to the house which they called Roc Agel. A swimming pool was built, horses were installed in the stable, and a modern kitchen where Grace could do most of the cooking was added to the main building—which with its terra-cotta tile roof and large stone fireplaces resembled some of the old haciendas in Southern California.

By now the panoply of royal life, the constant public exposure (even more intense than when she had been an actress) and the tensions of her husband’s reign had eclipsed the dazzling image of being a princess that she had nurtured before her marriage.

After her father’s death, the fiasco of her flirtation with returning to the screen and two successive miscarriages in 1960 and 1961, she retreated to Roc Agel, which quickly became her home and refuge, the place where she could unwind and be herself. With all the attention she had received, Grace never forgot her roots. She was the daughter of an American bricklayer, a self-made man whose parents had left Ireland to escape poverty. “I wonder,” she wrote to a close American friend, “what it is I might have come here to escape.”

20

THE FINAL SHOWDOWN between Rainier and Onassis had all the elements of the shootout in a Hollywood Western. These were two men who knew they could not co-exist in the same town: One is the stranger—the foreigner—and he is considered dangerous; the other is the power figure—the boss—of the invaded territory.

With Rainier’s final capitulation to de Gaulle, Onassis appeared to have the upper hand; for if there were to be free elections of candidates to the National Council, the members he supported could act on his behalf. As in all good melodramas of this kind, a strong, seductive woman entered the scene, distracting one of the men from his main objective and giving the other the advantage.

During the height of Rainier’s battle to maintain his divine right, Onassis fell deeply, passionately, in love with the volatile, darkly exotic opera diva Maria Callas, born in America of Greek parents, who was married. He soon separated from his wife, Tina, and was living openly on the Christina with his paramour. Despite their hypocritical disapproval of this situation (for, after all, both had had lovers and Grace several who were married men) Rainier and Grace attended social occasions on the yacht and did not exclude the couple from their own parties or state affairs. To do so would have created an irreparable breach and in 1963 Rainier was still hopeful that Onassis would support his new plan for land reclamation from the sea, which was the only scheme he could envision that would increase the size and enable the potential development of the Principality. By the use of landfill, the coastline and inlet directly to the east of the Rock could be built up to accommodate a hotel, convention center and large apartment project. When he saw that Onassis, still concerned that the Principality would lose its appeal to rich tourists if it was allowed to become more commercial, would not bend to his ideas, Rainier’s attitude took a sharp turn.

His open offensive began with his 1964 New Year’s address to the nation when he made a slurring reference to the shortcomings of the S.B.M. and Onassis’s part in its failings. Immediately, the Greek sent an emissary to the Palace to inquire exactly what Rainier wanted. The man returned to Onassis with Rainier’s refusal to reply until Onassis revealed to him precisely what his intentions were. The next day, Rainier sent his representative, Roger Crovetto, to Onassis to repeat his request.

“Crovetto found Onassis drinking in the Salle Empire,” one witness reported. “He took a dislike to Crovetto, who announced he had been insulted and left in a fit of pique. Onassis mellowed to the extent of following Crovetto in his white Rolls-Royce on a mission of apology. . . . [He] managed to catch up with him in the square outside the palace by taking the traffic circle in the wrong direction and plowing into the fender of the minister’s car. Apologies were made, [Crovetto] was promised a new car and departed shaken but to some degree mollified.”

Rainier, obviously setting the scene for a confrontation, was appeased by Onassis’s overture to his representative. In what could only be construed as a retaliatory countermove, he requested the resignation of Charles Audibert (known to be an Onassis man) from the Council. Next, after he had reconciled his differences with de Gaulle, he petitioned for his help in ridding Monaco of Onassis (whom de Gaulle held in low esteem), and was offered France’s unconditional support. Items began to appear in the French press referring to Onassis as “an undesirable presence,” and in an interview with the editors of Le Monde Rainier stated that Onassis was “devoid of any real concern for his adopted country,” and was “above all a speculator.” He concluded that “the only solution appears to be a test of force. My government and myself are resolved to it.”

In a startling turn, Rainier teamed up with his old enemy Jean-Charles Rey, who had married Antoinette in a civil ceremony only a few months before, in a scheme that created 600,000 new shares in the S.B.M., to be controlled by the state, which thereby became the majority shareholder. It would seem that Rainier was now using his new brother-in-law’s conspiratorial talents to his own good. When Onassis was told about the proposed legislation (pointedly described by his staff as “loi gangster”), he thought Rainier was merely trying him. But the decree was drawn up and passed despite Onassis’s attempt to get the Supreme Court to rule the legislation unconstitutional. (If it had done so, Rainier could have vetoed the decision, anyway.)

Within a week the Christina lifted anchor and sailed out of Monte Carlo. Onassis was so grieved, and so certain that he would never return, that he did not remain on deck to watch the town, where he had once held so much power and that had been his primary home for ten years, slip into the distance and fade from view. In a final humiliation before his departure, Onassis had been sent a check by Rainier for 39,912,000 francs ($10 million) for the buy-out of his entire interest in the S.B.M., the figure arbitrarily set by Rey and the Council at considerably below its real value. A great percentage of the stock, at an advantageous price, he told his associates, would soon make its way into Rainier’s possession. Later he was to exclaim, “I was robbed!”

To Monégasques, Onassis’s departure held little personal meaning. He had never won their hearts and had always been looked upon as an outsider. Nor did they appear concerned about who had control of the S.B.M. as long as Monaco’s economy was on the upswing and their own finances improved. This soon occurred with the growing realization of Rainier’s plans for land reclamation, new construction and medium-priced housing. An added boon was the lowered price of international air fares and the advent of the jumbo jets which could accommodate many times the passengers of former overseas air transportation and required far less flight time. There was a huge boom in tourism, and Monte Carlo, with its superb climate and many distractions, quickly became the most popular resort on the Mediterranean.

Prices of the Principality’s limited available land soared, along with the cost of apartments and office space. Rainier was fast becoming one of the richest men in Europe. Monégasques, their rising earnings free of tax, had also benefited, and their new affluence not only raised their standard of living, it caused them to seek better jobs. Labor was difficult to find within the Principality and hundreds of foreign workers, mostly from Italy, were brought in. Space became an almost nonexistent luxury as new buildings were wedged into every possible gap. For the first time the Principality had to concern itself with environmental issues. Traffic was badly congested and a complicated system of one-way streets was inaugurated.

Through it all, the pampered beauty of Monte Carlo was miraculously preserved. England’s Edward VII would have easily recognized the square in the center of the town with its beautiful manicured gardens and its trio of belle époque buildings—the Casino, Hôtel de Paris and Café de Paris—although the café might have given him pause, for in 1962 gaming rooms, which were open night and day, had been added. To Rainier’s credit (and that of his planners and architects), nowhere in Monte Carlo had the elegant avenues and tree-lined streets been allowed to deteriorate.

The major part of the restoration and redecoration of the Palace was completed by the mid-sixties, along with the royal family’s private apartments (furnished by Grace with the help of American decorators in what was sometimes sniped at by critics as “California wide-screen casual” with its massive windows, huge potted palms, exotic plants and oversized, sandcolored couches, chairs and ottomans and beveled-glass cocktail tables). This enabled Rainier to open the public rooms for tours. Soon, most of the ground floors of the old buildings on the narrow, curving streets of the Rock were transformed into cafés and souvenir shops, leading to accusations that Rainier had become crassly commercial and, since he held the leases on most of the buildings, money hungry.

The family was completed when Grace gave birth to a second daughter, and third child, Stephanie-Marie-Elisabeth, on February 1, 1965, in the same room where her other children had been born. Grace’s easy pregnancy had given her the confidence to drive to Nice to meet Ma Kelly’s arriving plane. After their return to the Palace and lunch, Grace had gone into labor two weeks early. When the cannon shots announcing the royal birth stopped at twenty-one, seven-year-old Albert exclaimed proudly, “I got a hundred and one!”

The children were being raised to be bilingual in French and English—as Rainier had been—by an English nanny, a highspirited, hefty lady from the Midlands, Maureen King, who established a rigid rule that only one language could be spoken at a time. Grace almost always communicated with the children in English, and it was due to this that they had a distinct American accent which, because it appeared to please their mother, was never discouraged. The wide age difference between the two oldest and Stephanie bonded the youngest child closer to her mother.

Caroline bore an uncanny resemblance to Princesse Charlotte in both appearance and character. With her vivid Prussian-blue eyes, brown hair and olive complexion, she was a commanding presence even as a toddler. Uninhibited, precocious, garrulous and bossy, she quickly gained the upper hand in the nursery. Albert, whom the family called Albie, was the most like his mother, with fair hair, finely chiseled features and the same myopic eyes. They also shared similar temperaments. Albie was shy, slow to accept new adults or peers, fiercely loyal once he did and tremendously sensitive to those close to him. Although he followed his father’s lead in sports, he had a talent for art and shared his mother’s love of the theater and ballet. Both the older children were aware at a very young age of their position and accepted the rigors it demanded: the public exposure, the control, the recognition that they were not as free as most children to be themselves and that, except for each other, their contemporaries in Monaco would view them with mixed awe and reserve.

Stephanie was the maverick. Unable to diminish the age gap between herself and her two siblings, to wedge herself into becoming a part of their close relationship or to compete with them on any level other than for parental attention, she was a disciplinary problem from the age of two, willful, stubborn, and with a temper that could erupt unexpectedly. “I could have beaten her like a gong without making her give way,” her mother would later say. Yet Stephanie’s recalcitrant personality created a tighter bond between the two. For Grace refused to accept the notion that she might not be able to bring her younger daughter into line and spent more time with Stephanie than she had with Albert or Caroline. Then, too, Stephanie, her coloring so darkly striking and her personality so outgoing, also possessed a great vulnerability and was the most openly affectionate of the three children.

Albert struggled to overcome his difficult position as the middle child caught between the strong personalities of his two sisters. As hereditary prince, he found that more was demanded of him than of his siblings. He desperately wanted to please his father, who expected him one day to be as great a sailor as his namesake, Albert I, but as a child, Albie had a fear of the water and a tendency toward a queasy stomach. He endured much to overcome these shortcomings. Tortuous hours were spent in the new, Italianate marble pool at the Palace practicing swimming, placing his head under water for as long as he could manage. During boating trips with his father he had to fight to control his nausea for he was inclined to uncomfortable seizures of seasickness. By the time he was nine he had a serious stutter and was immensely self-conscious, but he had succeeded in conquering his phobias.

Her royal obligations, her children, the running of a complicated household and the well-being of her husband filled Grace’s life, but still there was something lacking. She had intensely wanted to play the Tzarina Alexandra in the film adaptation of Robert Massie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Nicholas and Alexandra, but Rainier was adamant that she never return to the screen. By the early 1970s, his plans for developing Monaco were being put into action, and the royal couple were rarely together because the demands of his enterprise consumed much of his time. After her primary education on the Rock, Caroline was sent to St. Mary’s, a strict convent school near Ascot in England. Although Albie attended school in Monaco, he went for the summer, at the request of his mother, to a camp in New Hampshire with some of his Kelly cousins. Family was something Grace believed in and in Rainier’s family there were no children Albie’s age.

Her yearly pilgrimages to Philadelphia continued, but after Jack’s death, and despite her attempts to remain close, nothing ever seemed the same. Ma grew more difficult with the years and her sisters seemed to have become envious and to expect more from her than she felt they gave in return. Her family became a sore point between Rainier and her, for he felt they took advantage of her and treated her in a demeaning manner, never acknowledging her royal status. Her faith had come to mean more to her since the birth of the children, although she was never obsessive about it. But she liked to go alone to the small private chapel at the Palace, where she would sit totally absorbed for an hour or more, in silent contemplation. She would walk by herself in flat shoes on the grounds of Roc Agel, or in the Palace gardens overlooking the sea, a scarf on her head; a lonely figure, her step hesitant.

An unsettling feeling of displacement had begun to overtake her. She felt more American than when she had left home. The French and Monégasque women, wives of Rainier’s friends and associates, had never opened themselves to her, and feminine bonding, which had been so much a part of her life before coming to Monaco, remained important to her and greatly missed. Her closest companions were the American author Paul Gallico and his wife, Virginia; another American, Jeanne Kelly (who, although not related, shared many of Grace’s roots); and a few of the women on either her own or the S.B.M.’s staff—with whom, however, as their employer and as Princesse de Monaco, she could never truly be herself.

She became fluent in French and Italian, although her American accent was much in evidence (and often privately mocked by courtiers). Her hands were always active: with needlework, painting, modeling with clay. She never lost contact with her old friends and former bridesmaids and kept up a lively correspondence with the former Judith Kanter, who had divorced her agent husband, had married and divorced actor Tony Franciosa and was now married to Don Quine, a professional karate expert. She subscribed to The International Herald Tribune, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest and the Book of the Month Club. A week seldom passed in which she did not see a current or favorite Hollywood film in the Palace’s private theater.

She remained close to Cary Grant and nurtured a special camaraderie with Frank Sinatra, and perhaps a small flirtation. Rainier was observed by his nephew Christian to be “often short-tempered with Grace, too frequently in the presence of others . . . she never contradicted . . . nor called him on his tone. Grace was always deeply hurt [after such a display] . . . but her brave silences seemed only to exacerbate and prolong the discomfort and embarrassment of such moments.”

In Rainier’s defense, he was under considerable pressure. What he had called “ocean-stealing,” reclaiming land from the sea, had added nearly an entire square mile to his realm. He had been determined that Monaco would overcome its reputation for living off the Casino. Wise enough to know that a sizable portion of its livelihood (and his own) was dependent on its remaining a popular tourist resort, he had begun an active policy of economic development that balanced hotels and high-rise apartments with industrial expansion.

To achieve the proper equilibrium, Monaco was divided into three distinct areas, with the Rock (site of the old town and of the Palace) in the center separating the more aristocratic Monte Carlo from Fontvieille, where the reclaimed land was used to provide space for lower-income housing and for industrial and commercial premises. With its paucity of land, Monaco stood little chance of ever evolving into a major hub for heavy manufacturing. Nonetheless, Rainier lured cosmetic, pharmaceutical and plastics companies to his country. Unemployment became almost nonexistent and the per capita income of its thirty thousand residents one of the highest in the world. This did not satisfy his detractors, who deplored the plethora of high-rise condominiums that filled in almost every space along the roads that wound through and above Monte Carlo, calling the area a “vulgar concrete slum for arrivistes.”

Jet-setting visitors continued to throng the Casino, the Grand Prix, the tennis and golf tournaments and many social galas. From the time of the wedding of the century, Grace’s presence had given the Principality a renewed aura of grandeur, of a time lost in history, and a fairy-tale mystique that appealed equally to the blue-blooded and the nouveaux riches.

Rainier’s critics condemned him for pushing “into France [meaning over the border from Fontvieille] everything that isn’t profitable or attractive—warehouses, cemeteries, utilities . . . and the old people’s rest home.” Questions were being asked publicly about the true names and nationalities of the companies that were being registered in Monaco, “subletting apartments as ‘headquarters,’ but never showing up, let alone doing business or constructing plants? Who [a French editorial inquired] own many of these high rises?”

Such innuendos threatened, or at least seemed to threaten, the Principality’s future stability and good name. In the 1930s Somerset Maugham had labeled Monaco “a sunny place for shady people.” Unquestionably, the small country’s spectacular commercial growth had brought with it promoters and financial corruption. Companies had been set up as fronts for less ethical operations than they professed. Arms were being trafficked in plush offices on the Boulevard des Moulins. Scandalous press allegations were published almost weekly in France.

The postage-stamp size of Monaco with its often crass displays of luxury and wealth, the presence of the Casino and the tax-free position of the Monégasques, invited contempt and suspicion from France, which by 1970 had suddenly found itself with an irritatingly rich neighbor when times were not that good at home, unemployment being high and the value of the franc deflated.

Along with the Principality’s brimming affluence came serious problems of pollution, caused by too many cars in so small an area, and crime. There had been more jewel robberies than ever before and drugs were beginning to become a problem. Rainier decided to drastically augment his police force and to detain and expel any person looking suspicious. These undemocratic practices were not well received by Grace, and became a matter of unpleasant argument at home. The Princesse de Monaco also fought to prohibit the destruction of some of the best examples of belle époque architecture. (“I will nail myself to the door [of one such structure] if they try to raze it,” she was quoted as saying in Le Monde.)

Yet Rainier’s love and attachment to his American princess remained evident to all those who were close to them. At public galas when restraint was dictated, he could be glimpsed reaching for her hand. At more casual gatherings his arm would fall quite naturally and protectively about her shoulders. He did not appear to comprehend why an expression of intense sadness would suddenly cloud her classically beautiful face. Whatever their differences, they shared a strong attachment to their children and a belief in the rightness of their faith. He admired her independent spirit even if he seldom gave in to her ideas (unless he had leaned toward them at the outset). The Monégasques had gone through periods of approving and of disapproving of their sovereign’s consort, but they did feel the marriage was built on a solid foundation and it gave them a deep, abiding sense of security. Rainier had much the same feelings, and it seemed that the curse of the Grimaldis, so often written about in the past, would never apply to Grace and him.

The twenty-fifth anniversary of Rainier’s reign (May 1974) was celebrated with a spectacular series of events that extended throughout April, May and June. Monaco was ablaze with flowers, red and white primulas decorating the bases of all the trees on the major boulevards. Special services were conducted in all the churches and cathedrals in the Principality. There was an extraordinary parade of flower floats and galas were held at the Monte Carlo Opera House; lavish dinners at the Hôtel de Paris (where additional crystal chandeliers were hung to add to the brilliant display) were attended by Prince Juan Carlos and Princess Sophie of Spain (Juan Carlos was designated heir to the Spanish throne, and would become King upon the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, which occurred that September) and the Begum Aga Khan, along with numerous Hollywood stars. The celebrations ended with a magnificent display of fireworks.

Albert, just turned sixteen, was co-host with his parents, the first time he had performed at an official function. He continued to spend the summers at camp in New Hampshire and with his Kelly cousins in their beach house in New Jersey, and he had become “very American in appearance, and his speech was so completely East Coast that no one could tell he had not grown up there,” his Grimaldi cousin, Christian de Massey, says, adding that “he continued to be slightly handicapped by his childhood stammer. . . . Bespectacled, reserved, and self-conscious, he acted out his part with great concentration, while Caroline played hers with more effortless and authentic relaxation.”

There was a majestic Te Deum for Louis II in the Cathedral, presided over by Cardinal Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia, and the current Bishop of Monaco, Monsignor Abele, as well as by representatives from the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches and the Church of England. For the first time in many years the entire Grimaldi family were present and seated together (even Princesse Ghislaine attended), and appeared to do so in harmony. However, Rainier and his sister still exhibited great hostility toward each other within their Court and private circles and never saw one another except on public occasions.

Stephanie, still difficult and only nine years of age, required a good deal of her mother’s attention. Caroline, who had only recently passed the second part of her baccalauréat in Paris, was living in her parents’ magnificent recently acquired and refurbished home on the Avenue Foch. Nine years older than Stephanie, and a young beauty at eighteen, she was, perhaps, even more headstrong than as a child. She struggled to live what she thought was a real life, which meant spending her evenings whenever possible at a disco with an attractive escort. She was seldom alone, for a member of either her own or her mother’s staff was always in attendance and she never left the house without a detective at her side.

Day and night found the paparazzi positioned outside the house on the Avenue Foch, waiting to flash their cameras as Caroline left or returned. She began to feel hounded, with good reason, for the press’s relentlessness in stalking her every move and the wild speculations that were printed about her were certainly excessive. “Why do I have to be a princess? I hate it!” she would exclaim to the staff and security guard, whom she called her “keepers.” She was a competent pianist, an avid reader, and an excellent linguist, but she had no idea what she could or would be allowed to do with her life.

Rainier was a devoted father, albeit often an absent one. He had also suffered greatly as a youngster growing up royal. But he knew even less of the real world than his children and he counted on the strength of his marriage and on Grace to assure the well-being and stability of their daughters. Albert was more his concern. For, after all, it was his son who would, like himself, one day be Prince de Monaco.

21

SMALL THOUGH IT WAS, Monaco demanded far more of its sovereign than Great Britain did of the Queen, who made no major decisions and had little to do with the economics, or for that matter with the political machinations, of her domain. In contrast, Rainier had the final word on almost everything of a public nature that went on within the boundaries of his realm. For, although Monaco had a Constitution, the Prince de Monaco had the right to override any article within the document or to suspend it, as he had already once done. He was an absolute monarch who, in essence, had simply given his subjects a forum to discuss and suggest changes or additions to his plans for the Principality and its budget. But his was the final word.

Prince Pierre, Rainier’s father, had died in 1965, leaving him without a trusted confidant during a time of mounting economic complexities caused by the landfill project and the enormous cost of engineering and construction attached to it. Associates now found him a good deal tougher in business matters than he had previously been and they appeared to be right, for the contracts he negotiated with lessees were far more favorable to him than previously. And although he had legal representation, he made all decisions. There were members of his staff who felt he was driven by a passion to become one of the richest men in Europe (a goal which he was fast approaching). He leaned less on Grace, seldom involving her as he once had in the problems of the Principality. He had begun to look middle-aged, a paunch about the middle, his dark hair washed with gray, a noticeable double chin. But he had not lost his ability to joke, and the boyish smile that had been so beguiling could occasionally alter the growing seriousness of his expression.

He remained strongly attached to his children, took great pride in any of Albert’s accomplishments and was, by turns, both protective and overly permissive with his daughters, who he believed because of their sex should be under the control of their mother and not himself. This attitude became even more apparent as the sixties segued into the seventies and Caroline into a headstrong teenager. Grace had found it difficult to face her fortieth birthday on November 12, 1969, but she was, if more mature and a bit heavier, as strikingly beautiful as ever. Rainier and Grace were now frequently apart, for he remained in Monaco when she was in Paris with Stephanie. Unfounded rumors abounded in the gossip columns of the more abandoned press, and pictures were printed in tabloids of Rainier seated next to one beautiful lady or another at Monaco festivities (the photograph often touched up, cropped or intentionally made to create a false impression by narrowing the distance between Rainier and a dinner partner).

Rainier’s interest to the world was due to his position, not his influence on international affairs. Rainier was one of a select few remaining hereditary monarchs. Of course, Queen Elizabeth still occupied Buckingham Palace; Queen Juliana remained on the throne in the Netherlands; and King Baudouin held his country together, despite Belgium’s recent division into three regions with their own languages.

But as a monarch, Rainier’s situation was unique. Although his power was absolute with Monaco, he was not a world-class leader. What occurred in the Principality had no bearing on European affairs, even those of the countries that bordered his. Monaco had no land, no great seaport, no oil, no products needed by other nations, nor was it an aggressive country that might pose the threat of a war. And since France was now satisfied that its citizens could not evade paying taxes by being resident in the Principality, it was content to leave Monaco to its own devices. Rainier and Monaco existed in a time warp; it was an old-fashioned princedom in a modern world, and it ironically exemplified the fast-growing materialism of the last half of the twentieth century.

His mother, Princesse Charlotte, died on November 16, 1977. Rainier had never been able to forgive his mother for her treatment of his father and had not approved of the eccentric manner in which she had lived. She had been rude to Grace (but, perhaps, even more unpleasant to her own daughter). She had continued to maintain a fairly vicious troop of dogs, nine at the time of her death, which discouraged visits from her children and grandchildren. Marchais belonged to Rainier, and with his mother’s death, he and his family visited the estate more frequently. But for country gatherings, Grace—who was suffering occasional bouts of depression that had begun during the past year—preferred the ease and informality of life at Roc Agel. “There are times, you know, when the Princesse is a little melancholic—which I quite understand—about having performed a form of art very successfully, only to be cut away from it completely,” Rainier had told his biographer, Peter Hawkins. He described her moods as her “nostalgia for acting.”

Grace’s periods of melancholy could not be brushed aside with such a casual phrase. Rainier cared deeply for his wife, and her unhappiness weighed heavily upon him. She had never found in Monaco the devoted friends she had surrounded herself with before her marriage. Her relationship with Antoinette had always been cool and she infrequently saw her own sisters and their families. Her position in the Principality forbade the kind of spontaneity she so much enjoyed. And so, with both Caroline and Stephanie in Parisian schools, she spent most of the school year in Paris at their home on the Avenue Foch. In September 1976, Albert would depart for Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Rainier was closer to his children than most of his predecessors had been to theirs. He was determined to prepare his son for his job as the next Prince de Monaco and kept him as informed of Monaco’s affairs as Albert’s age and ability permitted. He was concerned about Caroline, who was now of eligible age and was dating men of whom he did not approve. In fact, she was being portrayed as a disco habituée and the paparazzi continued to stake out the Paris town house day and night and trail her relentlessly.

“I really would shoot these people if I had my way,” Rainier was quoted as saying after he observed the deleterious effect this harassment was having on his daughter, who seemed to be going out of control, maintaining late hours, smoking heavily, drinking more than he believed was becoming and doing so in public places. The constant vigilance of the press hounds only drove Caroline to invent ways to outwit them. Her friends were mostly from the disco set. She was photographed nuzzling, drinking and smoking in public, and even her lenient father was alarmed. He blamed the fish-tank life she was forced to live and threatened legal suits against the more persistent newsmen and photographers who beleaguered her. When this tactic failed, he surrounded her with bodyguards, which only added to her sense of a loss of privacy. In the winter of 1977, while she was working to obtain a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the Sorbonne, Caroline announced to her parents that she wanted to marry Philippe Junot, an investment broker seventeen years her senior, who was well known in Parisian café and disco society as a playboy and ladies’ man.

Despite her parents’ strong objections, Caroline insisted that she loved and wished to marry Junot. Grace is reported to have said to Rainier, “Well, perhaps it’s for the better. This way she’ll have a successful second marriage.” Such an attitude seems at odds with Grace’s Catholic views on marriage. But her philosophy did encapsulate two creeds—one for herself (marriage was for life), the other (an unhappy marriage should be dissolved) for the rest of the married world. She had also recently told the Comtesse Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince de Ramel, who was caught in a difficult and distressing marriage, “Divorce [the Comte] before he wrecks your life.”

Lisette was an American heiress, a child of divorce, brought up in Europe and the United States. She had been a successful photographer before her marriage to Comte Régis de Ramel. She lived part of the year in the Comte’s family château in France and the rest of the time in a house in Monte Carlo. A warm, ebullient, intelligent young woman, although about twenty years younger than Grace, she became her friend. Grace insisted Lisette join the exclusive Monte Carlo Garden Club (Grace’s favorite organization and the only one in Monaco that required royal patronage for membership) and enlisted her as the official photographer on the Garden Club’s excursions to England and Denmark, so that they could travel together.

They had met when their mutual friend Jeanne Kelly Van Remoortel, whose husband was the conductor of the Monte Carlo Symphony Orchestra, had brought Grace to Lisette’s house. It was not an official occasion, just three American women gathering for a few hours of casual conversation over lunch. Albert had also come along, and Lisette’s Asian housekeeper, Chang, was making Chinese food, which was one of Grace’s favorites. At one point Chang came in much concerned. “I didn’t know I would have to cook for all those bodyguards,” she said, worried that perhaps she had not made enough food. Grace had not known that the Palace had sent four men along as security. Albert explained that there had been a threat to his life but that Prince Rainier had not wanted Grace to be frightened by it. When she had been convinced that Albert was not in any serious danger, she told Chang, “Certainly don’t feed the guards. They apparently got here on their own and they can find their own lunch,” adding that one of them could go out and buy lunch for the others.

Lisette found Grace “someone used to making other people comfortable.” To twist an adage a bit: You could take the girl out of America, but not America out of the girl. With Lisette and Jeanne Kelly and some of her other American friends, Grace would revert to the kind of friendships that had meant so much to her before she became Princesse de Monaco. She chose the few available women in Monaco who shared similar backgrounds and tastes and who could laugh over small, silly things. What she responded to in her companions was their ability to accept her on her own merit and yet respect her position—not an easy mix. Nature, the environment, food, children, ballet, theater and her newly developed passion for forming pictures from pressed flowers were some of her interests. She loved “a good gossip” and freely gave advice. More of a disciplinarian than Rainier, she was stricter with Stephanie than she had been with Caroline, hoping to avoid the problems she was now having with her elder daughter. Until Albert’s departure for Amherst, she saw as much of him as was possible in the six months or so that she was in Monaco, and mother and son had a close rapport that continued in the form of frequent letters and telephone calls once he was away at college.

The only times Lisette recalled Grace displaying any ill feelings (“flushing red with anger”) were when she related stories about how she had felt belittled by members of the English royal family. Princess Margaret had once looked her up and down in icy appraisal and said rudely, “Well, you don’t look like a movie star.”

“Well, I wasn’t born a movie star,” Grace had hotly replied. Another time she had overheard one of the British royals referring to her as “definitely not one of us.”

She traveled quite frequently during the late seventies. Ireland had become one of her favorite places to visit and she was researching her Kelly-Irish roots, the area that had once been home to Jack Kelly’s parents before they had emigrated to the United States and the distant relations who had remained behind. Irish literature also became a compelling interest. She had recently inaugurated the Princesse Grace Library on the Rock and was speedily building up a research center for Irish scholars, with many rare books and the manuscripts of James Joyce and several other famous Irish writers. And there were her trips to England and Denmark to open garden shows as guest of honor. Lisette accompanied her on these journeys, and the women spent time together in Paris as well as in Monaco.

“Did you take a good look at those books?” Grace once grinned when they were together in the library of the house on the Avenue Foch (which Grace described as “a retreat within a fortress”). Lisette stepped closer. One shelf held leather-covered books (blank inside) which were humorously inscribed with titles that applied to her good friends (e.g., The Perils of Jeanne for Jeanne Kelly Van Remoortel, who seemed always to be in and out of great dramas).

Caroline lived at the Paris house until her wedding to Junot. Since she could not be persuaded to wait or to break off with him, her parents (Rainier giving in first) had finally agreed to the marriage, fearing she might run off with him. (“When it comes to something Caroline wants badly enough, you just know her father will permit it,” Grace complained to Judith Balaban Quine, adding: “This man [Junot]. . . doesn’t do anything. Oh, he’s in investments or something, but it doesn’t sound very real to me. Mainly what he seems to do and Caroline does with him is go to nightclubs and parties. . . .”)

Although not the international extravaganza that her parents’ wedding had been, Caroline’s marriage to Philippe Junot in June 1978 was not a simple affair. Six hundred guests were to attend and all of the surviving Kelly relatives and close Philadelphia friends were included. Rainier still had a difficult time dealing with the Kelly family, and when Lisette asked Grace what she could do for the wedding celebrations, Grace suggested she host a dinner at her home for the American contingent—which she did, and at which neither Grace nor Rainier was present. (Jeanne Kelly Van Remoortel also gave a party for the American guests. This meant Rainier was spared two evenings of unwelcome confrontations.)

Caroline’s marriage to Junot began on an acrimonious note when he permitted a photographer to take pictures of them on their honeymoon in the South Pacific without first seeking Caroline’s agreement. This was followed by extravagant trips he arranged for them to take to the United States, the West Indies and England and Scotland. They did not return to Paris and the luxurious penthouse Rainier and Grace had taken for them on the Avenue Bosquet until November, having been traveling almost continuously for five months.

Caroline wanted to start a family, but Junot was not pleased with the idea. Before he had met Caroline, Junot had told friends that “staying single was the natural condition for a man and marriage was a social convention.” Within a matter of weeks of their return to Paris, Junot began the first of a series of extramarital affairs, conducted quite openly for he was photographed at parties, nightclubs and on a deserted beach with his lovers. This continued for eighteen months, Caroline’s attempts to make a go of the marriage finally failing completely after a photographer caught a picture of Junot dancing with Countess Agneta von Furstenberg, a woman friend from his premarital days, at Studio 54, a popular New York discotheque, when he had told his wife he was in Montreal on business.

Despite the problems with the Church that a divorce would cause, Grace and Rainier, who had never liked their son-in-law and had felt great anger at his ill-treatment of Caroline, did nothing to help reunite the couple once Caroline had ordered him to leave their Paris apartment. On August 8, 1980, Caroline issued a statement that the marriage was over and that she would file for divorce.

Monaco was the “family firm,” and when the Grimaldis were viewed badly by the press, it affected business. Caroline did not wait long after her separation from Junot to be seen with a parade of good-looking young men. The effect was to give the world the impression that at least one member of the Grimaldis cared little about her Catholic vows or her privileged position as a role model.

(Many years later Caroline would say: “When you’re young you make mistakes of course, but if you’re anybody else [other than a princess] you have time to sort it out for yourself. . . . I would rather have done things differently. I would rather have lived somewhere else and been left alone . . . . I’m fundamentally a lucky person without the littlest right to complain. But always in the back of my mind I had plans and other ideas. . . .”)

Feeling she had failed Caroline in some way, Grace now became almost obsessive in her tight control of Stephanie, who had blossomed into a beautiful fifteen-year-old. Stephanie and her mother were inseparable, a situation that was disturbing to Rainier who could see how terribly dependent the girl was upon Grace. Albert had grown into a handsome young man and was attending Amherst, where he had been very quickly accepted by his fellow students. But the press hounded him, and Albert was frequently photographed with different girls.

Rainier was known to be homophobic, and there are many reports of his sharp, disapproving comments about gay rights at dinner parties and social gatherings, and his rudeness to certain friends of Grace’s who were known to be homosexual. He was not entirely displeased that his son was attractive to and attracted by good-looking women. “He pushed Albert into sports and manly pastimes all through the boy’s youth,” one friend comments. But he was increasingly concerned that the public perception of his children could discourage the family tourist trade and investors and so affect the enterprising climate that had given the Principality the highest per capita income on the Continent.

Rainier did not approve of Grace’s driving a car. Her eyesight had grown weaker over the years, and he did not think she was a good driver to begin with. There was, in fact, little necessity for her ever to get behind the wheel of a car, for she had her own chauffeur, and if he was not available there was always someone on the Palace or her personal staff who could take his place. She also claimed that she hated driving. Nonetheless, from time to time she would set out alone in one of their cars, always with the explanation that it was less bother and more convenient at that moment. In truth, much as she disliked driving, it offered one of the few times that she could be by herself.

She owned a series of curious vehicles for a princess. During the late seventies her favorite private mode of transportation was a converted black London taxi that was big and commodious in the passenger compartment but had room only for the driver up front. She disposed of it when it was severely damaged after she hit another car broadside at the intersection that led up the hill to the Palace. No one was hurt but the accident unnerved her. “I’ll never drive again,” she told friends. “That should make Rainier very happy.”

A used 1971 metallic-green Land Rover (similar to a jeep) replaced the London taxi. From the time of the collision, Grace did not drive except on the vast private property at Marchais or Roc Agel. This gave many friends and members of the press the false impression that she had allowed her license to lapse and that she no longer ever drove a car, which would later create much confusion in the press.

On the morning of Friday, September 10, 1982, Stephanie returned to Monaco from a vacation in Antigua where she had suffered a serious water-skiing accident that had required fifteen stitches in her head. The chauffeur brought her up to Roc Agel from Nice Airport, and Grace immediately began hovering over her. Although Stephanie insisted she was all right, Grace wanted further X rays to be taken.

The weekend proved to be stressful. Business detained Rainier at the Palace on Saturday. Grace was preparing for a trip in ten days to England and then to the United States, where she would embark on a three-week tour of poetry readings (Irish poets mainly, with some of Shakespeare’s sonnets included), her newest involvement, the proceeds to go to charity. The project was finally approved by Rainier after several weeks of trying to get Grace to change her mind, his objection being more to the difficulties of such a trip in terms of security and of Grace’s comfort than to the project itself.

Albert was in Italy for a soccer match and would not return until late Sunday night. Caroline was departing for London on Sunday and Stephanie for Paris on Monday night to start her school term that following Wednesday. Grace was to accompany her, but with the news of Stephanie’s accident it was feared that the paparazzi would be out in full force and there would be no peace on the Avenue Foch. Arrangements had been made for them to stay for two nights at the Hotel Meurice in Paris to outwit the press. The plan would make things easier in one way, more complicated in another. Extra clothes had to be taken because the press would be watching the house on the Avenue Foch to see if anyone came in or out who might give a clue to where Grace and Stephanie might be.

But Grace’s main concern was Stephanie’s well-being. She remained adamant in her wish to have further X rays taken, and she was not at all sure that it was advisable for Stephanie to fly to Paris or to begin school so soon after the accident. At ten A.M. on Monday morning, September 13, the chauffeur drove the Land Rover from the garage to the front of the house. Although not yet old enough to have a license, Stephanie was permitted to drive through the grounds of Roc Agel. Normally she would have brought the car around, but because of her head wound, Grace did not think it was wise for her to do so. And Rainier, who was spending a few short hours at Roc Agel on Monday to relax, agreed.

The plan was for the chauffeur to drive them down to the Palace and then later to a doctor’s office for X rays. But after Grace had placed all the additional clothes they needed across the backseat of the Land Rover, she decided it would make matters simpler, since the car ride took only about fifteen minutes, if she drove. The chauffeur suggested he take them and then return for the clothes, but Grace insisted that she and Stephanie go alone and then he could bring Rainier down later. Grace’s insistence indicated that she might want some time alone with Stephanie to discuss something personal. Mother and daughter set off a few moments later, Princesse Grace, wearing her glasses, behind the wheel of the car.

The sun was glaring, making the precipitous road difficult to navigate. Stephanie later told doctors that about five minutes down the steep incline from Roc Agel her mother complained of a sudden pain in her head and then slumped over the wheel of the car just as she was about to negotiate a particularly sharp, steep hairpin turn which, Stephanie said, required her “to brake very hard and fight with the steering wheel to follow the road 150 degrees to the right.” Stephanie, seeing Grace was not in control, tried to apply the hand brake but was unable to do so. The car careened straight toward the edge of the cliff where a small safety barrier about a foot high separated the road from a sheer drop of 120 feet. The Land Rover crashed through the barrier and plunged over the side of the mountain.

The car came to rest in the field of a farm at the foot of the cliff. Neither Grace nor Stephanie had fastened her seat belt. In the downhill fall Grace had been thrown into the backseat, Stephanie onto the floor under the glove compartment of the front seat. She managed to get the door open by kicking at it with both her legs. Already half off its hinges, it fell to the ground and Stephanie stumbled out on the passenger side. Smoke was coming from the car. A woman who lived on the property was standing nearby, too stunned to move. “Please get help! Call the Palace! I’m Princesse Stephanie, call my father and get help,” Stephanie screamed. “My mother’s in the car! Call my father!” The farmer who owned the property had now joined her and asked who her father was. Stephanie explained and began to sob, “Call my father at the Palace.”

The woman ran back into the house to call an ambulance and the fire department while the man led Stephanie away from the Land Rover, which all of them feared was about to blow up. Before the ambulance came to take them to Princesse Grace Hospital, Stephanie collapsed. Her head wound had opened and she had suffered spinal injuries. Stephanie had either been too upset to remember or had not known that her father had remained at Roc Agel, and by the time he was notified, Grace and Stephanie were on their way to the hospital, where he arrived not long after.

The Princesse Grace Hospital had recently undergone minor refurbishment and the installation of new equipment. Even so, it was not up to the standard of a modern institution. Not long before, Lisette de Ramel had been scheduled to have her twin sons in the hospital and had gone to look at the facilities. “It was so dirty and ill-kept that I decided I would do anything rather than have my children there,” she says. “After they were born, I told [Princesse Grace] that I had gone to a small Communist town in France to have the twins because I would not go to her hospital. ‘Well, we’re taking care of that right now,’ she assured me, and I knew she really cared and work had begun.”

Grace was brought into the emergency department unconscious, a thin trickle of blood seeping from her mouth—the ominous sign of a brain hemorrhage. While a team of two assistant surgeons, a radiologist, a neurologist and four nurses attended to her wounds, the doctor in charge, Professor Charles Chatelin, telephoned one of France’s leading neurosurgeons, Professor Jean Duplay, at Pasteur Hospital in Nice. Duplay arrived by helicopter half an hour later. He instantly requested that a brain scan be done to ascertain the extent of the damage—but Princesse Grace Hospital did not have the equipment, and the only brain scanner in Monaco was in the private clinic of Dr. Michael Moreau.

In deep shock, Grace could have died if she was moved. The doctors agreed that first her general condition had to be stabilized. Eight hours later the short ambulance journey was undertaken. The diagnosis following the scan was that her brain response was totally and irreparably damaged. The first reports of the tragic accident did not reveal the gravity of Princesse Grace’s condition. Until the brain scan could be conducted, the medical team that attended her could not be sure how badly her brain had been damaged. However, they did know that she was in far more critical condition than was reported. Members of the Palace staff say the secrecy was necessary because Princess Caroline, who was on her way back to Monaco from England, had to be told first.

The following evening Caroline, Rainier and Albert were at Grace’s bedside in the hospital where she had been returned after the scan. They had been told that her brain had ceased to function. The family had gathered earlier in Stephanie’s hospital room and Rainier and the three children “agreed that there was no point in continuing life artificially.” Grace was moved to a white-walled room filled with flowers; and at 10:10 P.M., September 14, 1982, each member of the family having said a last farewell, the life-support system was switched off.

22

WHEN RAINIER had inherited the throne thirty-three years earlier, Monaco was viewed by many as “an exotic backwater of stucco villas, multimillionaires, of Aristotle Onassis, of fortunes made and thrown away on the gambling tables.” In looking back, Monégasques could date the Principality’s history in the twentieth century as Before Grace and After Grace. Her marriage to Rainier had been the turning point in Monaco’s esteem. She had brought dignity and international celebrity to the Principality, givings it a recognition factor apart from the gaming tables at Monte Carlo.

While Grace gave her adopted country a sense of pride, Rainier had turned Monaco into a thriving business concern, reclaiming land from the sea and creating an all-season international conference center and playground, “not only for the wealthy but for the not-so-rich, though far from impoverished tourist.” In truth, his accomplishments far outstripped hers. He had managed to keep out the vultures—the cutthroat gamblers and building contractors, the mass tourist industry and the mafia. He had emerged somewhat bruised in 1963 from his encounter with President Charles de Gaulle, but he had won in his power struggle with Onassis. But it had still been Grace who held the Principality together as a community. The doyens of Monégasque society (those women who had inherited, or who married men who had inherited, the fortunes that had been made in Monte Carlo during the golden years at the turn of the century, or who were members of European aristocracy resident there since that time), had not made life easy for her. Despite her status, they had been snobbish toward her and Grace had felt that they constantly stood in judgment of her, criticizing the way she spoke French, decorated her apartments in the Palace, her family’s lace-curtain Irish background, and her own career as a film star.

But upon her death it was plain to see that the people had held her in very special regard. She was mourned as no reigning monarch in Monaco’s recent history had been. When the bulletin saying she had died was released on Radio Monte Carlo, many Monégasques and residents pulled their cars to the side of the road and could be seen crying, and people on the street openly wept. The years of Grace’s reign as Princesse de Monaco had brought pride to the average Monégasque for her elegance, beauty and charm and they had loved her because of her compassion for the elderly, the young and the ill. She had helped set up senior-citizen groups, convalescent homes and a ballet school for children. She was only fifty-three years old at the time of her death, and without a history of any serious illness; no one was prepared for the suddenness of it.

They looked to Rainier for strength and leadership, but for many weeks after Grace’s death he appeared a broken man. Their fears mounted. A deep rift existed between President Mitterrand’s Socialist France and the anachronistic Principality of Monaco, and some old-timers still feared a French takeover, prompted by resentment of tax-free millionaires living on their back doorstep.

There was also concern that the Princesse de Monaco’s death would cause the stream of transatlantic visitors she attracted to Monaco, and upon whom the Monégasques largely relied for their prosperity, to dry up. To add to their consternation, the press published an unsubstantiated story that Rainier’s grief was so overwhelming that he was contemplating abdicating in favor of Albert, whom everyone believed to be too young and inexperienced for the job of Prince de Monaco.

The royal funeral service was held on Saturday, September 18, in the Byzantine Cathedral where Grace and Rainier had been married twenty-six years earlier. On a dais by the altar, under the glare of television lights, Rainier, dazed and unable to control his grief, sat slumped in a chair between Caroline (swathed in black, a mantilla covering her face) and Albert (Stephanie remained hospitalized with her injuries), and directly behind them sat Grace’s brother Kell and her sisters, Lizanne and Peggy. Grace’s coffin, draped in the red and white Monégasque flag, was close by.

She was not snubbed in death as she believed she had been in life. The Princess of Wales was there to represent Great Britain; Madame Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of the French President, and Mrs. Nancy Reagan on behalf of the American government sat side by side in the front row of the congregation, along with King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium, ex-Queen Anne Marie of Greece, Prince Philip of Liechtenstein, Prince Fuad of Egypt, Prince Albert of Belgium, Princess Feriad of Jordan, Prince Karim Aga Khan and Begum Salima, Princess Bénédicte of Denmark, Prince Bertil of Sweden, Prince Bernhardt of Holland, Princess Paola of Liège, Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg, ex-Empress Farah Diba of Iran, and Madame Claude Pompidou, widow of the former President of France.

Seated behind the royals were four of Grace’s bridesmaids, Judith (Kanter) Quine, Maree Frisby, Rita Gam and Bettina Thompson Gray; Grace’s former Hollywood agent, Jay Kanter; Cary Grant and the many other Hollywood friends Grace had maintained from her former life. The mourners’ list gave strong proof of just how important Grace Kelly Grimaldi, Princesse de Monaco, had been to the rise in stature of her husband’s Principality.

The suddenness of her mother’s death, the shock of seeing her father—who had always seemed the strong member of the family—so visibly shaken, the sight of her usually exuberant sister in a deep state of depression brought out all of Caroline’s better instincts. Within a matter of weeks she appeared to have stepped—however lightly—into her mother’s shoes. “It was incredible,” one close observer noted. “Caroline seemed to carry herself differently—with undeniable regal bearing. She looked more mature. She spoke more confidently. Her sadness was evident but it was controlled.”

For many months to follow, Rainier was seldom seen in public without Caroline at his side. Occasionally, one could glimpse his hand touch hers as though to draw strength from her fortitude. And as time progressed, Caroline became Monaco’s official hostess, greeting important visitors and attending, sometimes with her father, sometimes alone, galas, dedications, inaugurations, always with regal bearing. But she could not help realizing that her position by her father’s side could only be temporary.

Eventually—and with Albert now of marriageable age it seemed sooner rather than later—Albert’s wife would supersede Caroline in position. Then there was always the possibility that Rainier would remarry. Her aunt Antoinette, who had divorced Jean-Charles Rey and married ballet dancer John Gilpin of the Royal Festival Ballet in London (who was to die of a heart attack just forty days later) was an example of what Caroline did not want her life to become—a royal appendage who did little worthwhile with her life, and was consumed by ambition and frustrated by envy and resentment. Caroline longed for a home and family of her own. She also tried her hand at writing, beginning with a series of articles for French magazines. In one, she gave a clear picture of the problem she thought was most felt by her father’s subjects—the invading army of visitors that occupied so much space in the tiny Principality.

“The rules are simple,” she wrote. “If you’re part of the jetset.. . you have dinner on your terrace of the Hôtel de Paris and fiddle with your caviar on your plate. The buses drive by endlessly. The people in them stare and point. . . . So on one hand there are groups who stagger out of hot, smelly buses. On the other there are people trying to be beautiful and desperately cool, swelling with pride at the mere thought of showing off. Where do the Monégasques fit into this social jigsaw? Quite frankly, I don’t think we do. . . .”

After Stephanie recovered from her injuries, she returned to school in Paris, and was soon spending most of her time away from Monaco, either in France or in California. She had some of her mother’s artistic leanings and, to Rainier’s disappointment (for he would rather have seen her embark on a less public vocation), only recently envisioned a stage career, preferably in music, although her pleasant voice was professionally untrained. She, perhaps even more than her siblings, missed her mother, and she turned to Caroline for the support that she had lost. But her life could never be the same. And, for a long time, she not only had to deal with constant false accusations in the press about her degree of culpability in the accident but with her own sense of failure in not turning the wheel or pulling the hand brake in time to avert the tragedy.

“There was a lot of pressure on me because everyone was saying that I had been driving the car. . . that I’d killed my mother. It’s not easy when you’re 17 to live with that,” she told her mother’s friend and biographer, Jeffrey Robinson. “After a while you can’t help feeling guilty. Everybody looks at you and you know they’re thinking, how come she’s still around and Grace is dead? . . . I needed my mother a lot when I lost her. And my dad was so lost without her. I felt so alone. I just went off and did my own thing.”

Within a year of her mother’s death Caroline married twenty-seven-year-old Stefano Casiraghi. A tall, blond, intelligent Milanese, the son of a wealthy Italian industrialist, Casiraghi was, according to one of his good friends, Mauro Ravenna, “arrogant but shy. A born manager, an indisputable professional [in business dealings and in his hobby of power-boat racing], demanding and always well prepared. [Racing] was a passion with him. . . . He had thousands of ideas for ventures—a sharp mind for business. . . .” Another friend called him “an intense, fervent kind of man.” There is no doubt that his electric personality had a strong effect on Caroline. Many of her former café society friends were dropped, and her life quickly revolved around Casiraghi.

Caroline had divorced Junot and in the spring of 1984 been wed in Monaco in a quiet ceremony outside the Church when she was four months pregnant with Casiraghi’s child, a fact that was well-publicized in the press and did not help her public image. The choice of a civil divorce and marriage had not been easy. Since her mother’s death Caroline had become the most overtly religious member of the Grimaldis; and it greatly disturbed her that without an annulment of her first marriage, she could not take communion. But shortly before Caroline had separated from Junot, Grace had told her (as she had once told Lisette Prince de Ramel about her difficult marriage) that she must divorce Junot or her life would be destroyed.

Her mother had seemed to imply that things would be worked out with the Vatican and an annulment would be forthcoming. That had not yet happened, but Caroline was deeply in love with Casiraghi and he with her. They settled in a house on the Rock; Stefano went into real estate and boat building. A son, Andrea, was born in 1984, a daughter, Charlotte, in 1986, and another son, Pierre, in 1987. The children were being brought up to speak French, Italian and English, and as the Casiraghis lived most of the year in Monaco (they also spent time in Paris), the children saw Rainier often and were a great source of happiness to him.

Caroline took over most of Grace’s work—the president’s chair at the Monaco Arts Festival, the directorship of the Monaco branch of the Princesse Grace Foundation and the Princesse Grace Dance Academy (for young ballet dancers) and the formation of a professional ballet company for the Monte Carlo Opera. Then there were the Garden Club, the Girl Guides and the Princesse Grace Irish Library.

“It’s because I’m here. I have a family and I’m here,” Caroline told Robinson, who then asked, what about “all those stories about wanting to take over the throne?”

“You mean the ones that say that I’m manoeuvering in dark corridors in the Palace? All that intrigue and counter-intrigue. Richelieu and Mazarin look like kids compared to what I’m apparently doing. . . . Frankly I can’t wait for Albert to get married. . . . Of course he keeps telling me he has to find the right girl. Well at this stage . . . I think I’d settle for Joan Collins.”

Albert had served six months with the French Navy after his graduation from Amherst, and then he had spent five months with the New York office of the Morgan Guaranty Trust Company as a management trainee. After that there had been short stays of employment with Wells, Rich and Green Advertising in New York (his idea, for he thought he would like the profession) and in the marketing department at the champagne makers Moët et Chandon (Rainier’s suggestion so that Albert could “get a feel for the way a major French conglomerate operated”).

In 1986 Albert returned to Monaco, and his father involved him as much as possible in the running of the Principality. Rainier had regained his equilibrium. He had friendships, and perhaps romantic liaisons (associates say this is the case), with some suitable women—one a close friend of Grace’s, another a member of the international set. But remarriage was never discussed. He had truly loved Grace. Her death had wounded him deeply and he seemed unable, or unwilling, to let go of the pain or to distance himself from her by marrying again.

He threw himself wholeheartedly into his business ventures and the further development of Monaco. When Rainier began the work of reclaiming land from the sea for his Principality, there had been strong objection to the project by France, which was concerned that the air and sea rights on their border, set forth in the treaty Albert I had made with France, might be infringed upon. In January 1984, President Mitterrand of France paid Rainier an official visit. The two men were seen smiling in a relaxed manner together. Shortly after their meeting a new treaty with France was ratified by Rainier that better defined Monaco’s air and sea rights so that there would be no question that land he was reclaiming from the sea belonged to the Principality.

Monégasques breathed easier. Rainier appeared to be his old self again, confident and an excellent diplomat. He had, after all, brought Monaco from being a “sunny place for shady people” to a nation, however small, that was no longer solely dependent upon a Casino for survival. With a permanent population of only 30,000 (of which only 4,700 were Monégasques), the Principality had an embassy, consulate, or full-time representative in fifty-one countries, including the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, West Germany and Spain. That it did not have a seat in the United Nations rankled. Rainier had tried to obtain a seat with an independent vote from that of France; but the 1919 Treaty of Versailles between France and Monaco states that in return for France’s undertaking to defend the independence and sovereignty of the Principality, its reigning monarch undertook to exercise its rights in conformity with French interests. The United Nations, therefore, refused to agree that the Principality’s vote could be independent of France, and Rainier abandoned the idea.

With a police force of 450 (about three times the police-to-population ratio of other Western countries because of Rainier’s determination to keep down the crime rate), he has been accused of playing “Big Brother.” “This isn’t a police state,” he insists. “I’ve heard that comment but I don’t agree with it at all. Come on, what is a police state? A place where the police interfere with your life, with whom you see, with what you say, with what you think. That isn’t the case here.” Nonetheless, privileges such as residency or business interests in the Principality have been denied or removed by royal edict from time to time without contest because, despite the Principality having a Constitution, it is an absolute monarchy.

Monaco’s present Constitution is based on the one originally drawn by Albert I in 1911, revised by him in 1917 and given a more liberal character by Rainier on December 17, 1962. But the first chapter of the Constitution stipulates that the executive power derives from the high authority of the reigning Prince, who not only represents Monaco in all its dealings with foreign powers but signs and ratifies all treaties and appoints his own Minister of State and three Governmental Councillors, responsible for Finance and the Economy, the Interior, and Public Works and Social Affairs.

Even the judicial powers belong to the Sovereign, who delegates all exercise of them to the courts and tribunals, but the Constitution guarantees the independence of the judges and their rulings. Although Monaco is a Roman Catholic country, freedom for other religious denominations is guaranteed, as well as public education for all children from six to sixteen years of age. The Constitution also established the National Council. Still, the Council shares legislative power with the Sovereign, who can override or veto their suggestions or decisions. Monaco’s eighty-five man army is composed entirely of French nationals seconded from the French Army (an arrangement inaugurated in 1861 by Prince Charles) to eliminate the possibility of a military coup d’état. (This had not stopped Antoinette from plotting to overthrow Rainier.)

By 1990 the Grimaldis appeared as solid as the Rock they ruled over. There had been serious rivalries between Caroline and Albert before her second marriage, with Caroline threatening to leave Monaco completely if he married and his wife became First Lady. Rainier had entered the fray and there was talk about changing Monaco’s Constitution to allow her to inherit. Casiraghi’s death ended the discussions. Rainier and his immediate family were a closed, tight circle, each drawing strength from the others. Stephanie, who had become a model-cum-entrepreneur-cum-punk-singer-cum-pop-singer, was difficult for Rainier to control. He had left the raising and discificult for Rainier to control. He had left the raising and discipline of his daughters to Grace and seemed to be at a loss as to how to cope with Stephanie’s rebellious nature. He felt her romantic affairs were entirely too public and the men she saw unsuitable for a young princess. But Stephanie still suffered emotional depression from the effects of the car crash that had killed her mother and despite her world travels and Rainier’s disapproval of her life-style, she remained close to him, warm and loving, and he treated her with considerable tolerance.

Only thirty-three years old in 1990 when she was widowed, Caroline could hardly be called the matriarch of the Grimaldis, but she began to take on the mantle. Grace’s impact on Monaco was everywhere one looked, her name carved in stone, her beauty and glamour remembered by all. The Monégasques would recall her ever more radiantly each year. In fact, an unsuccessful attempt was made to have her made a saint.

Caroline did not rebound from the loss of her husband with the same resilience that she had shown upon her mother’s death. In the early days of her widowhood she had learned not only that her husband had a mistress all along, but that he was deeply in debt. To protect the investments he had left her, she put up $2 million of her jewels as collateral to the banks and worked successfully to rescue her inheritance from his creditors. Rainier once again became the mainspring of his family. He was undeniably not only a vigorous Prince de Monaco, but the strong head of his family. He had been the one to break the news of Stefano’s death to his grandchildren and he remains a potent presence in their lives and in Caroline’s as well, dining with her at her home two or three times a week, and spending weekends at Roc Agel with the young widow and her children.

A year after her husband’s death Caroline showed no sign of emerging from the strict mourning she had imposed upon herself. In a ritualistic gesture she had cut off her formerly luxuriant hair, had not taken to wearing makeup again and dressed in an austere fashion that was diametrically opposed to her once flamboyant image. More vital to the Monégasques, she displayed no inclination to return to her role as the Principality’s First Lady. When photographed surreptitiously by the press, she presented a somber figure, the radiant smile gone. But during this time she developed a close relationship with the French actor Vincent Lindon.

Monégasques were hopeful that Caroline had finally put aside her public mourning when they read that she had appeared in December 1991 with Prince Rainier and Albert and Stephanie at a benefit held at the Louvre Museum in Paris to honor her mother and Georges Pompidou, the late president of France. Elegantly dressed in a floor-length black velvet gown, she had entered the room on the arm of her father, smiled cordially at the five hundred guests, and spoken easily to many of them.

After this one public appearance, she withdrew once again into seclusion, having now to face rumors that Casiraghi had been murdered. His co-pilot, Patrice Innocenti, claimed that “Stefano had many enemies. Some of them drank to his death with champagne that day in Monte Carlo.” However, a police investigation concluded that his death was a tragic accident. (“Everything was going well,” Innocenti stated in a press interview a year after the investigation. “Then, in a fraction of a second, I felt the boat rising up and flipping over. . . . We had been the victims of a [huge] wave. .. . The boat was raised up two or three metres, flipped over and then hit the sea on Ste-fano’s side. I felt the thud, it was tremendous.”) The investigation had been hard for Caroline to bear.

Albert stepped into the breach that Caroline’s withdrawal from public life created and took on a higher profile. Constantly described in the press as “Europe’s most eligible bachelor,” he refuses to be rushed into making the wrong choice of a bride. The loss of Grace’s glamorous presence and Caroline’s prolonged mourning has cast a pall over Monaco. Whomever Albert marries will be expected to assume the roles his older sister and his mother have played so brilliantly as hostess for visiting celebrities and at the Principality’s festivities; and then as Princesse de Monaco when he ascends the throne. Finding the right wife is not an easy task. Meanwhile, Albert remains an heir-in-waiting, and the only male in the direct Grimaldi line who, as things stand at present, can inherit the throne. Caroline has petitioned her father for permission to marry Lindon. The conditions are not easy. Lindon would have to convert from Judaism to Catholicism and sign a contract that would deny him any title or custody of the children in the event of a divorce. He will also have to adopt the name of Grimaldi and make his home with Caroline in Monaco. The Vatican finally granted Caroline an annulment from Junot on February 26, 1992. The decision was confirmed by a second commission on June 20, clearing the way for her to marry in the Catholic Church. With their father dead, the children’s illegitimate status remains, but Lindon (or whoever Caroline does marry) could adopt her three children and thus legitimize their position.

Caroline’s problems now seem resolved and the Grimaldi line more secure. But Monaco has now to face a minor scandal with Stephanie, unmarried and about to deliver a child by a live-in lover who was a former Palace guard and whom she claims she will marry after the birth of her child. But the Grimaldis have survived nearly eight hundred years in their position of power. While other nations crumble around them, political parties disappear, and economic despair is on the rise, Monaco and the Monégasques prosper under the ruling hand of the man, Prince Rainier III, who remains the only absolute monarch in Europe. The Grimaldis are the oldest ruling dynasty in the world despite the miniature size of the country, which might easily have roused a large nation to seize it. They are a family of survivors of legendary stature.

The Grimaldis and Monaco—inseparable and one.

Footnote

¹The young lions had been banished to the Palace zoo when one of them almost devoured a happily fast-footed Chihuahua belonging to a visitor.