It has been a difficult year for Prince Albert and Princess Charlene, who have been forced to spend most of their time apart while she received treatment for a mysterious medical condition.
Although the pair have long denied rumours of a split, could it be their marriage was doomed from the start?
WARNING: This article mentions rape and sexual assult
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Some speculate their misery flows from an ancient curse that has plagued the House of Grimaldi for its 700-year reign. Legend has it that in the 13th century, Albert’s ancestor Prince Rainier I kidnapped and raped a Flemish maiden.
She put a hex on the prince’s descendants. “Never will a Grimaldi find true happiness in marriage,” she is said to have decreed.
Examples of the family’s bad luck date back to the 1600s when Prince Louis I’s wife Catherine Charlotte humiliated her husband by leaving to become the mistress of the French King Louis XIV.
The curse appears to have struck again when Charlene failed to catch her flight home in May 2021 after what was supposed to be a short trip to South Africa to promote animal conservation.
She went on to spend over half the year separated from her 7-year-old twins, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, as she convalesced from a “severe sinus infection” which prevented her from flying.
Just days after the frail-looking princess’s November homecoming, Charlene fled again – this time to a private clinic in Switzerland.
“[She] was overwhelmed and couldn’t face duties, life in general, or even family life,” Albert said. “She realised herself that she needed treatment.”
The timing of Charlene’s ailments has been met with suspicion after it coincided with court proceedings against Albert. The Monegasque ruler, 64, was slapped with a paternity suit in December 2020 by a Brazilian woman who alleges he fathered her 16-year-old daughter while dating Charlene.
The legal battle is just the latest episode in the soap opera-worthy real-life drama for the couple. Their marriage got off to a rocky start in 2011 when Charlene sobbed as she made her way down the aisle, with Albert begging her, “Don’t cry”.
The emotional scenes followed reports that the Olympic swimmer, 44, had been caught trying to flee Monaco three times in the days leading up to her wedding, after reports of Albert’s unfaithfulness.
On the few occasions that Charlene has put in an appearance in Monaco in the decade since the wedding, her tragic demeanour earned her the nickname ‘sad princess’.
“People are very quick to say, ‘Oh, why isn’t she smiling in the photos?’” Charlene has acknowledged. “Well, sometimes it’s hard to smile. They don’t know what’s going on in the background.”
When screen-queen Grace Kelly gave up her Hollywood career and headed to the sun-drenched French Riviera principality in 1956 to marry Albert’s father, Prince Rainier III, many thought the Grimaldi bad luck had finally come to an end.
The former actress appeared to take to royal life with ease and the pair welcomed three children: Albert, and daughters Caroline and Stephanie.
But their love story came to an untimely end in 1982, when Grace was killed in a car accident at 52 after driving off a mountainside while taking Stephanie to catch a train.
Grace and Rainier’s romance is often considered a modern fairytale, but the reality wasn’t so rose-tinted. Biographer Wendy Leigh alleges Rainier had taken at least three mistresses within a month of the wedding.
Grace, not surprisingly, felt “humiliated”.
“The idea of my life as a fairytale is itself a fairytale,” she admitted during her short life.
Her daughters haven’t fared well in matters of the heart either. Princess Caroline, 65, has headed down the aisle three times. Her 1978 union with Parisian banker Philippe Junot lasted just two years.
She was widowed in her second marriage, when the “love of her life”, Stefano Casiraghi, was killed at 30 in a speedboat accident while defending his World Powerboat Championship title in 1990.
Today she is wed on paper only to third husband, Prince Ernst August. Caroline has been estranged from the Hanoverian prince, 68, since 2009 after he was fined for causing actual bodily harm to a hotel manager in a fight over noise from a disco.
Her little sister Stephanie, 57, caused a huge scandal when the unwed princess fell pregnant to bodyguard Daniel Ducruet in 1992.
The pair had two kids by the time they wed in 1995, but divorced 14 months later – after he was photographed in a naked poolside tryst with a topless model. Stephanie’s father had him banned from Monaco!
Running away to join the circus didn’t work out well for Stephanie either. Her next two romances – to an acrobat and an elephant trainer – failed to last even two years. She has a pragmatic explanation for her short unions: “I may be a princess, but above all, I’m a human being.”
If you or someone you know has been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help is always available. Call 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit their website.
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