Posts Tagged ‘Grimaldis’

The Aristocracy Succumbs to Morals

Posted in General on June 23rd, 2010 by Eugene Finerman – 2 Comments

Monaco’s Prince Albert to marry Charlene Wittstock

By  AP
news-general-20100623-EU.Monaco.Albert's.Engagement (The 52 year-old prince is the one on the left.)

PARIS — Prince Albert of Monaco is engaged to marry Charlene Wittstock, a former Olympic swimmer for South Africa, a union that will give this wealthy Mediterranean principality its first crown princess since American Grace Kelly died in 1982.
Succumbing to the bourgeois convention that some of one’s children should be legitimate, Bert Grimaldi will evidently try to protect the dynasty and his principality from the playboy sons of his idiotic (but good-looking) sisters.  
(The Renaissance art collection of Monaco–including Titians and El Grecos–was destroyed today when Count “Bobo” Grimaldi accidently ran over them with his Lamborghini.  The collection was in the Monaco National Museum, on the second floor.)
The insistence on legitimate heirs is a relatively new habit among the Grimaldis.  Louis II, the grandfather of Prince Rainier, never bothered to marry his mistress Marie.  She was only a cabaret singer, and perhaps her husband would have objected to the bigamy.  However, Prince Louis did recognize his daughter Charlotte as his heir.  With Monaco and a prince’s title as a dowry, Rainier’s father–the Count de Polignac–could overcome his pedigree prejudices.  He married Charlotte in March, 1920 and had a child by December of that year. 
That child was–and is–Princess Antoinette.  Her brother Rainier arrived in 1923.   Antoinette may well be the role model for her nieces Caroline and Stephanie.  She has four children, but only bothered to marry in time for the fourth. 
I wonder if the Dutch Calvinist family of Charlene Wittstock is going to be really thrilled with the Grimaldis.
p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day: