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Albert II, Prince of Monaco |
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His Serene Highness |
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Your Serene Highness |
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Sir |
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Albert II, Prince of Monaco (Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi; born 14 March
1958), styled His Serene Highness The
Sovereign Prince of Monaco, is the head of the House of Grimaldi and the current ruler of the Principality of
Monaco.
Early life
Born in Monaco, Albert attended the Albert I High School, graduating with distinction in
1976. Albert was a camper and later a counselor for six summers at camp Tecumseh on
Lake Winnipesaukee, Moultonborough, NH, USA, in the 1970s. He spent a year training in various princely duties, and enrolled at Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1977 as Albert Grimaldi, studying political science, economics, music, and English
literature, and also joined Chi Psi fraternity. He spent the summer of 1979 touring Europe and the Middle East with
the Amherst Glee Club and graduated in 1981 with a
Bachelor of Arts degree in political
science.
During school, Albert was an enthusiastic athlete, participating in cross
country, javelin throwing, handball,
judo, swimming, tennis,
rowing, sailing, skiing,
squash and fencing. He is a patron of Monaco's
football teams. He competed in the bobsled at the
1988, 1992, 1994, 1998, and 2002 Winter Olympics. He has been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1985. (His maternal grandfather John B. Kelly, Sr., and maternal uncle John B. Kelly,
Jr., were both Olympic medal winners in rowing and were actively involved in the
Olympic movement.) The press reported the prince refused any special treatment during his Olympic stints, and lived in the same
bare-bones quarters as all the other athletes.
On 25 October 2002, Albert visited Miami, Florida for a World Olympians Association
fund-raiser at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables. The group's mission was to have
the 100,000 Olympians get involved with their communities and talk to young athletes about dedication and training.
Regency
On 7 March 2005, Rainier III, Prince of Monaco was admitted to a hospital in the principality and on
22 March he was moved to A and E then intensive care. The Prince was being treated for
breathing, kidney, and heart trouble. On 31 March 2005, the
Palace of Monaco announced that Hereditary
Prince Albert would take over the duties of his father as Regent since Rainier was no longer able to exercise his sovereign functions. This decision was reached
by the Crown Council of Monaco, a body made up of notable local figures with
residual powers to make judgments about certain constitutional matters. The 47-year-old prince spent his first day as regent of
Monaco caring for his critically ill 81-year-old father, who was Europe’s longest-serving living monarch.
However, Albert's Regency, exercised in the name of the incapacitated Sovereign Prince Rainier III, lasted barely a week.
Accession
On 6 April 2005, Hereditary Prince Albert became Albert II,
Sovereign Prince of Monaco, upon the death of Prince Rainier III.
The first part of Prince Albert II's enthronement as ruler of the Principality of Monaco
was on 12 July 2005, after the end of the three-month
mourning period for his father. A morning mass at Saint
Nicholas Cathedral led by the archbishop of Monaco, Monsignor Bernard Barsi, formally marked the
beginning of his reign. Afterward Albert II returned to the princely palace to host a garden party for 7,000 Monegasques born in
the principality. In the courtyard, the Prince was presented with two keys of the city as a symbol of his investiture. The evening ended with a spectacular fireworks display on
the waterfront.
The second part of his investiture was on 19 November 2005.
Albert was enthroned at Saint Nicholas Cathedral. His family was there in attendance, including his elder sister (and now his
heir) Princess Caroline with her husband Ernst, Prince of Hanover and three of her four children, Andrea, Pierre and Charlotte; as well as his younger sister Princess
Stéphanie, his paternal aunt Princess Antoinette, Baroness of
Massy, his godson, Baron Jean-Léonard Taubert-Natta de Massy,
and his cousin Elisabeth-Anne de Massy. Royalty from 16 delegations were present
for the festivities throughout the country. The evening ended with an opera performance in Monte-Carlo.
Albert's reign
Albert continues the policy, initiated by previous rulers of the statelet, of using his
position to draw the world's attention to the need to protect the (marine) environment. Just like his great-great-grandfather
Albert I he traveled to Spitsbergen in July 2005. During this trip he visited
the glaciers "Lillihöök" and "Monaco". Prince Albert II also engaged in an Arctic expedition,
reaching the North Pole on Easter, 16 April 2006.[1] As a result, he is the first incumbent head of state to have reached the North Pole.
The prince is also a Global Advisor to Orphans International.
Bachelorhood
Over the years, there has been much discussion of the prince's continued bachelor status. Although he has received much press
attention for dating well-known fashion models and actresses, including Angie Everhart,
Catherine Oxenberg, Brooke Shields,
Claudia Schiffer, and Victoria Zdrok, his
apparent disinclination to marry gave rise to rumors that he is gay. Prince Albert has consistently
denied this suggestion, most notably in a 1994 interview published in the French magazine
Madame Figaro. "At first it was amusing," he said, "but it becomes very irritating in
the long term to hear people say that I am homosexual."[2]
He has since confirmed that he is the father of two children.
In October 2005, German magazine Bunte reported that Prince Albert was dating Telma Ortiz Rocasolano, a sister-in-law of Spain's Crown Prince Felipe. However, in November, 2005 the Prince instructed his lawyer, Thierry
Lacoste to commence legal proceedings against French newspaper France Dimanche for violation of
privacy and false information regarding the story.
On 10 February 2006, at the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter
Olympics, Prince Albert was accompanied by former South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock. They were seen again together at the Monaco Grand Prix. In August 2006, she attended the annual Red Cross Ball in the presence of the
Princely Family again fuelling speculation about their relationship.
Children born out of wedlock
Jazmin Grace Grimaldi
In 1992, a California woman, Tamara Rotolo, filed a
paternity suit against the prince, claiming that he was the father of her daughter, whom
she named Jazmin Grace Grimaldi. Prince Albert was also listed as the father on
the child's Riverside County, California, birth certificate.[3] and the child was legally surnamed Grimaldi. However, the case,
which went to trial in 1993, eventually was dismissed by Superior Court Judge Graham Anderson Cribbs, who claimed that there was
"insufficient contact between Albert and the state of California to justify hearing a suit there"[4] agreeing with an assertion by the prince's lawyer, Stanley Arkin, that the
California court had no jurisdiction.
In court documents and legal depositions, Case#IND78459 in Riverside County Superior Court Family Law Division under Superior
Court Judge Graham Anderson Cribbs, Prince Albert admitted that he had been with Tamara Rotolo, who was traveling with friend,
Barbara Welker (per her deposition filed with the court), in Monaco on "a couple of occasions" in
July 1991. (The child had been born approximately nine months later, on 4
March 1992.) As reported by a local newspaper covering the case, "Arkin asserted that the
Riverside County court had no jurisdiction in the case since the romantic encounter supposedly occurred in Monaco and Albert has
had no contacts with California that relate to the issues in the suit."[5]
On 31 May 2006, after DNA test results confirmed the child's parentage, Prince Albert admitted, in a statement from his
lawyer, that he is Jazmin's father. He also extended an invitation for the girl to study and live in Monaco.
According to Le Figaro, Jazmin Grace Grimaldi is "mature, sweet and intelligent" and an
honor student at St. Margaret's Episcopal School. Per the school
website, she is currently enrolled in a private school in the San Juan
Capistrano, California, California area and resides in San Juan Capistrano, California.
Her mother is a real-estate agent.
Alexandre Coste
In May 2005, Nicole Coste, a former Air France flight attendant from Togo, claimed that her youngest son, whom she calls Alexandre Éric
Stéphane Coste, is Prince Albert's son, proven by DNA tests conducted by Swiss technicians working on orders from
the Monegasque government. She further claimed the prince had signed a notarized
certificate confirming paternity but that she had not received a copy of it. The French weekly Paris Match published a ten-page interview with Coste and included photographs of the prince holding and
feeding the child. Coste also told Paris Match that she was living in the prince's Paris apartment and receiving an
allowance from him while pretending to be the girlfriend of one of his friends in order to maintain privacy. She also said that
the prince had last seen the boy in February 2005. A spokesman for Prince Albert had no comment,
though upon news of Coste's claims, the prince's lawyer, Thierry Lacoste, announced that "A judicial strategy will be determined
within the next few days."
In mid-May 2005, Lacoste announced that as a result of the international publicity over the
revelations of the prince's son, Prince Albert is suing the Daily Mail,
Bunte, and Paris Match for delving too deeply into his private life.
On 6 July 2005, a few days before he was enthroned on
12 July, Albert II officially confirmed via his lawyer Thierry Lacoste that the 22-month-old was
his biological son.[6]
Additional paternity suit
An earlier paternity suit, brought by Bea Fiedler, a German topless model whom the
Daily Telegraph described as a "sex-film star", reportedly was dismissed. A
blood test, which was refused by the judge, did not prove that the prince was the father of Fiedler's son, Daniel.[7]
Succession issues
As Rainier III's health declined, his son's lack of legitimate children became a matter of public and political concern, due
to the legal and international consequences in the event Albert were to die without lawful descendants while reigning. Prior to
2002, Monaco's constitution specified that only the last reigning
prince's "direct and legitimate" descendants could inherit the crown.[8] Therefore, Albert's sisters were due to lose their succession rights once their brother mounted the
throne, leaving the Grimaldi dynasty to face extinction if Albert failed to produce a child
within marriage or by adoption. Nor could a reigning or hereditary prince adopt an heir prior to age 50, according to a
1918 law.[9] (This situation
did not arise in Rainier's case, as he succeeded his maternal grandfather Louis
II, rather than a collateral
relative.)[10]
On 2 April 2002 Monaco passed Princely Law 1.249 which provides
that if a reigning prince dies without surviving legitimate issue, the throne passes to his siblings and their descendants
according to the principle of male-preference primogeniture.[11] In October 2005, (after Albert's accession to the throne) this law took full
effect when ratified by France, pursuant to the 1918
Franco-Monégasque Treaty, which had stipulated that Monaco would become a French protectorate if the throne fell vacant.[12] His sisters and their legitimate children thereby re-acquired the right to succeed Albert upon the
throne if the occasion arises, while the monarch lost the right to adopt an heir.[13]
Albert's illegitimate son, Eric Alexandre, or daughter, Jazmin Grace, could acquire claims to the throne ahead of all others
currently in the order of succession if Monaco's constitution were changed to that
effect. In Eric Alexandre's case, he would also be legitimated and automatically become
Monaco's heir apparent under current law if Albert were to marry his mother. But in a 2005
exchange with U.S. interviewer Larry King, he said
this will not happen.
In Jazmin's case, however, Albert's marrying the mother would probably not legitimate her nor give her a place in the line of
succession, as she would likely be considered an "adulterine" child. The man to whom her mother
had been married since 1987, David Schumacher, filed for a divorce from Rotolo on 13
September 1991 in California, according to a San Diego Union-Tribune article by Jeff Wilson of the Associated Press. He cited as grounds "irreconcilable differences", and Rotolo did not contest the
petition, the couple having been separated since April 1989.
Albert has said neither of his children will be eligible for the throne in statements confirming their paternity.[1][6] As of July 2007, Caroline, Princess of
Hanover, remains first in the line of succession to the
Monegasque throne. Though she is only the heiress-presumptive and not
heiress-apparent, Caroline is the Hereditary Princess of Monaco according to the
Grimaldi house law.[14]
Until Albert should have legitimate descendants born of a recognized marriage, Caroline's eldest son, the untitled
Andrea Casiraghi, is second in line to the throne.
Environmental issues
The year 2007 has been declared as (International) Year of
the Dolphin - (http://www.yod2007.org) by the
United Nations and UNEP
(United Nations Environment Programme). The UN Convention on Migratory Species, together with its
specialized agreements on dolphin conservation ACCOBAMS and ASCOBANS and the WDCS (Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society) have proposed 2007 as the
Year of the Dolphin ('YOD')).
(International) Patron of the 'Year of the Dolphin' is H.S.H. Prince Albert II of Monaco. He has
launched the start of the year on 17 September 2006: "The
Year of the Dolphin gives me the opportunity to renew my firm commitment towards protecting marine biodiversity. With this strong
initiative we can make a difference to save these fascinating marine mammals from the brink of extinction."
Titles
Albert has held two positions from birth:
As Prince, his official shortened title is His Serene Highness Albert II,
Sovereign Prince of Monaco; this does not include the many other styles claimed by the Grimaldi family (see Sovereign Prince of Monaco for a complete list of titles).
Ancestry
Notes
- ^ a b Albert, à nouveau
père
- ^ "Madame Figaro", 1994; reported in Daily Mail, 13 August 1994, page 17
- ^ according to the website of the Desert
Sun, a newspaper in Palm Springs
- ^ Evening Standard article,
24 March 1993, page 20
- ^ "Madame Figaro", 1994; reported in
Daily Mail, 13 August 1994,
page 17.
- ^ a b Monaco prince admits love child
- ^ "Bea in His Bonnet," "Daily
Telegraph", 29 July 1987. Also "Sunday Mirror", 8 March 1998, pages 1+
- ^ Status of Monaco. Retrieved on 20 June 2007.
- ^ Succession Crisis of 1918. Retrieved on 20 June 2007.
- ^ Succession Crisis of 1918. Retrieved on 20 June 2007.
- ^ The Constitution (2002). Retrieved on 20 June 2007.
- ^ New Treaty with France (2002). Retrieved on 20 June
2007.
- ^ New Treaty with France (2002). Retrieved on 20 June
2007.
- ^ The House Laws. Retrieved on 20 June 2007.
- ^ Albert to inherit
lion's share
References
External links
pms:Albert II ëd
Mònaco
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