Albert II, Prince of Monaco

style="text-align:center; font-size:larger;" | **Prince Albert II**
Reign	6 April, 2005 - Present
Investiture	19 November, 2005
Predecessor	Rainier III of Monaco
Heir Presumptive	Caroline, Princess of Hanover
Spouse	none
Issue	None legitimate; Jazmin Grace Rotolo Eric Alexandre Coste
Princely House	Grimaldi
Father	Rainier III of Monaco
Mother	Grace Kelly
Born	14 March, 1958 Palais Princier, Monaco

Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco (Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi; born March 14, 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.

He is the second child, and only son, of Rainier III and his American wife, the film star Grace Kelly, and became the reigning prince following his father's death on April 6 2005. Prior to that, he had been the heir apparent, carrying the titles of HSH the Hereditary Prince of Monaco and Marquis of Baux; after his father became increasingly ill in early 2005, he was appointed regent, in which capacity he served for a week during the last days of his father's life.

Early life

Born in Monaco, Albert attended the Albert I High School, graduating with distinction in 1976. 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, 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 March 7, 2005, Rainier was admitted to a hospital in the principality and on March 22 he was moved to intensive care. The Prince was being treated for breathing, kidney, and heart trouble. On March 31, 2005, the Palace of Monaco announced that Prince Albert would take over the duties of his father as Regent since Rainier was no longer able to exercise his royal functions. This decision was reached by the Council of the Crown, 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 April 6, 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 enthroning as ruler of the Principality of Monaco was on July 12, 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. After the mass, Prince Albert II returned to the royal palace to host a garden party for 7,000 Monegasques born in the principality. In the courtyard of the royal palace, 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 November 19, 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 of Hannover and three of her four children, Andrea, Pierre and Charlotte; as well as his younger sister Princess Stéphanie and his paternal aunt Princess Antoinette. Royalty from 16 delegations were present for the big 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. Albert, à nouveau père

Bachelorhood

Over the years, there has been much discussion of the prince's continued bachelor status. Though he has received much press attention for dating well-known fashion models and actresses, including Angie Everhart and Claudia Schiffer, as well as Victoria Zdrok (who has been both a Playboy Playmate and a Penthouse Pet), his apparent disinclination to marry gave rise to rumors that he is gay, and merely engaged in superficial, sham dating. 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." Monaco Arctic Expedition website He has since confirmed that he is the father of two children, Jazmin Grace Grimaldi and Eric Alexandre Coste.

In October 2005, German magazine Bunte reported that Prince Albert was dating Telma Ortiz, 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 February 10, 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.

Controversy

Jazmin Grace Rotolo/Grimaldi, daughter

In 1992, a California woman, Tamara Rotolo, filed a paternity suit against the prince, claiming that he was the father of her illegitimate daughter, whom she named Jazmin Grace Grimaldi. Prince Albert was also listed as the father on the child's Riverside County, California, birth certificate, according to the website of the Desert Sun, a newspaper in Palm Springs, 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" (Evening Standard, March 24, 1993, page 20), agreeing with an assertion by the prince's lawyer, Stanley Arkin, that the California court had no jurisdiction.

In court papers, Prince Albert admitted that he had been with Tamara Rotolo, who reportedly was travelling with her husband, in Monaco on "a couple of occasions" in July 1991. (The child had been born approximately nine months later, on March 4, 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." "Madame Figaro", 1994; reported in Daily Mail, August 13, 1994, page 17.

On May 31, 2006, after DNA 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 France.

According to Le Figaro, Jazmin Grace Grimaldi is "mature, sweet and intelligent" and an honor student at St. Margaret's, a private school in the Palm Springs area. She currently resides in Palm Desert, a small town just south of Palm Springs, California . Her mother is now a real-estate agent.

Alexandre Coste, son

In May 2005, Nicole Coste, a former Air France flight attendant from Togo, claimed that her youngest son, whom she now 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 is presently living in the prince's Paris apartment, has been 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 July 6, 2005, a few days before he was enthroned on July 12, Albert II officially confirmed via his lawyer Thierry Lacoste that the 22-month-old was his biological son. Monaco prince admits love child

Other 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. "Bea in His Bonnet," "Daily Telegraph", July 29, 1987. Also "Sunday Mirror", March 8, 1998, pages 1+

Succession issues

As Prince Albert has yet to marry, his lack of legitimate children became a matter of public and political concern, due to the possibility that there might be no immediate descendants to the throne upon his death. Monaco's current constitution specifies that only "direct and legitimate" descendants can assume the throne.

On April 2, 2002 Monaco passed Princely Law 1.249 which provides that if a reigning prince dies without surviving legitimate issue, the throne would pass to his siblings and their descendants under the rule of male-preference primogeniture. 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. Before this change, the crown could pass to a direct male descendant of the reigning prince only, making Albert's sisters ineligible. This change made the extinction of the Grimaldi dynasty less likely. (This did not arise in Rainier's case, as he succeeded his maternal grandfather Louis II, not an uncle.)

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 US interviewer Larry King, he said this will not happen.

In Jazmin's case, however, 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 Shumaker, filed for a divorce from Rotolo on September 13, 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 Rotelo did not contest the petition, the couple having been separated since April 1989. But an uncontested petition for dissolution of marriage cannot result in a final judgment of divorce "until six months have elapsed from the date the respondent was served with a copy of the summons and petition or the date of appearance of the respondent court...", according to California Family Law Code §2339. At the earliest, therefore, Rotolo's divorce could not have become effective before March 13, 1992, nine days after Jazmin's birth. Article 227 of the Monégasque civil code stipulates that "Children born outside of marriage, other than adulterine children, are legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their father and mother..." Since Jazmin was born while her mother was legally married to a man (David Schumacher)other than her biological father, she would thus probably be ineligible for legitimation even if her parents were to marry in the future.

Albert has said neither of his children will be eligible for the throne in statements confirming their paternity. As of June 2006, Caroline, Princess of Hanover, follows her younger brother Albert as heiress presumptive in the line of succession to the Monegasque throne. Though she is only the heiress-presumptive and not heiress-apparent, in the constitution, the title Hereditary Prince or Princess is not reserved for heirs-apparent. Thus, Caroline is Hereditary Princess.

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.

Titles

Albert has held two positions from birth:

His Serene Highness The Hereditary Prince of Monaco, Marquis of Baux (1958-2005)
His Serene Highness The Sovereign Prince of Monaco (2005-) ^*

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).

Notes

References

External links

Preceded by:
Rainier III
Sovereign Prince of Monaco
2005–Present Succeeded by:

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