MONACO

Charlene of Monaco: this forgotten highness whose destiny strangely echoes the life of the princess

While Charlene of Monaco is still being cared for in Switzerland, some Monegasques feel somewhat like history is repeating itself on the Rock. And for good reason, a former princess has experienced setbacks almost similar to those of the wife of Prince Albert.

Is there a curse hanging over the royal princesses in Monaco? Last November, after several months in South Africa to treat an ENT problem which prevented her from traveling, Charlène of Monaco made her grand return to the Rock, welcomed by her children Jacques and Gabriella, as well as her husband, Prince Albert. However, this family reunion was short-lived for the princess, who then set sail for Switzerland, where she is interned to treat several health problems. While her recovery promises to be long, and her husband supports her more than ever, the Monegasques hope to see her again on the feast of Saint Devote, on 26 and 27 January next.

But in Monaco, the life of Charlène is not without reminding some the fate of another princess consort before her: Princess Alice of Monaco, wife of Albert I and great-great-grandfather of Prince Albert II. First princess from the United States to set foot on the Rock long before Grace Kelly, Alice Heine was born in 1857 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His parents, a wealthy Parisian banker and a daughter of American high society from Alsace, gave him as godfather and godmother the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie. In 1875 she married the Duc de Richelieu with whom she had two children, before being widowed at the age of 22 in 1880.

This common point that Charlene and Alice of Monaco had

She then waited almost ten years, like Charlene of Monaco with Prince Albert II, to marry Albert I. Thus, in 1889, Alice Heine became Princess Alice of Monaco, and therefore the mother-in-law of Louis II, the son of Albert I, born of the marriage of the latter with the Scottish Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton, who was finally annulled in 1880. Another point in common with Charlène of Monaco, who by marrying Prince Albert became the stepmother of Jazmin Grace and Alexandre, her husband’s eldest children, interpreted as illegitimate because they were born out of wedlock, with whom she maintains distant relations.

Portrayed at the time of her marriage as “a 32-year-old American blonde”, Princess Alice, passionate about the arts, contributed to the development of culture on the Rock. But over the years, her relationship with Albert I tarnished, to the point of leading to a breakup in 1902. If she did not divorce Albert I, Alice of Monaco set sail for the United Kingdom before settling in Paris where she died in 1925, three years after her husband, with whom she was never buried.

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