State of GRACE

It was once a fairytale principality, replete with its own movie star princess, but in recent years Monaco’s air of shiny, untroubled glamour has begun to tarnish. William Langley travels to the “Pink Palace” to find a surprising new generation of royals who just might hold the key to Monaco’s reinvention.

- William Langley

When Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish climate activist, sailed into New York harbour on August 28 last year, foghorns hooted and flags flew, but few in the cheering crowd on the quayside noticed the slender young man with the cool blue eyes and blonde stubble at the boat’s helm. Pierre Casiraghi, the 32-year-old son of Princess Caroline of Monaco, prefers to keep a low profile, even on public occasions. Having safely delivered Greta aboard his $8 million zero-carbon racing yacht, Malizia II, after a 14-day transatlantic crossing from England, Pierre stowed his oilskins and slipped quietly away. The clubs and salons of Manhattan held little appeal for him, and he was soon headed back to the tiny, super-rich principality, snuggled into a stretch of Mediterranean coastline, that his family has controlled for 700 years.

Pierre takes care to speak well of Monaco and his family’s tenacious hold on the tiny, sun-kissed playground whose 45,000 residents pay no income tax and enjoy one of the world’s highest standards of living. But behind the enclave’s comic-operatic trappings – toy town soldiers in cockaded hats, candy-striped flag posts and the burlesque sex lives of its often-errant royals – the realm is facing threats to its survival.

France, which supervises many of Monaco’s affairs and has long coveted its riches, is fuming over new allegations of official corruption, and in recent years a number of private banks have closed their operations, apparently sensitive to suggestions of money laundering. Worst of all is the sense that the place is losing its cherished aura of style and glamour.