CURSE OF THE GRIMALDIS

THE ROYALS OF MONACO HAVE SUFFERED UNHAPPY MARRIAGES AND MYSTERIOUSLY TRAGIC DEATHS FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS

- Kylie Walters

It has been a difficult year for Prince Albert and Princess Charlene, who have been forced to spend most of their time apart while she received treatment for a mysterious medical condition. Although the pair have long denied rumours of a split, could it be their marriage was doomed from the start?

Some speculate their misery flows from an ancient curse that has plagued the House of Grimaldi for its 700-year reign. Legend has it that in the 13th century, Albert’s ancestor Prince Rainier I kidnapped and raped a Flemish maiden.

She put a hex on the prince’s descendants. “Never will a Grimaldi find true happiness in marriage,” she is said to have decreed.

Examples of the family’s bad luck date back to the 1600s when Prince Louis I’s wife Catherine Charlotte humiliated her husband by leaving to become the mistress of the French King Louis XIV.

The curse appears to have struck again when Charlene failed to catch her flight home in May 2021 after what was supposed to be a short trip to South Africa to promote animal conservation.

She went on to spend over half the year separated from her 7-year-old twins, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, as she convalesced from a “severe sinus infection” which prevented her from flying.

Just days after the frail-looking princess’s November homecoming, Charlene fled again – this time to a private clinic in Switzerland.

“[She] was overwhelmed and couldn’t face duties, life in general, or even family life,” Albert said. “She realised herself that she needed treatment.”