In art school one of my best chums was a girl who was several years older. By the time she had reached art school she was both a graduate of Exeter Prepratory School and Amherst College and living with the son of a South African retailing magnate. As both my friend and I were not afflicted with the art school affliction known as artiste, we chatted quite a bit when at our easels. Since our classes were often 3 hours long and required even more easel time after class, we were able to cover a lot of ground during those art school years. It was was during those easelside chats that I learned all about my friend's Amherst classmate, Albert. Albert, as in Prince Albert of Monaco. As we do try to maintain certain standards here at Patum Peperium I won't go into much detail other than to say that girls with posh school names attached to them would travel every weekend to Amherst with the very single-minded intent to get to know in Albert in the marital way. Albert, being a prince among men, was more than happy to oblige them. Prince Albert's Amherst days were much akin to William Shakespeare's Prince Hal's tavern days. Prince Hal differs from Prince Albert in that by the end of Henry IV part one, Hal had shed his wastrel past and become the English king of noble blood and virtue his father had always wished him to be. The world has been waiting for a long time fro Prince Albert to shed his wastrel past. Now, it looks like it will have to continue to wait :
PRINCE ALBERT of Monaco will recognise a second illegitimate child, the 14-year-old daughter of a married Californian waitress who visited the Riviera state, according to a French book published today.
Spokesmen for the 48-year-old Prince did not deny the report, which made national news in France yesterday, but said that they had nothing to comment “for the moment”.
“Albert and Tamara Rotolo met on the Côte d’Azur in July 1991 where Tamara had come with her husband on holiday .
. . She was married, Albert was careless,” the authors quote a friend of the Prince as saying. The alleged affair lasted two weeks. “Less than four weeks later, in August 1991, Tamara told Albert that she was pregnant.”
Details of the affair surfaced after the Prince, who has never married, hinted last year at the existence of other children. In July, after he recognised that he was the father of a two-year-old boy [Alexandre], the Prince told Larry King on CNN: “I know that there are other people who are in more or less the same situation. We will give them an answer at the appropriate time.”...
Since reports of the late Princess Margaret and her boy toys began surfacing in the press, interviews with royals have focused in on how hard it is to be royal. Really, according to most royals, life's a downer because they are required to behave like trained poodles for their subjects. For the sake of this argument, let's just agree : Being of royal blood is perfectly beastly. In fact, let's take it even one step farther and say it's the worst thing that can happen to someone. But does the difficulty of being royal give royals a free pass on being decent people?
Prince Albert had one job to do in life; get married. Because of the era into which he was born, fortune shined on him more brightly than his predecessors : His wife did not have to be of royal blood. He could choose almost any girl he took a fancy to. But he never did. He availed himself of many girls and then moved on to other men's wives. In the age of birth control, only an idiotic and insensitive prince would get a woman pregnant that he was not serious about. That the woman would be a married makes Albert that much more of an idiot and insensitive. Then after to getting one woman pregnant and condeming his child to a life of never being allowed to grow up with his father, much less to be of royal blood but never to be allowed to be royal, Albert impregnates a flight attendent some 10 years later, condemning another child of his to the same fate?
Albert is both a prince and a Catholic. The prince part is supposed to make him different from us. The Catholic part is supposed to make him different from Prince Charles. However, like Prince Charles, Albert has failed in his duty to his family, his country, and his Church. (As I'm not a Protestant, I won't get into a contest trying to determine which prince has made more of a hash of it - the Catholic church places both Princes' sins in the motal catagory and that's good enough for me) Years ago, Roger Kimball wrote something that sums up both Prince Charles and Prince Albert in a nutshell. As I can not put my hands on it right now, I will just say it went along the lines of the 60's generation traded private morality for public virtue.
Prince Charles, as we know, carried on a 30-year relationship with another man's wife. During that time he asked a young woman to be his Queen and she bore him two heirs before she fully understood the relationship he had with the other man's wife. Her mind failed and so did their marriage. Since then, the Prince has forced his Church, his Queen and his subjects to accept the other man's wife as his second wife. They even bent the rules for him to marry her so that he could still be King of England with his mistress who destroyed his first marriage as Queen. He will also be the head of the Church of England eventhough he seems far more partial to the Islamic faith. Since we found out about the true Prince Charles, he and his people have been keen to promote his true passions; organic farming, aesthetic architcture, homeopathic healing, and nature conservation. Prince Charles is so serious about nature conservation that instead of driving around in a England in Rolls like Mummsie does, he tools around in a Toyota hybrid. Prince Charles traded private morality for public virtue.
Prince Albert has had two illegitmate children. One with a waitress. The other with a flight attendent. Since he ascended to the throne in Monaco without a wife and legitimate children, he and his people have been keen to extoll his public virtue as well :
Little Monaco it is a big adventure. The prince ascending the throne on Tuesday drives an electric car, is passionately concerned about poverty and global warming and has acknowledged having an illegitimate son by an air hostess from Togo.
Residents of the tax haven on the Riviera are for the first time glimpsing 47-year-old Albert’s true colours and it has earned him a new nickname, “the Green Prince”.
He used to keep quiet about his environmental interests for fear of sending Prince Rainier, his staunchly conservative father who died in April, into a rage. Now Albert is beginning to speak his mind. He is expected to sack several elderly palace retainers and to present goals for Monaco far different from those of his father.
His first official mission at the head of the Grimaldi clan is to the island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic circle. On July 25 he will be part of an expedition there in the footsteps of his explorer ancestor Prince Albert I. The idea is to measure the effects of global warming.
Another of the bachelor prince’s missions is to turn Monaco, which hosts an annual Red Cross ball, into the headquarters of the humanitarian world. Ever since a holiday in Madagascar years ago, he has been quietly pouring money into development projects there.
He is eager to get involved in charity work on a larger scale, and Monaco is expected to become a magnet for aid donors as Albert holds fundraising parties for fighting poverty, preserving the rainforest and saving the whale.
His father would frown. Rainier put Monaco on the map in the 1950s with his marriage to Grace Kelly, the actress. A combination of Hollywood celebrity and European royalty helped the principality to flourish into a global financial centre.
Rainier, who enjoyed spear fishing, had less interest in the environment than in his impressive collection of gas-guzzling vintage cars. He was often dismissive of his son’s liberal views and girlfriends — among them Nicole Coste, the former Air France hostess with whom the prince had a relationship that lasted five years
After the end of a three-month mourning period last week, Albert decided to acknowledge publicly that he had a son by her called Alexandre, who was born in 2003...
...The child will never inherit the throne, a right reserved by the constitution for legitimate heirs, but friends said Albert was a “decent” man who had assumed his responsibilities. The little boy lives with Coste in Albert’s Paris flat, even though their relationship has ended...
...In a palace ceremony on Tuesday, Albert will address his tiny nation about the need to do more for the environment. He may even consider restrictions on traffic to ease congestion. It is enough to make the car-mad Rainier stir in his grave.
So it's ok that Prince Albert has failed his family, his children, his subjects and his Church because he drives an electric car and wants to save the whale. It's time to rewrite Somerset Maugham's famous quip:
Monaco, a “sunny place for shady royalty”.
Mrs. P
Here's something more amusing:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2200248.html
Posted by: Jacobite | June 02, 2006 at 02:05 PM