Prince Albert II on Tuesday formally assumed the throne of Monaco, the Mediterranean statelet that has become indelibly linked with Hollywood glamour and jet-set wealth, as well as the ruling Grimaldi dynasty’s own turbulent history.
Albert, who became legal ruler as his father, Prince Rainier, lay on his deathbed earlier this year, knelt before the principality’s archbishop to receive the blessing that marked his accession to the throne.
The ceremony came less than a week after Albert confirmed that he had fathered the child of a French-Togolese former air hostess.
Church bells rang out and the small crowd gathered outside the cathedral cheered and clapped as Albert and his relatives left the church — where Rainier and his film-star wife, Grace Kelly, are buried.
The Grimaldis walked the few hundred metres back to their hill-top palace, where they hosted a garden party for senior officials.
It was the first official outing for Albert and his sisters, Stephanie and Caroline, since Rainier’s funeral in April.
Albert donned a dark suit for the occasion; Caroline was fitted out in a checked coat, a wide-brimmed hat and long white gloves; and Stephanie wore a white and pink floral dress.
”We’re delighted with him!” said one of the onlookers, Virginie Nigione, a retired Mónegasque who ran a delicatessen in the principality for 40 years.
”The fact that he officially recognised his son shows that he’s a very modern prince,” she added.
Albert, a 47-year-old bachelor whose fortune is estimated at about €2-billion (about R16,18-billion), admitted last Wednesday, the last day of official mourning for Rainier, that he was a father.
The boy, 22-month-old Alexandre Coste, cannot become ruler of Monaco under current succession laws that exclude illegitimate children, but will ”want for nothing” in his life, the prince told French television on Monday.
Albert refused during the television interview to confirm or deny that he had fathered other children.
”I know there are other people who present more or less the same case,” he said.
But when asked if such paternity claims were false, Albert replied: ”We will answer that when the time comes.”
Tuesday’s events in Monaco, a tiny territory that lies cramped between the foothills of the French Alps and the sea, were to continue in the evening when the principality’s mayor will symbolically hand Albert the keys of the town.
The prince will then make a formal speech. A palace concert by the Monte Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra, an open-air ball in the port and a fireworks display were also planned.
The ceremonies were billed as a ”family” affair for Mónegasques.
Another formal investiture ceremony, to which foreign heads of states will be invited, is set for November 19.
During his 55 years in power, Prince Rainier was credited with turning the rocky statelet from a Riviera backwater into a thriving banking and business centre, noted for its fabled casino and its Monte Carlo car rally.
Rainier’s marriage to Kelly in 1956 added to the air of jet-set romance, which turned to tragedy when she died in a car accident in 1982.
Albert outlined his plans for his rule in Monday’s television interview, insisting that Monaco’s association with money laundering is a thing of the past, that he wants to attract more high-tech companies to the territory, and that he hopes to do more on the environmental and humanitarian fronts.
Albert’s failure to wed and have children led to a change in 2002 to Monaco’s Constitution, under which the dynasty can now continue to rule through the female line if he dies without an heir, instead of, as had previously been the case, the territory coming back under French control.
His aides have predicted that the prince, like his father, was waiting to succeed as ruler before making any wedding plans. — Sapa-AFP