Prince Albert II is to be formally invested as ruler of Monaco this week in a series of ceremonies taking place in the Mediterranean microstate synonymous with high living, gambling and jet-set glamour.
The high point of the ceremonies, which coincide with Monaco’s national holiday, will take place on Thursday in the royal palace, when Albert is to take a solemn vow before representatives of the state.
A pontifical mass celebrated in the presence of foreign dignitaries on Saturday will mark the end of a process begun in July, when the prince was sworn in before his subjects and received the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church.
A 47-year-old bachelor whose fortune is estimated at about two billion euros ($2,4-billion), Albert took the throne of the territory, wedged between the Italian border and the French Riviera resort of Nice, as head of the Grimaldi line after his father Prince Rainier died in April.
He will be presented on Saturday with a royal standard bearing his emblem, a pair of intertwined letter As, while his father’s standard will be presented to the royal guard one last time.
Later that evening, the prince, a fervent football supporter, will attend a match between Monaco’s national team and France’s Saint-Etienne, followed by a performance of Rossini’s opera the Voyage to Reims.
Under Prince Rainier’s 55-year-rule, Monaco, a rocky statelet of 32 000 inhabitants, was transformed 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 the film star Grace Kelly in 1956 added to the jet-set romance, but ended in tragedy when she died in a car accident in 1982.
During that time, the principality also developed an unsavoury association with money laundering, which Albert has pledged to undo.
He has vowed to help Monaco play a more important role on international financial markets, to attract more high-tech companies and to do more on the environmental and humanitarian fronts.
According to Monegasque journalist and royal-watcher Frederic Laurent, the prince has already shown the qualities of a thoughtful ruler.
”Albert is governing at his own pace, he wanted to take the pulse of the principality, start by getting to grips with current affairs so that he can make informed decisions,” Laurent said.
Though seen with a bevy of beautiful women over the years, Albert had until this year largely managed to keep his private life out of public view, in contrast with his sisters Stephanie and Caroline, whose tempestuous affairs have filled the pages of the celebrity press.
But a week before acceding to the throne in July, Albert admitted he had fathered a child out of wedlock, to a French-Togolese former flight attendant.
The boy, two-year-old Alexandre Coste, cannot become ruler of Monaco under current succession laws that exclude illegitimate children, but his father has said that he will ”want for nothing” in his life.
Albert’s failure to marry led to a change in 2002 to Monaco’s Constitution, under which the 700-year-old Grimaldi dynasty can now continue to rule through the female line if he dies without an heir.
Under the previous rules, the statelet would have reverted to French control.
Aides had predicted that the prince, like his father, was waiting to succeed as ruler before making any plans to marry. – Sapa-AFP