The Monegasque Royal Family Tree (2024)

The Monegasque royal family has found itself in the news quite a bit in recent months. Much of the attention has swirled around its current monarch, Albert II, a former playboy turned billionaire sovereign prince of the tiny but superrich principality, who has been imperiled by yet another claim that he has fathered yet another illegitimate child (he has officially recognized two kids born out of wedlock). Then there is the mysterious case of his wife, Princess Charlene, who, around the time the latest paternity scandal broke last year, fled to her native South Africa and didn't return for six months, blaming a sinus infection so severe she couldn't get on a plane. When she finally did come home to her husband and two young children in November, the happy reunion didn't last long: Charlene soon checked herself into a treatment facility for physical and emotional exhaustion, and is expected to remain there for several more weeks.

Regular bouts of scandal are part and parcel of any storied blue-blooded dynasty. (Look no further than the Windsors, who are in the throes of a really, really bad one thanks to a major thorn in their side named Andrew.) As for Monaco's 700-year-old House of Grimaldi, unrelenting global fascination and intrigue reached fever pitch when Prince Rainier III married Hollywood icon Grace Kelly in 1956. Since then, the family has become as synonymous with glitz and glamour as it has for their penchant for scandal.

Today the extended Grimaldi clan may be even more glittery than in Princess Grace's days. On the family tree? An Italian aristocrat, a Colombian billionaire beer heiress, German princes, and French movie stars, to name a few. Below, T&C takes a closer look at the modern generations of the Monegasque monarchy.

The House of Grimaldi was established in 1297 but it was the 1956 fairytale union of a prince and a Hollywood starlet in the wedding of the century that truly elevated the Grimaldis'—and by extension, Monaco's—reputation as a dynasty worth paying attention to. The couple went on to have three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie.

Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly's second-born, Albert, ascended the throne in 2005 after the death of his father. In 2011, he married the South African-born Charlene Wittstock, a former Olympic swimmer, in a star-studded ceremony that reportedly cost $55 million. Three years later, she gave birth to their twins, Jacques (his heir) and Gabriella.

In 2006, after DNA tests confirmed the years-long claim of a former California waitress that her daughter Jazmin, then 14, was his child, Prince Albert formally recognized her. But like all Grimaldi kids born out of wedlock, she is not in the line of succession. Today the 29-year-old is an actress and singer.

In the late '90s, Prince Albert dated Nicole Coste (pictured here), a flight attendant from Togo he had met en route from Nice to Paris. In 2002, she gave birth to their son, Alexandre Grimaldi-Coste. In 2005, when Paris Match broke the news of their secret child, Albert formally accepted him into the family.

The eldest child of Princess Caroline and her late husband Stefano is fourth in line to the Monegasque throne. After a seven-year relationship with Colombian heiress Tatiana Santo Domingo (her grandfather was billionaire brewery tycoon Julio Mario Santo Domingo), the two got engaged in 2012. The next year she gave birth to their first child before they tied the knot, first in a civil ceremony in Monaco and later in a religious celebration in Gstaad. They have since had two more children.

Caroline and Stefano's middle child Charlotte, an accomplished equestrian and Chanel brand ambassador, dated the French comedian Gad Elmaleh for four years, during which time she gave birth to their son. In 2018, she became engaged to film producer Dimitri Rassam, whose mother is the legendary French actress Carole Bouquet. The couple's son was born in 2018 and a year later, they married in two ceremonies, a civil one in Monaco followed by a religious one in Provence.

Caroline and Stefano's youngest son has taken after his late father—Pierre is a sailboat racer and the skipper for Team Malizia who, in 2019, famously transported climate activist Greta Thunberg across the Atlantic in a carbon-neutral boat so she could participate in the UN Climate Action Summit. He has been with Italian aristocrat and Buccellati ambassador Beatrice Borromeo since 2008. The couple tied the knot in a fabulous series of events in the summer of 2015, first with a civil ceremony and black-tie gala in Monaco, followed by a weekend of festivities on her family-owned Borromean Islands, in Italy's Lake Maggiore. They now have two sons.

Through her third husband Prince Ernst August of Hanover, Princess Caroline is the stepmother to his two sons with his ex-wife, Swiss socialite Chantal Hochuli. In 2017, the eldest, Prince Ernst August, married Ekaterina Malysheva, a Russian fashion designer and founder of EKAT, a line of flamboyant catsuits. Days before the royal wedding, his father publicly expressed his opposition to the union due to a dispute over the family castles. The celebrations went on without the father of the groom. The couple, who now live in Hanover, have three children.

Prince Christian, Princess Caroline's second stepson through her marriage to Prince Ernst August, married Peruvian lawyer Alessandra de Osma in 2018 in Lima. The couple, who are based in Madrid, welcomed twins, a boy and a girl, in July 2020.

The 29-year-old eldest son of Princess Stéphanie and ex-husband Daniel Ducruet is the president of the Monaco eSports Federation. He received his bachelor's degree in sports management from Western Carolina University in North Carolina. Before that Louis attended Skema Business School, which is where he met his wife Marie Chevallier. The two were married in 2019.

Princess Stéphanie's second child with ex-husband Ducruet used to be a competitive diver before transitioning to a career in fashion. The 27-year-old has a degree from Parsons, has interned at Vogue and Louis Vuitton, and, in 2018, founded Alter, a gender-neutral clothing line that shows at Paris Fashion Week.

Of all the Grimaldi descendants, Princess Stéphanie's daughter with another former bodyguard, Jean-Raymond Gottlieb, may bear the strongest resemblance to Grace Kelly. According to her Instagram, 23-year-old Camille is the marketing manager of a Monte Carlo nightclub and the founder of Be Safe Monaco, a non-profit that raises awareness about the dangers of drinking and driving.