In one way or another, Prince Albert's love children are taking after their grandmother,
Oscar winning actress Grace Kelly. But when it comes to their father's influence
on their lives, well… that's a different story.
Prince Albert's first child,
Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, was born on March 4, 1992, in Palm Springs, California. Her birth was the
product of a brief love affair between the Prince of Monaco and Californian Tamara Rotolo. People
reports that Tamara first met the prince on the French Riviera in 1991 when she was vacationing
in the wake of her separation from then-husband David Schumacher. After meeting at a Monaco tennis
tournament, Prince Albert and Tamara became very intimate and quickly entered into a love affair.
Nine months later, Jazmin was born. She spent the majority of her life in California,
where she experienced a relatively normal childhood despite her royal connections.
Speaking to Harper's Bazaar in 2015, Jazmin recalls happy memories of playing on her middle
school basketball team, excelling in her local theater community, and singing in her church
choir. After leaving high school, she moved to New York to study business at Fordham University.
Currently, the prince's daughter is pursuing a career in music and television, having scored
a small part in the show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in 2019. As for her music,
Jazmin released her first two singles in 2019, titled "Thankful" and "Fearless."
Although Jazmin now has a loving
relationship with her father, that was not always the case. Though she was always aware
of her father's princely status, she did not meet him face-to-face until she was 11 years old. As
she was growing up, her mother, Tamara Rotolo, would pass along messages from Prince Albert,
but overall theirs was a distant relationship. However, in 2006, Prince Albert decided to go
public with the news that he had a child living across the Atlantic, paving the way for a more
intimate relationship. Once the news of Jazmin's paternity was public knowledge,
she took the opportunity to visit Monaco for the first time. She told Harper's Bazaar,
"I wanted that moment to connect with my father,
to get to know him, and to have him get to know me."
She also reflected on her early years, saying,
"Not having had that figure around, I missed that. It's wonderful that
it happened when it did, and we've been enjoying a great relationship ever since."
Today, she travels back and forth from the U.S. to Monaco quite often and has managed
to forge a close relationship not only with Prince Albert, but also with his wife Princess
Charlene , and her twin half siblings, Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques.
From ordinary California girl to Monégasque royalty,
Jazmin's journey not only includes the revelation that her father is a prince
but also the revelation that her grandmother was none other than screen icon Grace Kelly.
The blonde was Hollywood royalty throughout the 1950s, starring in two Alfred Hitchcock
films and even winning an Oscar in 1955 for her role in The Country Girl. However,
she would leave it all behind to become true royalty, marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco.
"Acting is a very time consuming
profession." (scrub to) elapsed 4:42 to 4:45 "To do it well one has to do it completely."
Prince Albert, like his two sisters, was a product of the marriage. Although Jazmin
never met her grandmother, Grace Kelly has had a profound impact
on her life. Even before she connected with the Monégasque side of her family,
Jazmin recalls being dazzled by photographs of her glamorous grandmother, telling Harper's Bazaar:
"I love the pictures where she's quirky and smiling. She seems so natural and carefree."
Jazmin discussed her fondness for the late icon, reporting that one of her most cherished rooms in
Prince Albert's Monaco estate is the late actor's dressing room, filled with her old possessions.
Eleven years after Jazmin was born,
one of Prince Albert's partners gave birth to his second child, a son named Alexandre
Grimaldi-Coste, born in 2003. The prince's first son was also born out of wedlock,
resulting in a sticky situation for mother and father alike. Unlike Jazmin's birth,
which was the product of a passionate summer fling, Alexandre's birth arose
out of a multiyear affair between Prince Albert and a French-Togolese woman named Nicole Coste.
The pair reportedly first met on a flight in 1997,
where Nicole was working as a flight attendant and Prince Albert was a
passenger. In an interview with The Daily Mail, Nicole recalled how their affair began, stating,
"When I saw Albert, our eyes met, and I knew this was different. There was
definitely an aura around him, and we hit it off immediately."
She said it was the Prince of Monaco who made the first move, asking for the flight attendant's
phone number. The unlikely pair dated for years, though the relationship was kept strictly out of
the spotlight. By the time the romance had run its course, Nicole discovered that she was pregnant.
Although Alexandre and Jazmin were born
several years apart, their entrances into public life happened in quick succession, with Prince
Albert publicly acknowledging both brother and sister in 2005 and 2006, respectively. However,
while the battle to confirm Jazmin's paternity was mostly kept quiet, the drama surrounding Prince
Albert's reluctance to publicly acknowledge his son became European tabloid fodder.
According to The Daily Mail, Prince Albert was originally a doting father to the newborn
Alexandre. Nicole Coste, the prince's former partner and Alexandre's mother,
reports that her old flame provided financial support for both her and her son,
and even helped change the young Alexandre's "nappies" a time or
two. However, Prince Albert slowly began to disappear from his infant son's life.
After both private and public urging from Nicole Coste, including a tell-all interview
with Paris Match, Prince Albert finally recognized his relationship publicly in 2005,
after his father's death. At the time, Alexandre was only 23 months old. Today,
the father and son are reported to have a happy and healthy relationship, bonding through their
shared love of sports and passion for politics. The father of four even took on the responsibility
of throwing Alexandre a grand 18th birthday party hosted at the fashionable Jimmy'z club in Monaco.
Surprisingly, Prince Albert's two love
children seem to have a close bond despite their age gap and having grown up in different parts of
the world. Jazmin, who has an active social media presence, revealed her close relationship with her
half brother on her Instagram in a now-deleted post. On Alexandre's birthday, she shared a
sisterly congratulations to her little brother. Sharing a photo of the two embracing, she wrote,
"It's a celebration. Happy birthday my little brother Alexandre!"
Despite Jazmin growing up in California and Alexandre being raised in France,
adjacent to the Monaco elite, much of their bond can be explained by the fact that the
half siblings underwent similar trials in their early years. From DNA tests to scheduled
visits to Monaco to unwanted media attention regarding their relationship with their father,
Jazmin and Alexandre have more in common than meets the eye.
In addition to their similar childhoods, it seems both half siblings have decided
to pursue careers in show business. While Jazmin is an active singer and actor,
the younger Alexandre has reportedly been scouted for a career in modeling. The South
China Morning Post reports that the teenager has been taking advantage of his own Grace
Kelly-like genes by accepting small modeling gigs when he has free time away from school.
"I'm interested in-in all creative activity, you know."
Despite both Jazmin and Alexandre being
the first children to be born to Prince Albert, neither is in line to inherit the Monégasque
throne. While some may view this as a devastating blow to the prince's illegitimate children,
others may see this as a mutually beneficial situation, as both Jazmin and Alexandre are still
expected to inherit significant portions of Prince Albert's personal fortune, according to Yahoo.
The erasure of Jazmin and Alexandre from the line of succession was not
an individual decision made by Prince Albert but was mandated by Monaco's
laws. Each new monarch must be a "direct and legitimate" descendant of the previous monarch,
according to Monte Carlo's official website. Therefore, because neither Tamara Rotolo nor
Nicole Coste was married to Prince Albert at the time of their children's births,
these "illegitimate" children will not ascend to the throne.
However, if anything might soothe the blow of "commoner" status, it will be a piece
of Prince Albert's billion-dollar fortune. Some might even regard Jazmin and Alexandre's
situation as being preferable to that of Prince Albert's official two descendants,
twins Gabriella and Jacques. Unlike the twins, the prince's eldest children have mostly been
able to skirt unwanted media attention as well as chart their own trajectories in life,
all without losing the financial privilege that comes with being the child of a sitting monarch.
Just as the initial revelation of
Jazmin and Alexandre's connection to Prince Albert shocked Monaco society, the small principality may
be in for another earth-shattering tabloid moment, as rumors of a third love child have
been circulating in the press. The Telegraph reported that the Prince of Monaco has been hit
with a court case claiming that he fathered a child with an unknown Brazilian woman in
2005. Through his lawyer, Thierry Lacoste, Prince Albert has fervently denied these claims, saying,
"Our only comment is that the purported facts are
false and the claims being made by the plaintiff are unfounded."
While Jazmin and Alexandre seem to have settled into a loving dynamic with their father,
these new claims of a third love child could perhaps upset the hard-won harmony of Prince
Albert's blended family. According to Tatler, court documents claim that the
spontaneous affair between Prince Albert and the woman took place while he was already in
a relationship with Princess Charlene, though the two wouldn't officially marry until 2011.
"I think the party starts now."
This couldn't come at a worse time for the first couple of Monaco,
as reports have long been swirling that Albert and Charlene's marriage is in jeopardy. Still,
he maintains that any claims of him fathering a third illegitimate child are a "hoax." However,
only time will tell how this latest scandal will resolve.