Palace - My Life in the Royal Family of Monaco [antikvár]

PROLOGUE(JJ^he last time I spoke to my aunt, Princess Grace, was aJ to ask her, as I often had, to intervene on my behalf to resolve a family problem. It was a warm September day, one day before I was to marry my twenty-two-year-old Scandinavian fiancée. Having decided only ten days before to get married, I had invited our guests by telephone from my Saint-Tropez hotel room. There had been no word from my family as to who would be present. When I tried to find out what their intentions were, I learned that my mother, Uncle Rainier's elder sister, Princess Antoinette, had called her brother from her vacation spot in Scotland, to make sure that nobody in the family attended the ceremony.I knew my mother to be totally opposed to this marriage, and her instigations did not really surprise me. Similarly, over the years I had had so many differences with my uncle that I had not really expected him to be there either. All the same, I still would have appreciated their presence for my wife's sake. More important, I had hoped that my sisters, Elisabeth and Christine, and my cousins, Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie, with whom I had no differences, could attend. Just before phoning Grace, I had also learned that Elisabeth would surely not be coming as