Charlene, Star of National Day

Charlene Meets the Public

Charlene and Prince Albert greet the people

Princess Caroline, Princess Alexandra and Charlotte Casiraghi

Cousin Melanie de Massy, Princess Alexandra, Princess Caroline, Andrea and Pierre Casiraghi

Yep, caught a fish *this* big right out there in the harbor

The Princely Couple, beaming at the crowd.

National Day Thanksgiving Mass

The Princely Family at Mass

obligatory picture of the lovely Charlotte

Greeting the celebrants

Monaco's next princess greets the Archbishop

"Let's go dear we have to beat the crowd to the balcony!"

Happy National Day Monaco!

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the accession of HSH Prince Albert II as Sovereign Prince of Monaco upon the passing of his beloved father Prince Rainier III. Preperatory festivities began yesterday (the usual gift giving). The celebrations today begin at the National Cathedral of St Nicholas with a Thanksgiving Mass said by His Excellency Bernard Barsi, Archbishop of Monaco, with the participation of The Maitrise of the Cathedral of Monaco; Les Petits Chanteurs de Monaco and the Philharmonic Orchestra of Monte-Carlo. Afterwards, at about 11:15 AM today there will be a parade at the Court of Honour of the Princely Palace starting with the presentation of badges and medals to the Police and Security Officers of the palace by the Sovereign Prince after which the parade will begin at 11:30. At 8PM tonight there will be a gala soiree (by invitation only) at the Grimaldi Forim in the Salle des Princes. An hour later will be the Gala Evening with Michel Boujenah: Free at Last! Salle du Canton, Espace Polyvalent
with free bus service after the show. Photos will be posted later. It is expected that, for the first time, Charlene Wittstock will appear on the balcony with the Princely Family to honor the reign of her husband-to-be the Sovereign Prince.
Vive Albert II!
Vive Monaco!

Albert and Stephanie Giving Gifts

Yesterday at the Princely Palace, sticking to family tradition, Their Serene Highnesses Prince Albert II and Princess Stephanie of Monaco distributed gifts from the Monaco Red Cross to elderly citizens.

Growing Up with Grace

Grace Patricia Kelly was born on November 12, 1929, the third of four children, to John Brendan “Jack” Kelly and Margaret Katherine Majer Kelly. Her father was the son of poor Irish immigrants who firmly instilled two things in their children: the importance of religion (they were devout Roman Catholics) and the importance of economic success. Jack Kelly had done just that, striking it rich and becoming a very wealthy man as well as a decorated Olympian. Because of this he pushed athletic excellence on his own children almost from the day they were born. Margaret Kelly was a very strict German woman who ran a tight ship with her children, who tended to prefer their father even though he pushed them through a rigorous exercise schedule every day. Little Grace was loved as a child but did not exactly fill the expectations of her parents. For an athletic champion like Jack Kelly any sort of physical imperfection was unthinkable and Grace had a few.

Early on it was noticed that Grace squinted a lot. She clearly needed glasses but never got them, her squinting was dismissed as simply an unattractive habit and her inability to catch a ball was attributed to poor coordination. Perhaps because of this Grace was rather withdrawn, considered a daydreamer and so on. Grace seemed to be the awkward child, was too often ill with some ailment or other and was generally considered a rather odd duck. Like the rest of her siblings Grace went to a strict Catholic school before her socially conscious grandmother (‘Ma Kelly’) prevailed upon her parents to move her and her sisters to a more elite secular school. While the other girls carried on well enough, Grace worried her mother. She was too withdrawn, content to play by herself, caught colds frequently and spent her free time performing plays with her dolls. Early on Grace had caught the acting bug.

When Grace was only 12 she joined the East Falls Old Academy Players, encouraged by her uncle George Kelly who had made a career in the theater though her parents, particularly her mother, disapproved of Uncle George, both because of his homosexuality and because they considered the acting profession a largely immoral lot. He received much of the “blame” for Grace, always the odd one out, setting out on the path of becoming an actress. Margaret Kelly tried to dissuade her daughter, insisting that women had hobbies, not professions, and that the most important thing was finding a good husband and becoming a good mother. Lest anyone take too harsh a view of Grace’s mother (who could be a bit of a tyrant at times according to her own children) she had herself given up a career in education to devote herself to her family and she knew the importance of taking the time to find the right spouse before getting married. Grace’s parents had a rather unhappy marriage but stayed together because, especially at that time, for Catholics divorce was unthinkable. She also knew how hard this would be in a place like New England where the society elites looked down on the offspring of immigrants and Catholics in particular.

At the urging of her parents, when Grace finished school she applied to Bennington College but was rejected. Then, in opposition to her parents, she auditioned for and was accepted into the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Grace said she wanted to ‘find herself’. Margaret Kelly hoped her daughter would go along for a while and then give up on acting. Grace, now wearing thick glasses to compensate for her extreme myopia, thought of herself as a bit of an ugly duckling but of course everyone else could see that the opposite was true and this would give her a great advantage when it came to performing on stage. Jack Kelly absolutely opposed the whole idea and when he withdrew his financial support, thinking this would force Grace to move back to Philadelphia, his daughter cashed in on her statuesque features and took work as a model -which her parents were obviously even less happy about. Grace was a huge success as a model, appearing in a number of national advertising campaigns but she always considered it something done simply to pay the bills while pursuing her real dream of acting.

As we all know this finally came to be. In 1949 Grace was cast in two plays, she attracted Hollywood notice but was given no parts and went on to perform in some of the biggest plays on Broadway. In time she was given her first minor part on film in the 1951 movie Fourteen Hours. Her big break came when she was given the part of the leading lady alongside screen legend Gary Cooper in High Noon. It was all uphill from there with an extensive film career, Grace Kelly become one of the iconic stars of the golden age of Hollywood and eventually an Oscar-winner. A stunned but proud Jack Kelly later joked that, of all his children, he never expected it would be Grace who would be able to provide for him in his old age -though of course such a thing was never necessary.

Princess Stephanie for Fight AIDS Monaco

Birthday of Albert I

It was on this day in 1848 that H.S.H. Prince Albert I of Monaco was born in Paris, France to HSH Prince Charles III of Monaco and the Belgian Countess Antoinette de Merode-Westerloo

Princess Grace Awards in New York City

HRH Princess Caroline of Hanover was in New York City on Wednesday to honor the winners of the Princess Grace Award which are distributed to those who have made a significant contribution in the areas of the arts and charity. This year the big winners were Mr. and Mrs. Denzel Washington. Most know Denzel Washington for his long list of acting credits, being an Oscar-winner and so on. However, he and his wife Pauletta have also been very active in helping a number of charities over the years with little fuss or fanfare. They have established the Gifted Scholars Program in Neuroscience which provides scholarships to medical students who have shown promise to go and study under Dr. Keith Black, chairman of the neurosurgery department at Cedars-Sinai. Denzel Washington has done a great deal of good for many people, without drawing attention to himself and the Washingtons are very much deserving of this award. Pauletta Washington told Bloomberg News, "We are so blessed, and we are blessed to be a blessing to others. That’s our family mantra about giving. The main thing is to have an appreciation for what we have, and we teach that to our children."

Tony Award winning theatre director Anna D. Shapiro was also honored Wednesday for her contributions to the arts, in this case the theatre. Princess Caroline was all smiles as she handed out the awards.

Birthday of Princess Grace

It was today in 1929 that Grace Patricia Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S.A. to John Brendan Kelly and Margaret Katherine Majer Kelly. Surprisingly enough, as a child she was rather the oddball in the athletic Kelly clan, being a bit on the frail and sickly side, even considered something of an 'ugly duckling' by some. Fitting then that her last film should be "The Swan" before she went on to become the Princess of Monaco.

Veterans' Day

In the above photo we see HSH Prince Albert I (third from left) visiting the western front during World War I where his son, Prince Louis II (second from right), was serving with the French army. Prince Albert I had strong feelings about the Great War, being a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, then a pacifist, a man very attached to France and yet a very good friend of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. In fact, Prince Albert was on the yacht with the Kaiser when word of the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand first reached him; the event that would ultimately lead to the outbreak of the First World War. He was very reluctant for his son Louis to serve in the French army, much less to go to war, but he could not refuse him and Prince Louis II went on to become a genuine hero in the French military on the western front.

Birthday of Honore III

Today marks the 290th anniversary of the birth of H.S.H. Prince Honore III of Monaco, one of the most significant of Monegasque monarchs. He was the son of the controversial Prince Jacques I and would become one of the longest reigning monarchs in European history, serving as Sovereign Prince of Monaco for almost 60 years. He grew up in less than ideal circumstances, had plenty of domestic drama of his own following his marriage and he served with distinction in the French army. However, surely the most significant event of his long reign was the outbreak of the French Revolution which would ultimately spread to Monaco and cost Honore III his throne. He was arrested during the Reign of Terror and was very fortunate not to have ended his life on the guillotine. All seemed lost at the end of his life, but of course his end was not the end of the Grimaldis or Monaco. However, the very eventful life of one of the most colorful monarchs in Europe began 290 years ago today