Free Republic

Good news for those who have been craving some more Royal Wedding glitter. There’s another one this weekend.  It’s the event many thought would never happen: the marriage of Prince Albert of Monaco, the 53-year-old bachelor head of state of the tiny but rich principality on the Cote D’Azur, and Charlene Wittstock, a South African Olympic swimmer 20 years his junior.  The Grimaldi family has ruled Monaco for more than 800 years, and has featured on the global glamour map ever since Hollywood arrived in the form of the last bride to marry into the family, Prince Albert’s mother Grace...

For four years, Charlene Wittstock lived mostly in the shadows, waiting for Prince Albert II of Monaco to propose. With no job, no college degree and no knowledge of French, she was installed by him in a small apartment in the center of the tiny Mediterranean principality, far away from home in South Africa. With no official status, she appeared at the side of the prince when summoned, to smile a lot but to say little. She endured the nastiness of the locals, who gossiped about Prince Albert’s love affairs and predicted that he would never marry her. "snip" But...

MONACO, April 8 - While the television here plays vintage clips of the late Prince Rainier's storybook marriage to the American actress Grace Kelly, the unspoken question hanging in this tiny principality's crisp Mediterranean air is who the next princess will be. Prince Rainier's enigmatic son, Albert, who assumed Monaco's throne upon his father's death on Wednesday, is unmarried and has shown no public inclination to produce a royal heir. Choosing a bride to replace his mother, who died in a car crash 23 years ago, is an almost insurmountable task, people in the principality say. "People will be very...