Marriage and motherhood has seemed to have tempered the once wild spirited Princess Stephanie, where once she’d do everything she could to upset or embarrass her father, Prince Rainier, today Stephanie is content and happy as a wife and a mother. Stephanie herself once said, “I’ve had an unusual career path for a princess.”
Life for Stephanie was never going to be easy being the youngest daughter of the late former movie star Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier. Albeit born, on 1 February 1965, into a privileged and cosseted world Stephanie would always, as she grew up, be a rebel with a cause. The fairy tale existence into which she was born was shattered the day her mother died following a horrific car crash on 13 September 1982, Stephanie survived the crash but was in some quarters of the press blamed for the death of her mother. This trauma affected the young royal more profoundly than anything before or since and dictated the course of her life for many years to come.
In her twenties, Princess Stephanie was continually in the world’s scandal sheets with yet another beau, more outrageous than the last. Prince Rainier was said to despair of his wayward daughter. In retrospect the young royal was just reacting to the accident. "I realized how lucky I was to have life," she said later. "I had my arms open to the future and I said to myself, 'This could be all over tomorrow."
Living life in the Royal Fast Lane, however well intentioned caused friction between Stephanie and her father. A series of relationships and a series of unsuccessful business ventures in modeling, fashion design and a modesty successful career as a pop singer caused yet more friction and added column inches to the tabloids. It was however, the list of men she dated that gave her father the greatest heartache, Stephanie dated racing driver, Paul Belmondo, a twice-divorced disco owner, a record producer and Hollywood Brat Pack star Rob Lowe. 1991 the princess started a relationship with Daniel Ducruet, her former bodyguard, who had left his ex girlfriend pregnant with his child.
Princess Stephanie’s father was not pleased with the relationship and was angry when in May 1992 Stephanie announced her pregnancy. Later that year she gave birth to a baby boy called Louis. Another child, Pauline, followed two years later and Prince Rainier and his once wayward daughter were reconciled. Prince Rainier finally gave his permission for Stephanie and Daniel to marry in 1995.
The marriage was not destined to last. Daniel was photographed in a compromising position with Miss Nude Belgium and eighteen months after being married Stephanie and Daniel were divorced.
"Being a mother is the only true meaning in my life. It's everything," she said. In 1998 a third child was born. Camille Marie Kelly, however, caused controvesy having been conceived out of wedlock. The father was a mystery, although some suspected bodyguard Jean-Raymond Gottlieb to be responsible.
At the age of 36, Princess Stephanie and her three children moved into a Swiss caravan with elephant trainer Franco Knie. The circus life, however, was a passing fashion for a princess and at the end of 2002 Stephanie was back in Monaco.
Perhaps Stephanie learned something whilst with circus performers, because in September 2003 she married trapeze artist Adans Lopez Peres in a private ceremony in Switzerland. Again the marriage was a failure lasting less than twelve months.
Is Princess Stephanie the black sheep of the Grimaldi clan? "I don't see myself as a rebel” she once said “but of course it all depends on what you consider normal. The most important thing is to feel happy with what you yourself decided. Though I may be a princess, above all I'm a human being."
