There are many reasons why Princess Charlene of Monaco and Brigitte Macron might get along – and over the past few days the two consorts have indeed appeared to form a warm and sincere bond.
They have taken tea in the gardens of the royal palace in Monaco and then on Monday had a lunch at the fabled Colombe D’Or restaurant in France, amid a number of philanthropic and diplomatic duties connected to their husbands during the French state visit to the principality in Monte Carlo.
What they have in common is – let’s be diplomatic here – difficult relationships with their husbands.
Charlene’s husband is Prince Albert of Monaco, a portly playboy 20 years her senior who has at least two love children and, according to reports this week, was on the hunt for a love nest within six months of their 2011 wedding.
Madame Macron is the wife of French president Emmanuel, a marriage with its own sizeable age gap (she is 25 years older than him) and apparent challenges. She was videoed shoving her husband in the face at the end of a flight on a private jet on May 26, an incident which Monsieur Macron explained away as the couple ‘just joking around as we do’.
Both women – elegant to a fault and minutely scrutinised – appear to be working from the same playbook in which any nasty whiff of scandal and marital conflict is studiously ignored in favour of a perfumed, picture perfect appearance of decorum and harmony.
Brigitte Macron and Princess Charlene of Monaco both, it must be said, have difficult relationships with their husbands, write ALISON BOSHOFF and PETER ALLEN
‘Both are high profile women who are regularly caught up in unpleasant situations,’ a senior Palace source in Monte Carlo told the Mail.
‘They accordingly had much to discuss, and were very glad to be able to share their experiences. They gave each other advice, while enjoying a very happy time together.’
Charlene, a troubled figure who appeared physically frail and spent some time in a clinic in Switzerland to recover from an unspecified complaint four years ago, is looking particularly beatific – very much living up to her official title of Her Serene Highness.
Why so? Well, maybe it’s because she has the benefit of a reported allowance of £1.2million a year from her deep-pocketed husband.
Locals also claim that she lives most of the time at Roc Agel, a farmhouse hideaway in the hills above the ‘Pink Palace’, a retreat where Albert’s mother, the actress Grace Kelly, also lived for large portions of her reportedly stormy marriage to his father, Prince Rainier.
For make no mistake: Charlene, a one-time champion swimmer in South Africa, where she grew up, with a photocopier salesman father and swimming coach mother, finds herself surrounded by sharks here in the Mediterranean, where her husband’s Grimaldi family have ruled over the tiny, wealthy principality since 1160.
This week new allegations surfaced from the Prince’s former accountant Claude Palmero in which he described how he’d bought a bachelor pad for the Prince to use – French media assume for sexual assignations – within a few months of his 2011 wedding to Princess Charlene.
Palmero also said that he was involved in the destruction of compromising photographs of the Prince, and that Albert and his sisters, Caroline and Stephanie, all hid their wealth in offshore Panamanian bank accounts.
Princess Charlene and Prince Albert of Monaco on their wedding day in the Principality on July 2, 2011
The sleaze has been simmering for nearly a year since French newspaper Le Monde, and other media outlets, first published extracts from Palmero’s ‘secret notebooks’ in September last year, which made astonishing allegations about the Monaco royal family’s spending and transgressions.
It’s certainly worlds away from the glorious spectacle of Albert and Charlene’s £45million two-day wedding, in the Throne Room of the Prince’s Palace, in July 2011.
The crowned heads of Europe gathered to witness the marriage of Europe’s ‘playboy Prince’ to his stunning young bride, who had converted to Catholicism and swapped continents to become a Princess, but wept furiously throughout.
The couple have since had twins, Jaques and Gabriella, who are now ten years old and just took their first communion.
Both Albert and Charlene deny repeated talk of marital misery, with the prince granting a rare interview to Paris Match last year which, however, did not altogether silence the gossip.
He described how he and Charlene first met in 2000 at the Mare Nostrum International Swimming Meet in Monaco, but didn’t begin a relationship until 2005.
‘I don’t know if we fell in love back then,’ he said. ‘You know, after that, I didn’t see Charlene again for several years. I thought that she was an excellent swimmer and that she was friendly, cheerful, and approachable.’
Not quite, perhaps, the hearts and flowers account which everyone was hoping would silence the doubters.
In 2023 a French magazine Voici claimed the royal couple was in the process of separation, and said that they were a ‘facade couple’ and nothing more. But a Palace spokesperson denied the ‘malicious rumours’ and called the article ‘totally unfounded’.
And in a separate, careful interview with South African website News 24, Charlene doubled down on the denials, saying: ‘There’s nothing wrong with our marriage, and I find the rumours to be draining and exhausting. It feels to me like certain media or people want to see us split.’
President Emmanuel Macron, Prince Albert, Princess Charlene and the First Lady of France huddle together at last year’s Paris Olympics opening ceremony
However, there have been signs of a crisis for some time. In 2021, Charlene shaved the sides of her head into a bizarre ‘half hawk’ hairstyle, with her only explanation for the severe ‘do’ that it was her choice. The family Christmas photos released soon after showed her looking grimly miserable.
Friends of the princess explained that she had been retreating inward after a horrible shock: her close friend and confidant, the former Roman Catholic priest, Father Bill McCandless, left Monaco amid reports that he had been accessing child porn.
He has since been convicted of offences in the US. He had been one of the ambassadors of her charitable foundation and a cornerstone of her social set in the principality. She trusted him so much that he was reportedly present at the birth of the twins.
Charlene then became seriously unwell during a trip to South Africa where she was diagnosed with an ear, nose and throat infection that made flying impossible.
This led to her spending six months separated from her husband and children, while undergoing a series of medical operations.
When Charlene eventually returned, in November 2021, she spent only a few days in Monte Carlo before Prince Albert and her family persuaded the visibly frail princess to enter a clinic in Switzerland for four months. This all meant that Charlene went nowhere near Monaco for more than a year.
Since her return, she has been needed to help her husband to silence the drumbeat of sleaze allegations – and has stepped up to the role admirably.
A Monte Carlo resident, who has known Albert for more than 30 years, reveals that Charlene has been advised to focus less on personal dramas and more on the global image of the principality.
‘This is not a time for personal problems. Charlene’s behaviour during the Macron state visit was exemplary, and this, more than ever, is what is required. During a time of intense crisis, Charlene needs to act like a team member.’
This will require considerable fortitude as – according to the picture painted by wealth manager Palmero – the house of Grimaldi is rotten to its core.
Palmero, 68, was sacked by Prince Albert in 2023, and arrested last year after the Prince filed a lawsuit against him, resulting in an investigation into alleged ‘breach of confidentiality, invasion of privacy and receiving the proceeds of two offences’.
So far, no charges have been brought and this week new allegations surfaced in which Palmero claims Prince Albert ordered the purchase of a secret ‘bachelor pad’ within six months of his marriage to Charlene.
Footage of the French president arriving in Vietnam last month for his Southeast Asia tour with Brigitte shows Mr Macron being shoved in the face by his wife
A ‘rare gem’ of a flat was found close to the Royal Palace, Palmero wrote, and he arranged to pay the rent through a newly created company dubbed Etoile de Mer (Starfish).
He also claims there was another expensive flat, bought on the prince’s orders in 2015, in Knightsbridge, west London for Nicole Coste, the former flight attendant with whom Albert has an illegitimate, 21-year-old son, Alexandre Grimaldi.
Palmero claimed he’d also had to pay for all the ‘salaries of the employees’ hired by Ms Coste in London.
Describing the purchase of the apartment, and associated costs, Palmero said: ‘So that Charlene wouldn’t find out, Albert set up a trust of which I was the trustee, which means trusted man.
‘His Serene Highness signed the trust himself and kept me as trustee until January 2025. So he trusted me after my ousting, and you don’t trust a crook or a thief.’
This was all happening while Charlene was spending much of her time at her Roc Agel Farm retreat, rather than in the princely quarters at the Palace, according to multiple royal sources.
Charlene still seeks sanctuary at the farm all the time, the same sources said this week.
According to information published by Le Monde, Palmero said that in 2012, a year after the royal wedding, he went on an enigmatically titled ‘Mission K’ to recover compromising photos of the Prince from an unidentified woman.
The images – still in a traditional film format – were eventually burned after bundles of cash were handed over. Nobody has ever established what the flat was used for, or the exact nature of the pictures, and Albert’s lawyers deny impropriety.
The former accountant also spoke of funds he supplied to Tamara Rotolo, a New York estate agent with whom the prince had a daughter in 1992.
Palmero also outlined arrangements that he set up for the offshore investments of Albert and his sisters, Caroline and Stephanie, Le Monde said.
He was quoted as telling police: ‘The bulk of the princely family’s assets are housed in civil companies that go back through a chain sometimes including companies in other countries, to Panamanian companies. Each member owns their own Panamanian company.’
Palermo wrote that Albert had instructed him to keep written records to a minimum and to obscure the origins and movements of the sovereign’s funds.
Excerpts also detailed the sheer scale of Princess Charlene’s spending: despite an allowance of around £1.2million a year, she still managed to overspend. Remarking on a £500,000 overdraft which he had to pay off, Palermo said: ‘It’s crazy! I have no control over the princess’s spending.’
Charlene also poured nearly £2million into renovating a holiday house in Corsica, and redecorating her office.
Her brother Sean, with whom she runs a charity, and who runs a coffee shop in Monaco, received £786,000 to buy a house in 2022.
Meanwhile Prince Albert’s daughter by Ms Rotolo, Jazmin, who was born in 1993, receives £73,000 every three months, according to the notebooks. Palmero also says that she was given a flat in New York worth £2.6million seven years later.
And the prince, who acknowledged paternity of son Alexandre in 2005, also for some years bankrolled his mother Ms Coste’s fashion business, with a shop in Knightbridge. Palmero said that this largesse cost him a million Euros a year.
Palmero casts himself as a whistleblower exposing alleged corrupt dealings in Monaco’s multibillion-dollar property market, and has filed countersuits against the ruling family, accusing them of abuse of weakness, attempted extortion and theft.
Last week the European Court of Human Rights rejected one of a series of complaints that Palmero had made against Albert.
The prince’s lawyers have denied all his claims. In a statement, Albert said: ‘The attacks that [Palmero] makes against me and the state and its institutions show his true nature and the little respect… he has for the family and the principality.’
But is he fighting a losing battle against the tide of sleaze? This week the European Commission added the principality to its blacklist of high-risk countries that fail to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. The only certain thing is that he needs the air of refinement brought by his beautiful wife now, more than ever.
And with the French First Lady’s support, she’ll be more than up for the challenge.
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