C.harlène from Munich is back. After months of silence, the “sad princess” reappeared in the Rocca. Just in time for the Easter holiday shots, next to Prince Albert and to the twins Jacques and Gabriella who are now seven years old. Platinum blonde hair and very short cut, the former Olympic swimmer who has become a “royal height” sits on a towel in the lawn with her daughter, while a little further on her husband holds a hand on his son’s shoulder.
This is the first family portrait since last August and the first photos of Charlène since November, or since she returned from South Africa where in 2021 was stuck for months due to a severe eye, nose and throat infection. Since then there have been all kinds of hypotheses about her: convalescence in Switzerland, isolation in an apartment in Montecarlo or Corsica, pending an alleged divorce.
What appears certain, according to body language experts, is that the images reveal if not the cold, certainly the distance between the “sad princess” and her husband, who have been married since 2011.
Antonio Caprarica: “Happiness exists only in fairy tales”
Where is the truth? “My idea is that there is a very strong prenuptial contract involved: it is evident that the princess feels uncomfortable in a world where she has not integrated, or did not want to integrate. And that the marriage facade begins to wobble.
Perhaps because it is supported by political and economic reasons of which only interested parties and lawyers are aware ” explains Antonio Caprarica, the best known of the Italian royal watchersi who sifted through the lives of fifty princesses in the new book And they didn’t live happily ever after. 50 princesses out of fairy tales (Electa Junior). A volume for children which, however, can be read by everyone.
Because his basic thesis is that philosophically, happiness only really exists in fairy tales. None of the princesses described have ever been free from problems to face. «In the book I have doubts about that” forever “. Many have made history, many others have suffered it, but I wonder if by chance they would not have all preferred a different life. Maybe far from the glitz and enlightened by simpler and stronger feelings: friendship, love, filial affection »underlines Caprarica.
Warrior queens
His research starts from afar. From Boadicea, queen of the Britons, who in 26 AD ends up as a slave of the Romans, he frees himself and then – defeat – takes his own life. And continues with Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen consort twice, first of France and then of England, and mother of Richard the Lionheart who, exhausted by the struggles, takes the vows and ends up in the convent. Still, Giovanna d’Angiò, queen of Naples ousted by a nephew; then Anna Hyde, the first “bourgeois” who became a princess in 1637sister-in-law of Charles II, killed by breast cancer at the age of thirty-four.
Until the affront suffered by Alexandra of Denmark who on her husband’s deathbed, Edward VII, in 1910, must make room for historical mistress Alice Keppel: she was the great-grandmother of Camilla Parker Bowles, the current wife of Prince Charles … In common, all these princesses found themselves challenging patriarchal cultures, fighting for the good of their children (to place them in the right thrones), trying to survive in their arranged marriages, looking, like everyone, for the reason for their very existence.
«Each of them is the staging of the fundamental experience for all human beings: lto discover the struggle between Evil and Good, life and death or, more simply, failure and success “, Caprarica explains.
The new book on unhappy princesses by Antonio Caprarica
Modern princesses
But it is coming to our times that certain princely lives appear even more painful. Just think of the daughters of the last tsar killed during the revolution, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. Or, to a much lesser extent, to “our” Margherita of Savoy, beloved by everyone, but not by her husband Umberto I, disputed between the “Bolognina” (as the Duchess Litta was nicknamed) and the other lover Vincenza Publicola-Santacroce in Sforza-Cesarini.
Vedova, after the murder of her husband, consoles herself by traveling around Europe with the pilot and pioneer aviator Alessandro Cagno. “In modern times, however, none have had as much echo as Lady D. “This wedding is made with the stuff of fairy tales” said the Archbishop of Canterbury celebrating the wedding in July 1981. Nobody could have imagined that that ceremony would have opened wide the doors of hell instead. More than envy he would have deserved compassion »continues Caprarica who met Lady D several times in London when she was a Rai correspondent.
«Yet in her pursuit of happiness, Diana was paradigmatic: she demonstrated that, with character and determination, one can find one’s mission in life. And she, before her disappearance, had found her ».
Journalist and writer Antonio Caprarica (Photo by Leonardo Cendamo / Getty Images)
Antonio Caprarica: “The curse of Monaco”
If we put aside the sad Japanese princesses, crushed by imperial rules, the Monegasque ones emerge in all possible chiaroscuro: beautiful, rich but unfortunate.
Grace Kelly to marry Prince Rainier, in 1956, must give up her career as an Oscar-winning actress, before crashing his car in 1982 exactly where thirty years earlier, in Munich, he had shot To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant. Caroline of Monaco remains widow of her second husband, Stefano Casiraghi, died in an offshore accident in 1990. Stephanie of Monaco was blatantly betrayed in 1995 by her first husband, former bodyguard Daniel Ducruet.
And now there is the Charlene case. For Caprarica it is the “curse of the fortress” which has lasted for seven centuries. It is said of Admiral Ranieri I who fell in love with her, kidnapped and seduced a Flemish girl without marrying her because she was not a noble. It just so happened that she was a witch. And, therefore, he retaliated with a prophecy: “You will be beautiful, rich, but you will never have a happy marriage”. The example of Queen Elizabeth If you can’t be happy forever, however, at least you can be happy.
And perhaps the most obvious example is that of Elizabeth II who turned 96 on 21 April. “She married Prince Philip and stayed with him until her last breath. We do not know if they have been faithful, but they have been united. In your seventy-year reign, you have broken every planetary record for being on the throne. Perhaps he is not bursting with happiness – the cases of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry are open wounds – but certainly his existence can be said to be a fulfilled existence.»Concludes Caprarica.
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