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| Princess Charlotte of Monaco weds Count Pierre de Polignac |
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| The Hereditary Prince Albert and Hereditary Princess Mary of Monaco |
On 19 March 1920, Princess Charlotte of Monaco and Count Pierre de Polignac were married in a civil ceremony at Monte Carlo. The couple were joined in matrimony in a Roman Catholic service the following day, 20 March. The day before the civil wedding, on 18 March, Pierre de Polignac took the Grimaldi surname and became a Monegasque citizen. By virtue of marrying Charlotte, Pierre was titled as the Duke of Valentinois. Alas, this alliance between Charlotte and Pierre was not destined to end "happily ever after" for the parties involved.
On 9 May 1949, Prince Louis II of Monaco passed away at the age of seventy-eight. He was succeeded by his grandson, who became Prince Rainier III. Both Charlotte and Pierre attended the celebrations that marked their son's succession to the Monegasque throne. By this time, Charlotte had taken up residence at her family's Château de Marchais outside of Paris. Pierre was also a resident of his country of birth.
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| Prince Rainier, Princess Charlotte, Prince Pierre, and Princess Antoinette of Monaco in 1956. |
The wedding of Prince Rainier was the last public occasion to reunite his parents. Charlotte and Pierre both attended the union of their son to the American actress Grace Patricia Kelly in April 1956. Rainier's nephew Baron Christian de Massy, the only son of Princess Antoinette, recounted the acrimonious goings-on between his grandparents during this family event in his memoirs:
Some time after, when I was older, Aunt Grace told me that the royal wedding day and the whole period that preceded it were among the worst ordeals she had ever known. At the various official and unofficial occasions, the lunches, the dinners, and the other family gatherings, she was miserably aware of the tension that existed in most of the family, and especially between Charlotte and Polignac, who even carried on vicious arguments right in front of her and Uncle Rainier. At one point she heard Polignac say, in a deliberate slight to Charlotte, and referring to her illegitimate birth, "At least my son married a real princess!" Grace had naturally dreamed that her new parents-in-law would be pleasant and compatible; the fact that her mother-in-law was less than welcoming to her and that Mamou despised her own [ex-]husband was very painful to Grace, for whom family links were of primary importance. One of her first wishes was to make the difficult, quarrelling Grimaldis a family as united as hers. She now understood that this was impossible.
Several months after Rainier's wedding, in July 1956, Pierre underwent a 2 1/2 hour operation for a stomach ulcer in Charlottesville, Virginia.
On 10 November 1964, Prince Pierre of Monaco died of cancer at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The prince had been an active patron of the arts. He was sixty-nine years-old. Rainier and Antoinette were at their father's bedside when he passed away. Pierre's former wife survived him by over a decade. Princess Charlotte of Monaco died on 15 November 1977 at the Château de Marchais. The princess had taken to rehabilitating ex-convicts on her estate. She was seventy-nine years-old. Both Charlotte and Pierre are buried at the Chapelle de la Paix in Monte Carlo.
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| Charlotte and Pierre. |
