Prince(s) Albert I, and Louis II of Monaco


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Toscany

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Does anyone have any knowledge or background about the families of these two men?

I have found the secret assistance by Louis II, to warn both dissidents and Jewish people, during the Italian and German WWII occupation, very interesting.
 
AFAIK they weren't by no means "family men".

Albert neglected both his wives and preferred to sail the sea in his scientific vessels, interestingly named after his wives.

He did not seem to be much bored when his first wife left the principality taking with her his only son and heir.

Albert was a good fried of King D.Carlos, himself a renown oceanographer (?) and the two royals exchanged correspondence relatred to their experiences and discoveries.

Louis was even less a family man, who knows, after his troubled childhood.

He never made plans to marry and secure the succession.

The birth of Charlotte by a laundry woman was definitely fortuitous.

BTW has anyone ever seen a pic of Charlotte's mother ?

In late life he married an actress, Ghislaine Dommanget, whom Pr. Rainier chased from the rock after his grand-father's death .

Louis' daughter caused him many worries specially when, during WW2, she intended to marry a german captain who was swiftly moved to the eastern front and no one ever heard of him again.
 
Actually Prince Albert's first wife, Princess Mary Victoria, never seemed to like Monaco, her husband or anything about the marriage which had been arranged by Napoleon III. There were even rumors that Louis was not really Albert's son which some have used to explain the cold relationship between the two. Albert's second wife was a better fit in Monaco (and the first American Princess of Monaco) but Albert's first love was always the sea and when she looked elsewhere for attention Albert was infuriated.

As for Louis II, according to some accounts he did marry his first love in a religious ceremony but Albert refused to recognize it, there was no civil wedding and thus never recognized by Monegasque law. Louis and his second wife were perfectly happy as far as I know. Most assume he married her to have a caretaker in his old age and (not surprisingly) most assume she married him for money and position. This she would have been given but Rainier III voided his grandfather's will as soon as he died. Prince Louis II did use Monegasque police records to warn people ahead of time that the Gestapo would be coming for them. He was in a very difficult position as he, and certainly Rainier, favored the Allied side in the war but Louis, being a Great War veteran, also felt a great deal of personal loyalty to his former commander Marshal Petain who led the Vichy regime.

Part of the reason I think Louis II has been painted in a rather unfavorable light is that Rainier blamed him, to some extent at least, for the very bad relationship between his own parents. Louis had never liked Prince Pierre which is not surprising as the two were exact opposites in almost every way.

:monacostandard: :monacoflag:
 
According to a Marconi Wireless telegraph message to the New York Times dated February 2, 1908, Marie Juliette Louvet was the the morganatic spouse of Prince Louis II of Monaco. This means that his marriage to Marie was never recognized as dynastic by Prince Albert I. This morganatic status is the root of the claims that their daughter, Charlotte, was illegitimate. Truth is she was likely legitimate, but had to be formally adopted by Louis in order to acquire dynastic succession rights. If Louis never married Marie Louvet, why did he not marry another woman to father a much needed male heir? Answer is that he was already married to Marie. He claimed that this marriage was religious. We will never know. Marie was previously married and divorced with two children- this maybe why her marriage to Louis could never be dynastic. Louis only married his second wife, Ghiselline, sometime after the death of Marie Louvet. All the surviving evidence points to a marriage between Louis and Marie which was not recognized as dynastic by his father Prince Albert I, but may have been fully legal, and also religious.

I have miraculously discovered an article brilliantly authored by Frederick Cunliffe-Owen, in the archives of The New York Times, dated July 9, 1922. This article reveals the marriage between Prince Louis II of Monaco and Marie Juliette Louvet. According to Cunliffe-Owen, Louis married his mistress, Marie Louvet, without his father's consent. This marriage was both civil AND religious. When Prince Albert found out about it he declared the marriage morganatic, and insisted that Louis have the marriage anulled. However Louis refused, and furthermore, Louis insisted that the marriage was dynastic, not morganatic- Louis was fully supported by the Papacy and the Church of Rome. Eventually, a reconciliation was achieved between father and son. When Prince Albert was introduced to his baby grand-daughter, he fell in love with her. However, instead of formally recognizing her as his legitimate grand-daughter, he formally adopted Charlotte as his own daughter, making her heiress of Monaco after Louis. This act seems to indicate that Albert never recognized the dynastic status of the legal marriage. She was later married to Pierre de Polignac- representing the junior line of the Polignac noble family.

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Charlotte was both legitimate and dynastic
. Cunliffe-Owen further claims that the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II tried to use Louis' controversial marriage to get Albert to set aside his son's succession, and apoint his nephew, the German Duke of Urach as his heir, but Albert refused. Prince Albert, originally a good friend of the Kaiser, later turned against him. See article entitled "Prince Louis's Notable Career" in the archives of The New York Times. Cunliffe-Owen claims that Louis and his father were on excellent terms at the time of Prince Albert's death in 1922. Louis was a highly respected French General at the time of his accession.
 
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I doubt very much that the Papacy and the Church of Rome would have supported a marriage between the son of The Prince of Monaco and a divorced mother of two.
Catholics are STILL not allowed to marry divorcees and no record of marriage either civil or religious has ever been produced.
 
It depends if the first marriage was a Catholic one; in this case she couldn't re-marry in a Catholic ceremony (which is required by the law in Monaco).
But if her first marriage wasn't a Catholic one, then Catholic Church doesn't recognize it and she is - at the eyes of Catholic Church - free to marry in a Catholic marriage (i.e. the Princess of Asturias: a Catholic divorcée, whose first marriage was just a civil one, who has been able married the Catholic Prince of Asturias).
 
Louis II of Monaco died on the 9th of May 1949.


Prince_Louis_II_of_Monaco_05670r.jpg
 
The Louis II Stadium in Fontvieille is the Principality's premier sports venue and it is also where the University of Monaco is based. Louis II is thus very much part of Monaco's historical memory.
 
It just goes to show just how long reigning Louis II's successor Rainier III was, who came to the throne in 1949 and died in 2005.
 
The Prince of Monaco Albert II and King Charles I of Portugal were close friends. Does anyone know if the Portuguese royal family come to visit Monaco at the time of the Bragança were in exile or at the time when Portugal had monarchy?
 
Louis II formed the first Monaco Football Club in 1924.
 
Prince Dimitri of Serbia posted a very old picture with the great grandfather King Victor Emanuel with Prince Louis during World War I having a quick lunch on the front along with a French Brigadier General

https://www.instagram.com/p/BvKALPGhshv/
 
I was recently reading up on Alice Heine,later Princess consort of Monaco and discovered that her father was a French Jew and an American Roman Catholic mother.
I wonder was Alice raised in her fathers Jewish faith or her mothers Roman Catholicism?
 
I wonder was Alice raised in her fathers Jewish faith or her mothers Roman Catholicism?

The English and the German Wikipedia claim both, that she converted to catholicism, when she married her first husband, the Duke de Richelieu.

But both have no explicit source for that claim...
 
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Celebrations in Monaco following the accession of Prince Louis II in 1923 (no sound)

 
I was recently reading up on Alice Heine,later Princess consort of Monaco and discovered that her father was a French Jew and an American Roman Catholic mother.
I wonder was Alice raised in her fathers Jewish faith or her mothers Roman Catholicism?

The English and the German Wikipedia claim both, that she converted to catholicism, when she married her first husband, the Duke de Richelieu.

But both have no explicit source for that claim...

Since the view of Ashkenazi Judaism in the 19th century was that you needed a Jewish mother to be considered Jewish, I'm not sure how or why Alice would have been Jewish at all. Michel Heine certainly knew the direction he was taking when he married her mother. Alice would not have been considered Jewish by the Jewish community without converting, so it seems very unlikely her parents would have raised her as Jewish, of which there is no mention in Wikipedia, nor that she considered herself to be Jewish.

Princess Elsa of Liechtenstein (who did convert) is a clearer case.
 
The English and the German Wikipedia claim both, that she converted to catholicism, when she married her first husband, the Duke de Richelieu.

But both have no explicit source for that claim...

The French Wikipedia states she was born a Catholic. Because her Jewish father married her Catholic mother at St. Louis Cathedral in New Orleans, I suspect the French Wikipedia is correct and she was raised in her mother's faith.
 
In the tension filled times leading up to the First World War, Prince Albert I made numerous attempts to dissuade Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany from war. It is unfortunate that Prince Albert was unsuccessful.
 
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