I found new links to the Grimaldis from Kenneth I of Scotland (aka
Cináed I,
king of Scotland +859) while working on my own geneology
. Ancestors up to
Albert II. It will go along with two other posts I've made.
1,
2, You can see the connection through both of Rainier's parents.
Prince Albert I and Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton.
On 21 September 1869 at the Château de Marchais (which is still in the possession of the Grimaldi family today) in Champagne, Prince Albert was married to Lady Mary Hamilton (1850-1922), of Lanarkshire, Scotland, a daughter of the 11th Duke of Hamilton and his royal wife, Princess Marie of Baden. The couple met for the first time in August 1869 at a ball hosted by the emperor and empress of France and their marriage had been arranged by Albert's grandmother Caroline.
Caroline had tried to make a marital match between Albert and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, the first cousin of Queen Victoria and future mother of Britain’s Queen Mary, but to no avail. The failure did not dissuade Caroline from her goal and it was to this end that she sought the help of the French Emperor Napoléon III (Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) and his wife, Empress Eugénie.
The emperor managed to convince Caroline that Queen Victoria was unlikely to allow one of her family members to marry a Grimaldi, but suggested Mary, his third cousin and sister of his good friend the 12th Duke of Hamilton, as a suitable alternative. As the daughter of a Scottish duke, Mary may not have been royalty, but her family was sufficiently rich, well connected, and was connected to the French Imperial family through her maternal grandmother Stéphanie de Beauharnais, second cousin of Emperor Napoleon III's mother and Emperor Napoleon I's adopted daughter. [1]
Within a year of their marriage, the couple's only child, Louis was born, but the strong-willed 19-year-old Scots Mary disliked Monaco and everything about it. Shortly thereafter, she left Monaco permanently and the marriage was annulled in 28 July 1880 although a special provision was made by the Vatican that allowed for their son Louis to remain legitimate. That same year, the former Princess of Monaco married in Florence, Italy, as her second husband, a Hungarian nobleman, Tassilo, Prince Festetics von Tolna, 1850-1933. They had a daughter, Maria, who would become the paternal grandmother of the fashion designer Egon von Fürstenberg and his sister Ira von Fürstenberg, a European B-movie actress who would later become a companion of her cousin Rainier III of Monaco.
Lady Mary Victoria
Hamilton
Louis II,
Louis and Pierre,
Louis II and family