MONACO: Prince Rainier III of Monaco died at dawn yesterday of heart, lung and kidney failure. A heavy smoker, Europe's longest-reigning monarch was 81-years-old and had undergone repeated heart and lung surgery since 1999. He had ruled the tiny principality for 56 years.
Rainier's only son, Prince Albert (47), was at his bedside when he died. Albert became regent on March 31st, when the palace council decided that Rainier was no longer able to rule. Rainier's funeral will take place at noon on Friday April 15th.
Once the period of mourning is over, the regent will be invested Prince Albert II.
For France, Monaco provides a playground for the rich and famous, and a surrogate royal family to replace those overthrown in the revolution. Rainier struggled to wrest greater independence from Paris, so it seemed ironic that President Jacques Chirac praised him as symbolising "the shared destiny of Monaco and France".
The French-appointed head of Monaco's government, Patrick Leclercq, said: "Each of us feels like an orphan because the principality has been marked by his imprint over the 56 years of his reign."
Monaco exempted residents from tax as early as the 14th century. Only 6,000 of the principality's 32,000 inhabitants enjoy Monegasque citizenship; most of the others are tax exiles.
In 1963, President Charles de Gaulle's insistence that French residents pay income tax led to a crisis, during which France set up border posts. The late President Francois Mitterrand granted Rainier control of Monaco's airspace and territorial waters.
Five years ago, Rainier was so angered by a French parliamentary report accusing Monaco of money-laundering that he led a popular campaign for full sovereignty.
Through business acumen and sheer determination, "the builder prince" transformed the sleepy resort of Monte Carlo into the Manhattan of the Mediterranean, reclaiming 20 per cent of Monaco's two sq km from the sea.
Thanks to him, Monte Carlo boasts the world's most famous casino and motor race, a first-rate circus, ballet company, opera, football team and oceanographic centre.
Under Rainier, Monaco joined the Council of Europe and the United Nations.
His life seemed to have been imagined by a Hollywood scriptwriter. His mother, Princess Charlotte, was the illegitimate daughter of Prince Louis (later Louis II) and Marie-Juliette Louvet, a former cabaret hostess.
The Grimaldis recognised Charlotte the year before Rainier's birth, to prevent a rival branch from coming to power. She married Pierre, Prince de Polignac, but the couple soon divorced.
Rainier was haunted by his unhappy childhood. He and his elder sister, Antoinette, were raised by an English governess who was a cousin of Winston Churchill.
He was shipped off to English public school where boys were flogged. When he returned to the palace in Monaco, his grandfather was a distant figure who demanded that Rainier address him as "Monsieur". Louis II collaborated with the Nazis during the second World War; his grandson Rainier joined the allies and was decorated for heroism.
On succeeding Louis II in 1949, His Serene Highness Rainier III inherited more titles than the queen of England. (Duc de Mazarin, Comte de Farette, Sire de Matignon et de Marchais, Baron de la Lutumière, Prince de Château-Porcien is an incomplete list.) A life-long collector of automobiles, he already owned 13 cars, three yachts and two zoos, and was considered one of Europe's most eligible bachelors.
The first meeting between Prince Rainier and the Irish-American actress Grace Kelly took place on May 6th, 1955 - a publicity stunt organised by the editor-in-chief of Paris-Match magazine, who was married to the actress Olivia de Havilland. "He is very, very charming," Grace told de Havilland that evening, while Rainier confided to his personal chaplain, an American priest: "I think I've met the right woman." The engagement was announced the following January.
At their wedding in Monaco's cathedral on April 18th, 1956, Grace wore a champagne coloured dress made of 46m of silk and tulle and 290m of lace. Rainier designed his own uniform, modelled on the Napoleonic army.
Guests included Ava Gardner, Aristotle Onassis, the Aga Khan and King Farouk of Egypt. Grace's former employers at MGM studios obtained exclusive rights to broadcast the ceremony around the world.
The wedding marked the beginning of the paparazzi press which thrives to this day.
Ten months later, Princess Caroline was born; Prince Albert in 1958 and Princess Stephanie in 1965. Rainier compensated for his sad childhood by spoiling his own children, dressing up as their old "Aunt Leonore" to entertain his "little monsters".
Princess Grace said her husband was "dazzled" by his children. "He's happiest with us, at home," she said.
Grace's death in a car crash in September 1982 was the tragedy of Rainier's life.
His body wracked by sobs, Caroline and Albert had to help him walk in her funeral procession. Rainier never remarried.
"I live with the memory of the Princess, with the great emptiness of her loss," he said in 1999. "To me, like many others, her disappearance seems a great injustice. And yet she is ever present."
Rainier worried over the troubled love life of his daughters. Caroline's first marriage, to a playboy banker 17 years her senior, lasted for less than two years. She had three children, over whom Rainier doted, with her second husband, Stefano Casiraghi, killed in a speed-boat accident in 1990.
In 1999, Caroline married her third husband, Prince Ernst August of Hanover, with whom she had a fourth child.
Stephanie was said to be the closest to her father, but was also the most problematic. She has had three children out of wedlock and dabbled in careers as a rock singer and fashion designer. Rainier grudgingly accepted Stephanie's first marriage to her bodyguard, Daniel Ducruet, but insisted the couple divorce when Ducruet was photographed making love to Miss Nude Belgium beside a Monaco swimming pool.
Rainier founded the Monte Carlo circus festival in 1974 and once said he would have liked to have been a circus director. Stephanie apparently inherited his passion, for she married a Portuguese circus acrobat in 2003.
Albert - "Albie" to the family - was the most serious of the three, but had difficulty asserting himself with his strong-willed father. Monaco's new ruler stutters slightly in French, the language he spoke with his father, but not in his mother tongue, English.
While studying political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts, Albert worked in a library and for a cleaning company. He is less interested in business and banking than his late father, and reportedly dreams of turning Monaco into the world capital of ecology and humanitarian causes.
The Grimaldi dynasty was founded in 1297 by an exile from Genoa who supported the pope against the Holy Roman Emperor. The family's motto is Deo Juvante (With God's Help), and Rainier made Catholicism the principality's official religion.
Rainier said that Pope Pius XII, who received him and Princess Grace in the Vatican in 1950, was the person who most influenced him. "I learned a great deal from all of the popes about the greatness of man, his dignity," Rainier said.
When he died yesterday, the flags of Monaco did not have to be lowered; they were already at half-mast for Pope John Paul II.