I thought Prince Albert was geigh. But apparently not:
May 5, 2005
Magazine's Disclosure Clouds the Future of Monaco's Royal Line
By CRAIG S. SMITH
PARIS, May 4 - The line of succession to Monaco's throne, which passed last month to Prince Albert II, the bachelor son of Prince Rainier, took a new twist this week with claims by a former flight attendant that she bore Albert a son in August 2003.
The woman, Nicole Coste, went public with her explosive claim on the cover of this week's Paris-Match, the French picture magazine, which published a lengthy interview with the mother together with photographs of Prince Albert playing with the child at various ages. Ms. Coste, 33, insists that she has given no thought to her son's potential as an heir to the Monegasque throne, but does want Prince Albert to publicly acknowledge that he is the father of the child, named Alexandre.
"I'm not a gold digger," she told the magazine. "I wish simply that he would assume some of his responsibilities."
Monaco's palace spokesman, Armand Deus, would neither confirm nor deny Ms. Coste's claims. "No comment about this story, it's as simple as that," he said. "Nothing will be published, that's all I have to say."
If true, Prince Albert's affair is not a first for the royal family. His sister, Princess Stephanie, has had three children with men to whom she was not married and Prince Rainier's own mother was the daughter of Prince Louis II of Monaco and a young North African laundry worker. A California woman also claims Prince Albert, 47, is the father of her daughter, though he has avoided a paternity test to settle the matter.
Under Monaco's succession rules, Prince Albert's eldest son would be first in line to take the throne upon his death, though it is not clear whether young Alexandre would have that right if the prince refused to marry his mother.
Ms. Coste, who is from Togo, said she met Albert on a flight from Nice to Paris. He asked for her phone number and eventually invited her to Monaco, where they spent a weekend together. She said that she fell in love with him and that weekend liaisons became a regular occurrence, lasting years until Prince Albert's father intervened.
Their relationship grew distant after that with the exception of the night they celebrated her 31st birthday together, which resulted in Alexandre's conception, she said.
Ms. Coste, who is not married and has two older sons, told Paris-Match that Albert initially encouraged her to keep the child, promising to support it, but later changed his mind, concerned that a son born to a woman who was not his wife could complicate his succession to the throne.
After the birth, Ms. Coste said, technicians were sent by Prince Albert's lawyers to collect DNA samples from the child to confirm that Albert was the father, and when Alexandre was two and a half months old, he finally visited the child. She told the magazine that the prince had since agreed to pay her an undisclosed sum every three months to support her son.
Ms. Coste said she was currently living in Prince Albert's Paris apartment, but is planning to move to the French Riviera, so that Alexandre will be closer to his father.
"I didn't want him to grow up like Mazarine," Ms. Coste told Paris-Match, referring to the daughter born to the mistress of the former president of France, François Mitterrand, who died in 1996. Mazarine Pingeot's existence was not revealed to the public until near the end of his life, and Paris-Match was the magazine to deliver that news, too.
Ms. Coste told Paris-Match that she had threatened the Monegasque prince with a lawsuit if he did not acknowledge that the child was his, and as a result, in December 2003, he signed a notarized document acknowledging paternity on the condition that he not be registered as the father until after Prince Rainier's death. She was not given a copy of the document and said she had been fighting ever since to get one.
According to the interview, Prince Albert last visited the child in February, when his father was already gravely ill. She said that since Rainier's death she has asked that Prince Albert register as Alexandre's father. She said she was going public to encourage him to do so.
"I'm appealing to his heart and I think he'll understand the interest of his son," she told the magazine.
...lol
I think the Game is on the right.
) Lenny's BTM. That's where I got that impression.
Linear Mode
