Growing up with a mother who went from being a Hollywood star to becoming part of royalty cannot have been easy. And if not, just ask Princess Caroline. The Monaco royal spoke candidly about what her difficult childhood was like with Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier II as parents in the book Albert II of Monaco: The Queen and the Prince, published in 2018.
Caroline of Monaco explained in her pages how she and her siblings Albert and Stéphanie developed a very close and affectionate relationship with their nanny, Maureen Wood. «For my brothers and for me, Maureen was the key figure in our lives», admitted the princess. «When we were little, we were closer to our nanny than to our parents». Trained at the prestigious Norland College, the British woman was a significant figure in the Grimaldi family’s life and attended the baptism of Albert and Charlene’s twins, the princes Jacques and Gabriella, in 2015. Maureen Wood passed away in 2018, shortly after the book’s publication.
The princess Caroline, who is now 69, recounted in the book how the young Grimaldis would even beg Wood not to go on vacation: «We were sad for days.» Most of the time, our mother ended up calling her to ask her to return home earlier than planned«, we read in the book. Meanwhile, the nanny described how important it was to keep Caroline’s parents as central figures of the home, while preserving her growing bond with the children.
In the book she recounted the anecdote of a night when she, Albert and Caroline organized their own gala dinner when Rainier and Grace Kelly attended the royal wedding of Constantine and Anne-Marie of Greece. «The chef prepared a special menu, Caroline wore one of her mother’s dresses, Albert wore the uniform and I also wore a gala dress. Then we put on music and danced», Maureen Wood wrote.
This is how 18-year-old Caroline of Monaco looked
In 1975, The New York Times published a feature titled The Princess Caroline at 18: An Industrious Student and a Carefree Party-Goer, which included interviews and reflections from both the young royal and her mother. At that time, Caroline lived in Paris and studied economics, finance, international relations and political science. And she balanced her classes with hobbies such as horseback riding, swimming, skiing or taking flying lessons.
Grace Kelly with a young Caroline in her arms.
In that revealing conversation, the young princess described her family life as “happy but strict,” noting that she and her brother Albert were not allowed to watch television on days they had classes, although she added that palace rules had softened after the birth of her younger sister, Stéphanie. She also spoke of her circle of friends, which at that time included Henri Giscard d’Estaing, son of the president of France, and Prince Henri of Luxembourg, a close friend of Albert of Monaco.
That adolescent declared herself a fan of pop music, denied any plans to debut in the film world, and complained about the harassment of the most sensationalist media. “I can’t stop reading things about me and people I don’t know,” Caroline said, insisting that the image the press was giving of her was wrong: “I want to make this clear. I don’t spend my life in the social scene, and those romance stories bother me.”
Grace Kelly, Caroline, and Carlotta Casiraghi
Jumping another generation into the future, Caroline of Monaco and her daughter Carlotta Casiraghi have also remembered the figure of the late Hitchcock muse. “Although I never knew her, I see many things of your mother in you. The mother–daughter relationship is a complex one; the mother occupies a powerful place, even when she is loving and attentive,” Carlotta revealed in an interview with Madame Figaro about the similarities between her mother and Grace Kelly.
Caroline of Monaco with her daughter, Carlotta Casiraghi,
However, Princess Caroline expressed a different impression. “But I don’t look like her. Physically, I resemble my paternal grandmother,” she said, referring to Carlotta of Monaco, the Duchess of Valentinois. “She was a very free and original woman. She was a nurse during the war and, afterwards, she ran a rehabilitation center for former inmates.”
When talking about her childhood and youth, the eldest daughter of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly revealed that hers was “a bit of a vestige of the nineteenth century.” We didn’t see our parents much; we had an English nanny and a French housekeeper. I studied at the Saint-Mur boarding school; I loved school and was a good student. But she acknowledged that “the education of my children has nothing to do with the one I received.”
