August Annotations

IN THE HOUSE OF GRIMALDI - by Peter Kurth

The subject on everyone’s mind in Monaco these days is marriage: Stephanie’s marriage, Caroline’s marriage, Albert’s marriage, even Rainier’s marriage. Since none of the ruling Grimaldi family is married at the moment, and since the only point in having royalty (even teeny-tiny royalty like Monaco’s) is to see them behaving just like everyone else (only more so, or less so, depending on the state of their public relations) — well, after ten years of bad press, bad luck, and illegitimate babies, you can imagine it’s time for some domestic tranquility. Someone in Monaco has to get married, and fast, if only to prove that they’re still in the game.

It was a wedding that first put Monaco on the map, don’t forget, in 1956, when Grace Kelly left her role as a Hollywood princess for a new career as Europe’s most visible and dazzling Catholic grande dame. Her death in an auto accident in 1982 left a void in Monte Carlo that nothing and no one seems able to fill. Ask anyone: Grace’s tomb is the major tourist attraction in Monaco after the palace and the casino, which pretty much sums up her role in history and the principality at large.

“She was superior in the same way that Peter Pan was superior,” says Jeffrey Robinson, a friend of Princess Caroline who serves as the Grimaldi family’s official biographer. Rainier himself speaks of the memory of Princess Grace as “the motivation, true and deep, that keeps us all going.” Friends remember how “sweet” she was before her marriage, how “lovely” and “enchanting,” and how “royal” she became with the passage of time. If, today, Rainier and his children are mentioned in the same breath with the Queen of England as the world’s most glamorous figureheads, it is thanks to Grace and to Grace alone.

I’d better clarify that: it’s really only the children who are glamorous. Rainier himself is a Mediterranean capitalist, the descendant of pirates, if truth be told, who would rather watch television and eat pizza in his underwear than attend the parties, galas, balls, and fêtes that traditionally make up the Monaco season. Periodically, since Grace’s death, he has been linked romantically with one or another hard-bitten socialite on the razzle-dazzle circuit (most notably the “Business Princess,” Ira von Fürstenberg), but no one doubts that his first devotion is to the principality — “Monaco, Inc.,” 485.87 acres of porous rock and priceless sunshine and the most valuable real estate on the French Riviera. Apart from that, the aging Prince hasn’t got a lot of “interests.”

“Let’s face it,” a woman I know is frank in admitting, “if Caroline, Albert and Stephanie were to be killed in a plane crash, which God forbid, nobody would give a damn ever again about Rainier. His face wouldn’t sell two magazines on its own.” And don’t let anyone kid you: selling magazines — selling Monaco — is what it’s all about. Nothing in the country would function at all without the Prince’s family to promote it, open it, close it, bless it, and be photographed with it. In 1982, when Grace died, the National Enquirer sent 16 reporters to Monte Carlo to cover her funeral. Earlier, when Princess Caroline married Phillipe Junot, the Enquirer offered $5,000 to anyone who would sell his ticket to the ball that preceded the wedding. (No one did.) There are only a handful of people in the world who get this kind of media attention. The Kennedys, the Windsors, Elizabeth Taylor — and the Grimaldis, whose problems make the lives of the others look like fun-time in comparison. Basically what you’ve got in the line of succession are a Bad Girl, a Good Widow, and a Nice Boy on a Bobsled.

Taking the Bad Girl first: Stephanie of Monaco — rock star, swimsuit designer, wannabe actress and full-time brat — is the Problem Child of Europe, a girl the French papers call “princesse rockeuse” not just on account of her up-and-down career as a pop singer. Karl Lagerfeld once described Stephanie as “a sporty version of Madonna.” She had made Earl Blackwell’s worst-dressed list by the time she was twenty-one. She chews her nails and likes to tell jokes — the dirtier the better.

“What did the elephant say to the naked man?” Stephanie once asked a friend of her mother’s at dinner, and when he grinned and said he didn’t know, she answered brightly, “Do you really eat out of that thing?” She is deliberately provocative, even outrageous, in her public appearances, and she hopes to come back in some future life reincarnated as a dolphin.

“I hate being a princess,” Stephanie says — but she relies on it, too, just as often, and usually at the top of her voice. She is one of those unfortunate celebrities whose garbage cans are stolen by journalists and sifted for clues. She throws out unused plane tickets, spare change, sedatives, and pictures of herself; it’s hard to get at the truth, of course, if you’re picking through hair mousse and globs of pasta. One of the nicest things I’ve heard anybody say about Stephanie is that “she has a lot of anger.” She’s made a lot of headlines, too, since surviving the accident that killed Princess Grace. She was only seventeen in 1982, when her mother’s Rover, with the two of them in it, plunged off the mountain road from La Turbie on its way down to Monaco. Many believe that Stephanie was actually driving the car, or that she and Grace were having “a raging, slapping fight,” and that one or the other of them drove deliberately over the edge. There is some horrible chatter indeed on the Riviera about Princess Grace’s final hours. The tabloids, when they aren’t making a case for Mafia or PLO involvement in Grace’s death, slyly point to suicide.

“The curve they went over is directly above a cemetery,” a reporter in Paris once told me in all seriousness. “Grace would have known that. We think she wanted to fly off to join the angels.” Stephanie has “had help” in dealing with the trauma, but it’s the kind of thing, obviously, she won’t ever get over. A couple of years ago, she had a tattoo removed from an unspecified part of her body, because it bore the name (also unspecified) of one or the other of her former boyfriends. Now she’s playing at unwed motherhood, shacking up — what else can I call it? — with Daniel Ducruet, who regularly makes headlines himself by attacking photographers, personal enemies, rival suitors, total strangers, and beating them to a pulp.

“He’s bad news,” anyone in Monaco can tell you — and they will, provided you swear not to quote them by name. “Gossip was invented in Monaco,” Prince Rainier has said, but so was the happy dictatorship, “the last oasis of peace and dreams.” If you want to live in the principality, you have to play by the rules. There’s no other way. “And when you live here,” a friend of mine observes, “you really believe that you’re protected.”

As a matter of fact, you are. There are 450 openly acknowledged policemen in the principality, serving an official population that never quite exceeds 30,000 souls. Half of these, at any given moment, are probably somewhere else, since an awful lot of them are millionaires, businessmen, rock stars, and socialites. Of the roughly 5000 people who are actual Monégasques (born there, and engaged in picturesque occupations for the sake of the tourists), most earn their living from one or another component of Prince Rainier’s hugely profitable gambling, real-estate, advertising, and corporate-convention empire. There is no crime to speak of — no street crime, anyway — and no unemployment. The principality is an industry in the exact sense. It’s a theme park, a playground, a triumph of marketing, and a model of design. It’s also a police state, where you can be thrown out for insulting the Prince and his family when you walk down the street in your diamonds.

“We have video cameras in key locations around the principality,” Rainier admits, “on street corners, in passageways and in public lifts. It’s proven very dissuasive so we’re extending the system. Let’s face it, if a fellow sees a camera on a corner he’s not going to do much because he knows the police are watching.”

They’re listening, too. Every journalist in Monaco learns before long that his phone has been tapped. Old hands tell stories about operators bursting into conversations between writers and editors, shouting, “That isn’t true!” and, “How can you say such things about the Princess!” I went to dinner with a young man who recently opened a business in Monte Carlo, and he prefaced our conversation with the most extraordinary warnings — caveats I thought had gone out with the Cold War.

“Shhhhhhh!” he kept saying, glancing shiftily around the Café de Paris. “When you talk, talk quietly!” I was not to identify him by profession or even nationality, because if I did, he told me, he would be “expelled.” He was serious: “I will be out of here — like that!” Prince Rainier has an agreement with the French government that permits him, as an absolute monarch, to exile anyone he pleases not just from Monaco, but, if necessary, from all four départements of the French Riviera. Magazines and books with a “pessimistic” view of the Grimaldis, furthermore, are banned from the principality.

“You don’t hear a negative word about any of them,” says Irish writer Genevieve Lyons, who spends part of every summer in nearby Antibes. “People on the Riviera — not just Monaco — all want Caroline or Albert or Rainier at their parties. They want their patronage, they want to lie in their sun. And the gossip mill functions so smoothly here that if you did say anything nasty about them they’d hear about it before breakfast.” So nobody’s saying anything nasty about Princess Stephanie’s new career as a mother. She and Daniel Ducruet have been giving a lot of interviews lately to say how happy they are with the baby, and how happy Prince Rainier is to have another grandson, and how happy they’re all going to be when she and Daniel finally get married, which they will, only why rush, and besides (this is Daniel talking), “Marriage is a beautiful ceremony which shouldn’t be overshadowed by any sense of obligation.” (Tell that to the ghost of Princess Grace.)

“It’s so sad, so sad,” says a friend of Grace’s in New York. People’s eyes tend to widen when you ask about Stephanie, and royalty, in general, smacks its collective brow at the mention of her name. She is such an easy target for the tabloid press that it’s tempting to overlook her very real accomplishments and her winning sense of humor. It’s also a fact that her lovers and paramours, as a rule, do not discuss her when she’s finished with them. They like her. They are loyal in that sense.

“I think there’s a sort of a myth at work here,” says the doorman of an ultra-hot nightclub in Paris where Stephanie sometimes appears. “Every girl in France dreams of being a princess who hangs out with hoodlums. All of the movies are about that, all the commercials. That’s their dream. And Stephanie lives it.”

Caroline, meanwhile, is on to something else, slowly recovering from the terrible sorrow occasioned by the death of her husband, Italian businessman Stefano Casiraghi, in a speedboat accident in 1990. (Take it from me that everyone in Monte Carlo is described as a businessman sooner or later. They’re in “real estate,” or “development,” or “import-export,” and it all means money — preferably untraceable.) For most of her life before she married Casiraghi, Caroline played the same kind of circus-princess role that Stephanie acts out now. She was petulant, unruly, sometimes stupidly defiant and shocking. Her transformation, as one of her admirers puts it in a shimmering image, “from slut to saint,” is one of the most interesting of our times, and she doesn’t mind at all anymore when she’s compared to Princess Grace.

“I can’t stand to carry the burden of her unrealized ambition,” Caroline griped about her mother in 1978, at the ripe old age of 21. She said many superior things in the first flush of her independence, when she appeared as the toast of jet-set society and quite brazenly smashed her way into marriage with the much older, cavalier, epicurean Phillipe Junot. “He works with banks,” Grace remarked (frostily, we can imagine.) Caroline tells a story now — and it’s worth pointing out that she reveres her mother’s memory — of finding Grace one day bent over a copy of the Almanach de Gotha, hunting for suitable sons-in-law among the European nobility.

“Drop him or marry him,” she advised her daughter when it came to Junot, and Caroline married him, “out of naivety,” she supposes, “or maybe in the spirit of rebellion.” Grace was appalled at Caroline’s choice of men, but she summoned enough of her accustomed generosity to give her one of the all-time glamorous weddings of the 1970s — an unforgettable occasion, to hear the guests tell it, when a great deal of cocaine went up a lot of famous noses.

“Look at my little girl,” Grace cooed as Caroline tied what proved to be the loosest of knots. “She looks just like a princess!” (Friends, befuddled, were obliged to answer, “She is, Gracie. She is a princess.”) By the time the Vatican, late last year, finally got around to granting Caroline an annulment from Junot, everyone agreed that she had paid her debt to society. Tragedy — sudden death — had sobered her twice.

“Caroline is fantastic,” says Prince Dmitri of Yugoslavia, whose own family has known the Grimaldis for years. “She’s highly intelligent, highly cultivated. She’s brilliant. She can talk about anything: politics and art and metaphysics. She really is the kind of person you’d want to have next to you at dinner.” She is notoriously more exciting, at least in public, than her unmarried brother, Albert, whose gifts lie more in the line of administration and ribbon-cutting. After Grace’s death, rumors were rife that a grieving Rainier wanted to abdicate, and that Caroline (with or without her father’s consent) would “seize the throne” from Albert. These stories, denied by the palace as “ridiculous and completely without foundation,” were rather more dramatic than the situation warranted, but there’s truth to the suspicion that Caroline’s fingers will need prying loose if and when her brother takes a wife. There is nothing false about her devotion to the duties she inherited from Princess Grace, nor was there anything “sham” about her second marriage to Stefano Casiraghi. She was heartbroken when Stefano died, pulverized with grief, and there was real concern among her friends that she might crack under the strain of her loss.

She hasn’t — she won’t. She’s taken the time to recover for real, and all of a sudden she’s smiling again, to the intense satisfaction of the tabloids and the lace-tatting Monégasques. Caroline has had a lot of help in her bereavement from French actor Vincent Lindon, her boyfriend of record, who is “shadowy” in a way that differs substantially from most of the lizards you meet in Monte Carlo. He is private. He’s actually shy, and he’s completely devoted to Caroline’s three children by Casiraghi, Andrea, Charlotte, and Pierre. Lindon is also Jewish, and would presumably need to convert to Catholicism if he wants to marry Caroline — though why the Grimaldis, looking at the record of royalty over the last ten years, would need to be sticklers for protocol is beyond the ken. It has something to do with the laws of succession, obviously: Monaco enjoys a treaty of independence with its gaping neighbor, France, which stipulates that the Prince’s family has to produce a legitimate (i.e., a Catholic) heir, otherwise Monaco becomes French territory.

This is the upshot of “the Albert Problem,” the confusion that exists in the public mind about the man who is frequently described as the most eligible bachelor in Europe. At 35, Albert of Monaco is handsome, athletic (he’s an Olympic bobsledder), a wee bit nervous, and as nice as the day is long — “the dictionary definition of nice,” says a friend of the family. “He is nice, nice, nice.” Albert is the “sweetest” of all the Grimaldis, the most like his mother, with Grace’s tact and her well-known concern for the feelings of other people. (There is a marvelous story about Princess Grace and Diana Spencer, when they met for the first time on the eve of Diana’s marriage to the Prince of Wales. Grace found her crying in the ladies’ room at a party and folded her in her arms. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’ll get worse.”) For a number of years after Grace died, Prince Rainier kept insisting he would give up his throne as soon as Albert was “settled and confident. It will also have to do with when Albert gets married,” Rainier explained. Albert knows that the heat is on in this regard, but so far he’s refused to succumb to the pressure. He’ll take a wife when he’s ready, he says. Or not.

“Have you talked to any of his girlfriends?” a friend of Grace’s asked me when I called. “Is he a homosexual?” She thinks he isn’t. She thinks that people just think he is. “Every time I’ve seen him, God knows,” she says, “he’s surrounded by bimbos.” There is a fierce protectiveness toward Albert on the part of all his family and friends, and while everybody wants to tell you what a nice guy he is, he remains a blurry figure, not as thrilling, somehow, as you think he might be. He’s cautious, undeveloped, out of focus.

“He wants to make you feel comfortable,” says an American woman who dated Albert in Monte Carlo. She is very pretty, a leggy blonde, like most of his former sweethearts.

“When I went out with him,” she confides, “at nightclubs, or on his yacht, wherever, there were lots of — well, it’s not that I think I’m lower-class, but … there were lots of rich people. I was never made to feel that I was less than they were.” She was also never encouraged to think that she might become the next Princess of Monaco: “I didn’t think that anything `serious’ was going to come out of it. He didn’t try to kid me, and I respect him for that. I feel that he will always be a good friend of mine. He will always be there for me if I need him.” The girl explains that she “lost it” with Albert only once, when she complained that he was hard to reach (in the actual sense).

“I never see you,” she cried. “You’re always busy!” And Albert replied with perfect sincerity, “But you see me more than anyone else I’m dating.”

“And you know what?” says his friend. “I believed him. I’d probably seen him all of twice that month. But this is the thing: he never pretended with me.” She gently rejects the suggestion that Albert might be gay. She’s a professional dancer, and she knows from homosexuals: she “would have noticed.” Albert himself has publicly denied the rumors about his sexuality, but he’s smart enough to realize that no denial he can make would satisfy the press or his eager legion of gay male fans. His photograph appears in the newspapers with astonishing regularity as he frolics in boats and on sunlit beaches with a wide assortment of bare-breasted girls. He’s been seen on the slopes, so to speak, in the company of Brooke Shields, Donna Rice, Catherine Oxenberg, and, most recently, Claudia Schiffer, but again, so far as anyone knows, there’s “nobody serious” in the picture.

“And why should there be?” asks a friend of Albert’s in New York? Albert is only 35, a little older than Rainier was when he met Grace Kelly. I asked his pal to tell me “what makes Albert tick,” and the answer came without a beat: “Girls. Girls and sports and good friends.”

Is Albert gay? I blurted out (hang the consequences!).

“I’m not going to give you any details,” his friend replied. “Let’s just say I’ve been out with him at night.” He added something I couldn’t catch about “bringing them home,” then said: “Do you think it would be easy for Albert to find a bride? It’s one thing to marry a bimbo, it’s another thing to marry someone like his mother. She was superb. She was the best thing that ever happened to the principality.” There remains the possibility that Albert is just too boring and too nice for the shark-infested waters of Monaco, but this, as so much else, remains to be seen.

Will Albert marry? Will Rainier abdicate? Will Caroline seize the throne? (Let’s leave Daniel and Stephanie out of it.)

“It isn’t a joke!” cried a well-known film producer with a house in Monte Carlo, when I ventured that none of it mattered a damn. “I mean” — he was getting a bit misty — “God bless the principality! It’s a jewel! It’s a paradise! And the more the rest of the world deteriorates, the more I realize how lucky we are. I go to church every day to pray for the health of the Prince and his family. I really pray that God will keep them safe and sane. Because that is my security.”

And you know what? I believed him.

Reproduced exactly as published by “Cosmopolitan” in July 1993. Reprinted here by gracious permission of Peter Kurth. http://www.peterkurth.com

10 Little-Known Palaces and Homes Where Royalty Play

How would you hide from the paparazzi, your scathing skeptics or needy subjects if you were a member of royalty? Would you own several homes far, far away from your domain? Or, would you show up unexpectedly with bodyguards and staff to a high-priced resort tucked neatly away in the Caribbean? It appears that some royalty maintain traditions where they show up at a summer home on schedule, a habit that tends to keep news about their travels low-key. Lately, however, it seems that some royalty have altered those well-known habits based upon political agendas or to simply break with generations-old customs. Why settle for the musty family summer palace when you can visit a new high-priced resort geared to royalty?

This ability to venture beyond tradition has led to another new trick for royalty and celebrities alike - if you can travel with staff, why not stay in the home of another multi-millionaire? This possibility has led some royals to stay in celebrity homes, palaces that belong to other royal families or in the homes of corporate CEOs who unabashedly rent their abodes for tens of thousands of dollars per week.

We discovered all the above choices when we picked a handful of royals to follow for their vacations and getaways. While the sites listed below are numbered and listed in alphabetical order, these organizational techniques do not indicate that we favor one getaway over another or that they are listed in order of value.

1. Château de Caïx: Queen Margrethe of Denmark is a real homebody. Although she visits other heads of state for political reasons, her heart stays with her homeland as she officially resides at Amalienborg Palace in Copenhagen (where the Queen was born), spends summer at Marselisborg Castle near Århus, and uses Fredensborg Castle in North Zealand during the spring and fall. But, Queen Margrethe and her husband, Prince Henrik, also acquired a more private abode in 1974 when they purchased the Château de Caïx in Cahors, southern France. This latter home is the Queen’s true playground, where she can devote herself to her painting, graphic work and other artistic pursuits. Her works have been displayed at several exhibitions since 1988. This home also is a hideaway for her husband and his French relatives when he wants to escape Danish royal life, as this home originally belonged to his wine-producing family. Henrik was born to French parents, and his native tongue also is French.
2. Marivent Palace (Palma de Mallorca): This is the traditional summer home for Spanish King Juan Carlos and his royal family. While kings usually grant aging castles and palaces to municipalities, this building was granted by the city to the king when he was a prince. King Carlos and his son, both ardent sailors, participate in the Yacht Regattas in August and the Royal Yacht is moored in Portals Nous. Palma is the major city and port on the island of Mallorca and capital city of the autonomous community of the Spanish Balearic Islands in Europe. In 2007, however, tradition was broken when Juan Carlos’ daughters, princesses Cristina and Elena, arrived in Budva, Montenegro to stay at the Iberostar Bellevue in August. Also known as the Budva Riviera, this coastal town is a tourist attraction and one of the oldest settlements on the Adriatic sea coast in southeastern Europe. The hotel is located along the spectacular Plaza Bellevue beach and is surrounded by unspoilt, green countryside. Located just a few miles from the center of Budva, a jet-set summer resort, this hotel has been historically marked as a destination for European royal families. Among the prestigious hotels located here is the “Milocer,” former residence of royal family Karadordevic of Serbia.
3. Michael Appe home: Few individuals would know about this home or its location in the Town of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, unless they were born in the region, if they have too much money and a reason to hide away, or if they read the news about French President Sarkozy’s stay here in summer 2007. When French President and ex officio Co-Prince of Andorra, Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa (also simply known as Nicolas Sarkozy), visited this lakeside a town of around 6,000 residents 85 miles north of Boston last year, many learned that this area bills itself as the oldest summer resort in the U.S. Wolfeboro is a popular tourist destination because of its proximity to Lake Winnipesaukee. For residents, Wolfeboro represents a town with the seventh highest per capita income and the lowest crime rate in the country, the highest SAT scores for its students and - as a further benefit - a location in one of the lowest taxed states in the country. Like many current royalty, Sarkozy holed up in another multimillionaire’s home for his vacation, one that belongs to former Microsoft executive Michael Appe. Appe rents his 13,000-square-foot home for $30,000 per week, a fact that didn’t escape the notice of Sarkozy’s French critics. That amount equals one-third of the French president’s annual salary, another fact that might lead observers to understand that Sarkozy may not need his salary to stay afloat on Lake Winnipesaukee. Wolfeboro has a long history of hosting the rich and famous, including Monaco’s Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, author Kurt Vonnegut and actress Drew Barrymore.
4. Mustique: The Island of Mustique was made private when it was leased for 99 years from the British Commonwealth by Scotsman Colin Tennant aka Lord Glennconner in 1958. He turned the island into a hideway for British royals and celebrities. He lost the island in the 1970s, but the island remained private thanks to the operation and ownership of the Mustique Company, an organization comprised of shareholders and villa owners who are dedicated to protecting this island’s natural beauty, tranquility and privacy. Comprised of 1,400 acres, Mustique is part of the Grenadines in the West Indies on the edge of the Caribbean. Prince William and his long-time girlfriend Kate Middleton escaped to this resort for a romantic getaway in 2006, and they stayed in a villa owned by John Robinson (a close friend of Kate’s parents), the multimillionaire founder of the Jigsaw fashion chain (where Kate once worked). A more recent trip by Prince William and Kate put them in the £1,785-per-night Villa Alumbrera, one of the island’s most opulent and secluded mansions, for a week. This villa is owned by the widow of Swedish mining tycoon Adolf Lundin. Other royalty who have frequented this island include Princess Margaret and Viscout David Linley. Prices range from $5,000 per week for a two-bedroom villa to $27,000 per week for a nine-bedroom villa, depending upon season. Single rooms range from $500 to $1,400 per night. The most popular ‘hangout’ on the island is Basil’s Bar, which also is home to the Mustique Blues Festival. Proceeds from the sale of the festival’s CDs and t-shirts fund the Basil Charles’ Education Fund, an organization that provides education for children who reside in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
5. Nagarjung Palace: One way to use a royal summer home is to house a former king within its walls. Although King Gyanendra of Nepal won’t be playing around here, at least he has a roof over his head. And, he can dream about all the former summers he spent at Nagarjung Palace. King Gyanendra of Nepal was dethroned in May 2008 by this country’s new Constitutuent Assembly, which abolished the Asian monarchy and declared Nepal a republic. Officials met with Gyanendra in June, and the former King asked the new government to find alternative accommodation as his former home was occupied by his son and his family. The Cabinet decided to allow Gyanendra to move to Nagarjung Palace, which is situated on a forested hill on the edge of Katnamdu. Gyanendra used Nagarjung palace as his summer home, as it is surrounded by walls and has remained off-limits to the public. The palace has been nationalized by the new government along with most of the royal assets. It’s unknown how long Gyanendra will remain at the summer palace, or if the public will be able to view the inside of this vacation home in the near future. The monarchy’s end was the culmination of a two-year peace process that saw communist insurgents give up their armed struggle, join mainstream politics and win the most seats in April elections.
6. Necker Island: Before Sir Richard Branson became a “Sir,” he visited the British Virgin Islands to investigate real estate for his rock stars signed to his then new Virgin Label. Necker Island was the final island on his list, and he made such a lowball bid on the £3 million price tag for this 74-acre piece of real estate that he was evicted from the island. But, the owner, Lord Cobham, eventually settled for £180,000. Within three years and for $10 million, Branson built a 10-bedroom Balinese-style villa that crowns a hill above the beach. Each of the ten bedrooms contains open walls that provide a 360-degree view and cooling winds from any direction within the house. Built from local stone and Brazilian hardwoods, the retreat is decorated with antiques, art and bamboo furniture from Bali. With accommodations for up to 28 people, the entire resort rents for $47,000 per day. Famous figures who have stayed at Branson’s resort include the late Princess Diana, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Janet Jackson, Harrison Ford, Eddie Murphy and Oprah Winfrey. If you want to visit the island you can find a way to join a legitimate scientific expedition to study a rare species of gecko, which has full and unfettered access to the island. You can reach Necker via San Juan (Puerto Rico), St Thomas, Antigua or Barbados followed by a connecting flight to Beef Island, Tortola. From Beef Island there’s a 30-minute transfer via the Necker Island private launch. Necker Island currently is one of eight getaways now owned by Virgin Limited Edition
7. Paleis Het Oude Loo: Het Oude Loo is not a palace as much as a “Lust-hof,” or retreat, located near Apeldoorn, Netherlands in Europe. Now owned by the state, the former royal residence was built starting in 1684 for Stadtholder William III and his consort, Mary II of England. For over three hundred years, Het Loo was the summer residence of the House of Orange-Nassau, which became the Dutch royal family. Queen Wilhelmina declared that when she died the palace would go to the State, and it did in 1962 when Wilhelmina died at this retreat. After a thorough restoration, Het Loo now houses a national museum and library devoted to the House of Orange-Nassau in Dutch history and its gardens recently have been renovated to match earlier representation. Yet, Het Loo remains habitable, as evidenced by the use of the palace by Japanese royalty who are close friends to the royal family of Netherlands. Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko visited the Netherlands in October 1979 and May 2000 and stayed at the Het Oude Loo castle on both occasions. In the latest known visit, Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito and his family, on a two-week private trip to the Netherlands in 2006, visited former royal stables with Queen Beatrix and her family and stayed at Het Loo. This summer home is worth a visit by anyone who is interested in architecture, gardening and history. You can visit the park all year round, but the area around the castle is open only a few months a year.
8. Sofiero Palace: This palace represents a royal retreat that has been given to the state, while the current royals in Sweden look to other resources for relaxation. Sofiero Palace was King Gustav VI Adolf’s summer residence throughout his adult life, and he bequeathed Sofiero to Helsingborg Municipality in his will in 1973 after he created one of the most spectacular rhododendron collections at this estate. Few Swedish palaces can boast a more beautiful European setting. Today, there are over 10,000 rhododendron bushes of 300 varieties and just as many hybrids on the grounds. In recent years, the park has hosted a wide range of events, including open-air concerts, garden displays, exhibitions, courses and craft fairs. The current King of Sweden, His Majesty Carl XVI Gustaf, is the grandson of King Gustav VI Adolf, and he became the heir apparent when his father died in an airplane crash one year after the he was born. King Carl XVI Gustaf is most well known as the presenter of the Nobel Prizes each year. He and his family tend to travel to various locations for their ‘play’ rather than to retreat to a summer palace. With that said, visitors to Sofiero often can bump into royalty when they attend gallery openings or other events held at this palace.
9. The Glass Villa (Camli Kösk): Turkish presidents reside in the Çankaya Palace (shown at left), which takes its name from Ankara’s Çankaya district in the south of the capital. The palace, which was first used by Atatürk, has an important place in the history of Turkish politics. The compound, which has been enlarged in time with additional buildings and facilities, covers an area of over 400 acres. Designed by Seyfi Arkan, a Turkish architect, as a single-story modern residence during the mid 1930s, the Glass Villa is part of this compound and has served as a residence for Prime Ministers and Speakers of the Republican Senate until 1970. Through the years, the Glass Villa was extensively modified and extended, the latest having been completed in 1996. Since then, it serves again as a guest house for visiting heads of states as it once did in the 1950s. Although uncertain, we believe this may be the building where Queen Elizabeth II stayed on her recent visit to Ankara. Outside Ankara, Turkey has laid out the welcome mat country-wide to royals who wish to support Turkey’s bid to join the European Union (EU). So far as the West is concerned, Turkey can be said to be the most successful example of a Muslim country which has embraced democracy. Turkey closed its first chapter of negotiations with the EU in June 2006, and in May 2008, Queen Elizabeth II made her first visit to Turkey in 37 years. Despite France’s opposition to these developments, the French beauty, Marie Cavallier, joined Prince Joachim of Denmark in Turkey for a romantic getaway in summer 2007, where he proposed to her on bended knee. No matter if it’s Ankara, Bursa, Istanbul or some unknown hideaway, expect to hear about some royal getaway or real estate purchase news from this country over the upcoming seasons. The earliest date that Turkey could enter the EU, by the way, is 2013.
10. Whisper Bay: This new and exclusive development represents the typical resort that is replacing summer palaces and homes for many royals and celebrities. Located in Airlie Beach, near Queensland, Australia, this area - together with adjacent Shute Harbour - provides one of the embarkation points for both the Whitsunday Islands and the Great Barrier Reef. Airlie Beach, has appealed to backpackers for years, so it historically has been a relaxed and low-key tourist destination. But, this feel is changing rapidly, thanks to developers such as Rory O’Brien’s $280 million-dollar Whisper Bay project. A horde of the rich and famous, who use jets and sails to travel to and from this resort, have bought into O’Brien’s development among other exclusive development enclaves located in this area. Airlee Beach residents and visitors now see the likes of Scottish actor Sean Connery, former Dreamworld boss John Longhurst, ex-league rugby star Matthew Johns, former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and shipping multimillionaire Owen Glenn as they enjoy the area’s relaxing amenities. As a side note, Airlee Beach really doesn’t contain a beach - but it does sport a man-made lagoon.

From: International Listings by Andy Hagans and Brian Thibault.

“Baby”
By Susan Flanders

She was the baby of the family and her story is one of my favorites. This is a picture of Princess Beatrice on her wedding day, wearing her mother’s wedding veil. Her mother, of course, was Queen Victoria. Beatrice was the only daughter—and there were many—to be given the privilege of wearing Victoria’s own veil of honiton lace.

It might seem at times that whenever you read about the royals, Queen Victoria’s name pops up somehow. That’s because Victoria really was considered the “grandmama of Europe.” That’s because her relatives—and then her children and grandchildren went on to assume many of the thrones of Europe.

But back to Beatrice…the baby. As much as Victoria moaned about being pregnant and loathed it—in the end, the pregnancy and birth of baby Beatrice was to begin one of the fulfilling relationships of her life. It all began on a chilly night in December, 1861. It was the night that young Beatrice’s father died in the Blue Room at Windsor. But this just wasn’t any father…this was Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s adored–and I mean adored–husband. The night he died, the agonized and grief stricken Queen, picked up her youngest child and carried Beatrice to her own bed, laying with her throughout the night, holding Albert’s nightclothes and clutching their youngest child. There was something special about Beatrice…in some ways she was the nearest link to Albert. Beatrice comforted her.

The baby had been a happy and carefree child, full of enthusiasms–but, as Victoria’s world crumbled on that terrible night, so would Beatrice’s personality. Never again would relatives see the confident, bubbly personality of the old Beatrice. After that night it was buried away forever, and she became guarded. I’m sure it was partly shock–seeing her distraught mother and family–but it was also partly in response to the years of mourning that went on in the daily life of Victoria’s court…crying, hushed voices, tension, melancholy, melodrama.

Each elder daughter took her turn in looking after her mother. They acted as liaisons, secretaries and precious shields, keeping away the world. Eventually, Beatrice rightfully assumed her turn. Because Beatrice was the baby, there was no question that she would stay in this needed position. Whilst her other sisters married, marriage for Beatrice could not be a consideration. Quite frankly, Queen Victoria simply couldn’t do without her. And that was that.

Beatrice lived a quiet life, in rooms near her mother. She was at the Queen’s side from morning till night, reading her letters, taking dictation and notes, keeping callers at bay and keeping her dear mother company. Beatrice was very good at it too. She naturally deferred to her mother’s authority and her life was filled with all of the things that a loving companion would naturally do. She was protective, caring and genuinely adored her mother and enjoyed being with her, for the most part. She accompanied her from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle, then to Osborne House and we can’t forget Balmoral Castle in Scotland. For the most part they traveled to and from the latter three homes as Victoria was much too nervous to spend too much time in London.

But there always comes a time, when…well, things change. And things changed in a big way for Beatrice. In her late twenties and already a confirmed spinster, she met Henry of Battenberg at a large family event in Darmstadt. She fell in love instantly with the very handsome Battenberg…all the Battenberg brothers were known to be very handsome. And that was that. She could be as stubborn as her mother when it came right down to it. Well, she was her mother’s daughter, wasn’t she?

She was absolutely determined to marry the man of her dreams and I must say—Queen Victoria was even more determined that things would stay just the same. There would be no marriage, the Queen decreed. She simply couldn’t do without her—she would not survive it.

But, as you saw above, the Princess was in her wedding dress and so, did it happen and if so, how the heck did Beatrice pull it off? When I tell you, you won’t believe it. We’ll leave that story for another day. See part 2: “Baby Grows Up” at: http://writerofqueens.blogspot.com

——–

Susan Flanders is the creator of Writer of Queens and Queen Victoria Revealed
Susan has studied Queen Victoria since 1988 and has most of her memoirs, letters and biographies. To Susan, Victoria wasn’t the widow in black, tucked away in a castle, she was much, much more. Visit Susan’s blogs to know more and to read part 2: “Baby Grows Up“.