The House of Grimaldi has ruled the tiny principality of Monaco, with interruptions, for more than seven centuries, one of the oldest reigning dynasties in Europe. Today the reigning prince is Albert II, son of Prince Rainier III and the American film star Grace Kelly, who became Princess Grace of Monaco on their marriage in 1956. Albert married Charlene Wittstock in 2011.
The Grimaldi genogram hides a peculiarity found in almost no other royal house: the name has passed more than once through the female line, and the family has repeatedly bent its own rules to survive. When Rainier III's own succession looked uncertain, Monaco's constitution had to be amended so the throne could descend through a daughter if needed. Earlier still, the dynasty had been continued in the eighteenth century by a French nobleman, Jacques de Goyon de Matignon, who took the Grimaldi name upon marrying the heiress Louise-Hippolyte — and in the twentieth century Pierre de Polignac did the same on marrying Princess Charlotte, so Rainier III descended in the male line from a Polignac who agreed to become a Grimaldi.
The founding story is the source of the family arms: in 1297 François Grimaldi, a Guelph exile, is said to have seized the fortress on the Rock of Monaco by disguising himself and his men as Franciscan friars, talking his way through the gate before drawing concealed swords. The two sword-bearing monks on Monaco's coat of arms commemorate the ruse to this day.
That blend of longevity and precariousness gives the house its distinctive character: for generations a persistent belief held that if the Grimaldi line ever failed, Monaco would revert to France. The 1918 treaty with France in fact provided that a vacant throne would leave Monaco an autonomous state under French protection, but the fear made every succession a matter of national existence, and every marriage in the family tree a question of sovereignty as much as sentiment.
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