WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON WITH PRINCESS CHARLENE?
IN early March 2021, Princess Charlene of Monaco flew alone to an official engagement in her native South Africa. Ever since, the star-studded Mediterranean principality – always awash with rumour and intrigue – has been left to guess when, or if, she will be seen again.
The sparse bulletins that have trickled out of the ‘Pink Palace’, the royal family’s 800-year-old fortress home, say the princess developed a sinus infection and had to undergo an operation. But her long absence follows reports of severe turbulence in her 10-year marriage to the realm’s 64-year-old ruler, Prince Albert, and many in Monaco fear something deeper is afoot.
In August 2021, under growing public and media pressure for reassurance, Albert and the couple’s twins, Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, now seven, flew out to meet Charlene at an undisclosed South African location. Official photographs showed the royal couple dressed in rugged outdoor clothes and bush hats, surrounded by dense vegetation. In other photos, the twins were sitting in a tree, with blonde Gabriella displaying an outré DIY hairdo that came eight months after Charlene made world headlines with her own edgy semi-shaved hairstyle.
‘I am so thrilled to have my family back with me,’ wrote 44-year-old Charlene on Instagram. ‘Gabriella decided to give herself
