Does Monaco’s Prince Albert Have A Love Child?

PARIS (June 1, 2006) — Monaco’s royal palace refused comment on French media reports that the principality’s ruler, Prince Albert II, will soon acknowledge paternity of a second illegitimate child.

“The palace is not commenting, since these are the private affairs of the prince,” spokeswoman Christiane Stahl said Wednesday of reports that Albert will acknowledge paternity of a 14-year-old girl from Southern California.

On Wednesday, tabloid Le Parisien carried a large front-page photo of the girl with her mother. The newspaper blurred the girl’s face.

Albert had a brief affair with the mother, former waitress Tamara Rotolo, in 1991 when she vacationed on the Cote d’Azur, the newspaper claimed, quoting the authors of a new book.

A pair of phone listings for a Tamara Rotolo in Palm Desert, Calif., have been disconnected, and a lawyer for Rotolo could not be located. A lawyer for Albert was unavailable Wednesday for immediate comment, his office said.

Never married, the 48-year-old Albert acknowledged last July that he had fathered a son, Alexandre, out of wedlock with a former Togolese flight attendant. The child, now 3, will never take the throne and will not bear the Grimaldi family name.

Last year, Albert told The New York Times that other women had made similar claims. “I don’t know of any others that could be true,” he said. He denied he had paid money to Rotolo.

Rotolo filed a paternity claim shortly after the child was born, he told the Times, but after a court in California dismissed the case, he thought the matter had gone away. Since the story of Alexandre hit the media, though, he said she had contacted his lawyer again.

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