Read about the eventful and ultimately trafic life of Françoise-Thérèse de Choiseul-Stainville, Princesse Joséph de Monaco, the daughter of a prominent French family, daughter-in-law of Prince Honore III of Monaco and victim of the French Revolution. Her story and more at the sister blog Mad for Monaco.
Anne Edwards's book The Grimaldis of Monaco has a poignant account of the Princess's condemnation and execution.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip! I'm always on the lookout for books about the Grimaldis as the vast majority of them tend to focus on the Rainier-Grace period and the surrounding gossip rather than the very interesting history of all the prior princes.
ReplyDeleteWell, the Anne Edwards book (necessarily somewhat out of date now, of course, since it was written when Prince Rainier was still very much alive and before Princess Caroline's most recent marriage) devotes at least half of its pages to pre-Grace-Kelly Monaco.
ReplyDeleteI'm having someone send for a copy as we speak. From what I've looked into about most seem to complain that the pre-Grace/Rainier coverage was dull. That opinion is totally beyond me. As far as I'm concerned Monegasque princely history only gets more interesting and "colorful" the farther back you go. They were a very, swashbuckling, adventurous bunch.
ReplyDeleteThe cover of my paperback edition of the Anne Edwards book contains nothing except portraits of Grace, Rainier, and their kids. Presumably, therefore, it was marketed primarily in the belief that readers would care only for the post-1956 coverage. But there's lots of interesting stuff in the book (all of it new to me) concerning the Grimaldi status quo ante Rainier.
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