On September 13, 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco suffered a stroke while driving along a steep cliffside road in southern France, sending her car tumbling down a 45-foot embankment. Her 17-year-old daughter Stephanie, in the passenger seat, survived with injuries. Grace died the following day at age 52. That single crash set the three Grimaldi children on strikingly different paths that would define the family for decades.
Caroline, then 25, stepped almost immediately into her mother’s role as Monaco’s surrogate first lady. She had already endured a troubled first marriage to French businessman Philippe Junot, which ended in divorce by 1980. In 1983 she married Italian businessman Stefano Casiraghi, and the couple had three children in quick succession. Stefano, a world champion offshore powerboat racer, was killed in October 1990 when his boat flipped during a trial run off Monaco’s coast.
He was 30 years old, and Caroline became a widow at 33, raising three young children alone. She later married Prince Ernst August of Hanover in 1999. Albert, the only son, spent years as one of Europe’s most watched bachelors before succeeding his father as reigning prince in 2005. Long before that, he had fathered two children outside marriage.
A daughter, Jazmin, was born in 1992 to American Tamara Rotolo; Albert acknowledged paternity in 2006 after DNA testing. A son, Alexandre, was born in 2003 to former flight attendant Nicole Coste; his existence became public in 2005. Neither child can inherit the throne under Monaco’s constitution, but both have spoken positively about their relationship with their father. In 2011 Albert married South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock, and the couple welcomed twins, Jacques and Gabriella, in 2014, securing the line of succession.
Stephanie’s path was the most unconventional. After her mother’s death, she briefly pursued a pop singing career, then began a relationship with her bodyguard Daniel Ducruet in 1991. They had two children before marrying in 1995, but divorced after tabloid photos showed Ducruet with another woman. She later had a third child, Camille, in 1998, without naming the father on the birth certificate.
She then spent about a year traveling with Switzerland’s famed Circus Knie after beginning a relationship with its co-owner, François Knie, and later married Portuguese circus acrobat Adans Lopez Peres in 2003; that union lasted only about ten months. In the years since, she has focused on charity work, particularly AIDS awareness and youth programs in Monaco. All three siblings have remained devoted to preserving their mother’s legacy. The Princess Grace Foundation USA, established shortly after her death, continues to support emerging talent in theater, dance, and film.
Speaking on the 40th anniversary of her death in 2022, Albert said people most often remember not her beauty but her warmth and humanity, and that he still thinks of her multiple times each day. More than four decades after the crash, Grace Kelly’s grandchildren now number well over a dozen, spread across monarchies, private business, fashion, and wellness. The family that was captured in early photographs of three young children inside the palace has grown far larger and more complicated, yet each of her children ultimately found their own version of a meaningful adult life—linked always by the memory of the American film star who became their family’s most enduring matriarch.