The Principality of Monaco has traditionally practised male-preference primogeniture, which means that a brother will always take precedence over an elder sister. If we take absolute primogeniture (meaning that the eldest child inherits regardless of sex) into account, which women were passed over?
Marie Grimaldi
Marie was the only child of Antoinette of Savoy and Jean II, Lord of Monaco. She married Geronimo della Rovere in 1515 and was forced to renounce her succession rights.1 Her date of birth is unknown, but as her mother died in 1500, she was born sometime between 1486 (her parents’ wedding) and 1500. In 1505, her uncle Lucien had her father killed, and he became Lord of Monaco, skipping over Marie. Her date of death is also unclear.
Giovanna Maria Grimaldi
Giovanna was born on 29 September 1596 as the eldest child of Ercole, Lord of Monaco and Maria Landi. In 1615, she married Gian Giacomo Teodoro Trivulzio, and they went on to have two sons and a daughter together. Her sister-in-law, Ippolita, married her younger brother, Honoré. She died in December 1620, and her husband subsequently entered the church.
Princess Charlotte of Monaco
Charlotte was born on 19 March 1719 as the daughter of the future Jacques I, Prince of Monaco and Louise Hippolyte, Princess of Monaco. Charlotte had an elder brother, Antoine, who died at the age of two months. She was briefly engaged to Frédéric Jules de La Tour, Prince d’Auvergne, but in the end, she stayed unmarried. On 21 January 1738, Charlotte took religious vows and became a nun at the Convent of the Visitation. She died on 30 March 1790. Her brother, Honoré, succeeded their parents.
Princess Antoinette of Monaco
Antoinette was born on 28 December 1920 as the eldest child of Princess Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois and Prince Pierre of Monaco, Duke of Valentinois. Her mother was the adopted but illegitimate daughter of Louis II, Prince of Monaco and Marie Juliette Louvet. Antoinette had a young brother, the future Rainier III, Prince of Monaco. Princess Charlotte renounced her rights to the Monegasque in favour of Rainier on 30 May 1944.
Antoinette had a relationship with Alexandre-Athenase Noghès from the mid-1940s, and their children were legitimised when Antoinette and Alexandre-Athenase were married on 4 December 1951. They were divorced in 195,4 and Antoinette subsequently remarried on 2 December 1961 to Dr. Jean-Charles Rey. They had no children and were divorced in 1974. She married her third husband, John Brian Gilpin, on 28 July 1983, but he died suddenly six weeks later.
Antoinette was banished from Monaco for planning to depose her brother, and she lost her place in the line of succession with the accession of her nephew, Prince Albert II. She was eventually allowed to return to Monaco, and she died on 18 March 2011 at The Princess Grace Hospital Centre.
Princess Caroline of Monaco
Caroline was born on 23 January 1957 as the eldest child of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco and Princess Grace. She was the heiress presumptive until the birth of her younger brother, the future Prince Albert II, and again from Albert’s accession to the birth of his twins. On 28 June 1978, she married Philippe Junot, but they divorced two years later without having had children. On 29 December 1983, she remarried to Stefano Casiraghi, with whom she had three children before his tragic death in a speed-boating accident in 1990. On 23 January 1999, she married Prince Ernst August of Hanover, whose title is titular, and they had one daughter together.
Princess Gabriella of Monaco
Gabriella was born on 10 December 2014 as the eldest child, two minutes before her twin brother, of Albert II, Prince of Monaco and Princess Charlene. She holds the full title of Her Serene Highness Princess Gabriella Thérèse Marie of Monaco, Countess of Carladès. She has two older half-siblings from her father’s previous relationships: American-born Jazmin Grace Grimaldi and French-born Alexandre Grimaldi-Coste. Princess Gabriella and Prince Jacques were presented to the Monegasque people on 7 January 2015 from the Princely Palace. A few months later, on 10 May, she and her brother were christened at Saint Nicholas Cathedral and bestowed the Order of Grimaldi by their father.
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