Princess Caroline has spoken about her mother, the late Princess Grace, in a new interview in Le Figaro.
In the new interview, Princess Caroline and her daughter, Charlotte Casiraghi, discuss philosophy, their early years and the differences in their upbringing, and Princess Grace, the Hollywood star who married Prince Rainier in 1956 and became the Princess of Monaco until her untimely death in 1982.
Charlotte, who never met her grandmother, having been born in 1986, said of her beauty, “Even though I didn’t know her, I see a lot of your mom’s things in you. And I am reconstructing something that, perhaps, escapes you and that, perhaps, I imagine. The relationship between a mother and a daughter is a complex thing, the mother occupies an all-powerful place, even when she is loving and tender… There is no question of comparisons, but there are mirrors. When I watch films of my grandmother, I see in her your grace, your requirement, your discipline and your mystery too…”
She continued, “I feel rich in all these family stories, all these contrasts, all these women who have come out of a clear path. My whimsical great-grandmother. My grandmother who made the choice to stop the cinema.”
The pair also reveal a shared love of literature and reading, with Charlotte saying: “I’ve always loved books, even before I could read. I remember very precisely a memory with mom: we were on a plane, I had in my hand an old edition of one of your books that I was holding upside down to make it look like I was reading.”
Princess Caroline revealed that she used to pick out books from the library at the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, but that they weren’t of the philosophical nature. She said that the difference between Charlotte’s upbringing and hers, in that regard, was that, “no book was banned except the bad ones.”
Princess Caroline also revealed her affinity for sharing cultural exhibitions in Monaco and the care she takes to put together presentations. She said, “My luck here in Monaco is to be able to smooth out, soften and facilitate the creation of others. And to defend the freedom of artists. This is essential, it has always been my main focus, and the battle is never won. When I participate in the development of an exhibition, for example, I take care not to exclude anyone or anything, sometimes even things that I do not like or that I consider bad: this is the guarantee of plurality and freedom.”
Princess Caroline also revealed that she is not a cinephile, saying, “If there is something that I do not know well and with which I have the least affinities, it is cinema. Maybe because it was there? I’m not a very cinephile and my film culture ends in the 1980s: I mostly know old films.
“My taste for culture comes from elsewhere. Not from my parents, who were not great readers, unlike my grandparents. I also owe this taste to wonderful teachers I had as a child, then at university. In music, Nadia Boulanger was my teacher. It was not easy Mlle Boulanger, but fascinating. My grandmother had studied cello with Saint-Saëns…”
