Easter Sunday Mass spurred these reflections about the princely life
There were no chocolate bunnies laying around, unless someone hid them beneath the pews. Easter Sunday Mass in Monaco was a solemn occasion, befitting the tradition of the Catholic rituals. Attendees were not overflowing; they were just the determined and faithful congregants who patronize the Diocese of Monaco. They had set the time aside, come what may, rain or shine. And it seems that the wind and clouds were out that day on the Rock. Princess Caroline nor Charlotte Casiraghi were among those wearing all-weather coats. The princess wore a silver trench coat that matched her hair, while her first daughter, Madame Casiraghi, wore a navy blue coat. (It’s strange for me to call her a Madame, but what else do we call a mother of two who has been married? I’m older and have been accustomed to thinking of her as a Mademoiselle, but as I must remind myself, Charlotte is no longer a teenaged girl!) For Princess Caroline and Charlotte, this was not just any Mass, nor even just any Easter Mass. They would not have missed this particular Mass for anything in the world. Why, it would not take a genius to figure out. They were seated in the first row facing the altar, rather than the usual princely spots on opposite sides of the altar, and they seemed like any other congregants–here to represent the House of Grimaldi certainly, but most of all to see their own descendant perform in his first ceremonial function. Raphaël Elmaleh, son of the philosopher Charlotte Casiraghi and comedian Gad Elmaleh, assisted in the rites of the day as one of four altar boys. Raphaël just turned ten last December. He is right on target, therefore, as a beginner altar boy in the Diocese of Monaco. Altar boy service generally begins around this age, and boys can serve in the role until the age of 17. If he seemed at all nervous about this public performance, it did not show. There he was, calm and confident, and certainly well practiced in his duties. Let us recall that he is no stranger to the public stage. Just like his mother, he was born into it, and he does have a recurring (if not starring) role on his father’s Instagram account, with 2.2 million followers! As if that were not enough to elevate his status, he looks to great-uncle Prince Albert and great-aunt Princess Charlene as his godparents. Recently, when Paris Match exposed his mother’s lunch date & catching a train with writer Nicolas Mathieu, the writer (of the article) called her a “child of the Rock,” but really she was never quite as much that as her sons are proving everyday. Raphaël and Balthazar are full-time students and day-to-day inhabitants of the Rock, whereas their mother was entirely educated in Provence and Paris–except perhaps, preschool in Monaco before the death of her father.
Raphaël may have spent some time in a school in Paris, but now he is likely enrolled in CM2 (5th grade in the U.S., or Year 6 in the UK) at the Institution François d’Assise-Nicolas Barré, where Balthazar should be in CP–that’s first grade in the U.S., and the equivalent of Year 2 in the UK. FANB is the same school that their aunt, Princess Alexandra, got her certificate from. Currently their cousins, the twins Prince Jacques and Princess Gabriella, are in CM1 at the école (elementary school) FANB. The Institution FANB has an école (elementary/primary school), a collège (middle school), and a lycée (high school) division; so if they want to, Raphaël and Balthazar can stay there until they pass the BAC exam and take their certificates. It’s not every Grimaldi, though, who chose to go to FANB. The Sovereign Prince, Raphaël’s godfather, gained his certificate from Lycée Albert I, Monaco’s public high school and also situated on the Rock. Princess Stephanie’s children also completed their certificates at Lycée Albert I. (Princess Stephanie herself went to school in Paris. And while we are talking about where people went to school, Princess Caroline was sent to a convent school in the UK, her son Andrea went to the International School of Paris, and Charlotte and Pierre attended high school in Fontainebleau.)
In Charlotte’s latest appearance on the Literary Rendezvous podcast, she and co-host Erica Wagner led the discussion, with guest host Naomi Campbell, about the novels of guest of honor Rachel Cusk. The discussion centered around motherhood and how women balance the demands of motherhood with a sense of autonomy and individuality. Obviously, Charlotte is an inheritor who never had to work if she did not want to, but work is precisely what she has always chosen. Her privilege stems from her financial freedom and emotional support in choosing her career path. To be sure, khâgne and hypokhâgne at Lycée Fenelon were free, and she won her place there by passing the exams just like every other student. That was two years of work preparing either for the third/final year toward a degree at a university. Her first choice was to get into one of the prestigious Grand Écoles, but that’s not what happened. As it happened, she took a long break from studying her Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Foucault by working for Gucci. She was compensated accordingly to model the equestrian line in amateur jumping competitions. After giving birth to Raphaël in 2013, she began to look again towards headier pursuits. Back in 2009, when she had wanted to return to equestrian sports, she had phoned her old jumping coach, Thierry Rozier, and said, “Thierry, allons-y!” (That is a direct quote from Rozier in a Point de Vue article published at the time.) In 2014/2015, wishing to return to philosophy, she again sought the help of trusted mentors. Her high school philosophy teacher, Robert Maggiori, brought two other philosophers, Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly, into the task, and the four of them co-founded Les Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco–@philomonaco on social media–to organize talks on current trends and publications in the field of philosophy. In 2016, Robert and Charlotte coauthored Archipel des Passions, a Socratic-style treatise on human emotions. It has been translated from original French into German, Italian, and Spanish.
In 2018, Charlotte returned to school at Sciences Po to complete her education. She had her second child at the end of that year, and got married the next summer. Motherhood, twice over; marriage; publishing a book; returning to school; @philomonaco; Literary Rendezvous for Chanel; occasional representational duties for the House of Grimaldi; not to mention fashion campaigns and shows and shoots and interviews for fashion houses! It sounds exhausting! That’s to say nothing about the bonus child she had from Dimitri’s first marriage, and co-parenting with Gad…. That’s a lot–even with plenty of money to pay babysitters, healthcare, and private school. We all try to maximize the resources we have access to, but we still have to put the work in. Yes, even Charlotte. She has, moreover, set herself in the midst of a seemingly ever expanding blended family. She may be divorcing Dimitri, but he will always be Balthazar’s dad, just the same as Gad being Raphaël’s dad, and both boys have paternal half-siblings. Charlotte’s new boyfriend brings another child into the fold. It is a blessing to have so much family, but as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility, and families are made of personalities! And oh! so much noise, noise, noise! No wonder she has spoken so lovingly of stillness and solitude! Working is great, and we want to keep seeing her do the podcast and lead the events for @philomonaco, but not at the expense of burning out. We all need to remind ourselves to take the opportunities for self-care, and to refrain from judgment of those who, say, opt to get a divorce. Even when we know the circumstances, but especially when we do not know them–we ought to respect a couple’s autonomy, and remember that we don’t know what the couple is going through, what they may have tried, and what they are dealing with. As a person who never got married, I admire those who gave it a try. I’m sure they don’t call it “the plunge” for nothing. Faint heart never won fair lady? Life is difficult; let’s just acknowledge that. Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew, but those challenges are the great teachers. I don’t buy into the notion of “well, I’m just sad for the children,” because I have no idea what is sad or happy in their lives. Some children are miserable in households with parents who probably should get divorced. The thing about the Princely Family of Monaco is that they appear so perfectly all the time, they make life look easy. (Really, it must be the media more than they who make their lives look this way.) We see them getting out of luxury cars and wearing beautiful dresses at expensive fundraisers, and we think, oh that looks fun. And surely, it is fun to do those things. But there are shadows everywhere under the sun–the parts of a person’s life we don’t see, that get no sunlight, that go around unseen, subtle, or unrecognized. Finally, luxury is no protection from the worst demon of all–the voice in the head. I think what Charlotte is doing with her life is magnificent–using her power to promote the empowerment through literature and knowledge of the self. Most people are too anonymous and too busy to be effective at the kind of task she has undertaken. She has the star power, the time, and the unique appeal to pull it off. It’s fantastic, and whatever is going on in her private life, it looks like she, and her kids, are doing just fine!
FURTHER READING/VIEWING/LISTENING
“The Time & Space Defying Achievement of Writing About Motherhood with Rachel Cusk.” https://malwinagudowska.substack.com/p/the-time-and-space-defying-achievement