Crowning Blow? : Tiny Monaco, Which Lost Its Beloved Princess Grace 8 Years Ago, Grieves Again With Caroline, and Asks What Lies Ahead?

The Paris tabloids and the picture magazines call it “The Curse of the House of Grimaldi.”

For the second time in eight years, tragedy struck Monaco, a tiny principality on the French Riviera. Once again, this sun-drenched flyspeck on the Mediterranean coast--a territory that could fit comfortably in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park and whose entire population could not half fill Dodger Stadium--was the emotional epicenter of Europe.

In 1982, American movie-star-turned-princess Grace Kelly died in an automobile accident, leaving behind three children and a heartbroken husband, Prince Rainier III, ruler of Monaco.

On Oct. 3, Italian-born financier Stephano Casiraghi, 30, was killed during a speedboat race, leaving behind three children and a heartbroken wife, Princess Caroline of Monaco, the oldest child of Kelly and Rainier.

“The brutal death of Stephano has caused us all great pain,” said George Crovetto, a sommelier in a Monte Carlo restaurant and one of 4,481 residents of the city of Monaco, called Monegasques. “To die so young and leave three young children behind. It’s a true tragedy.”

Once again, as they had almost exactly eight years before, the ruling Grimaldi family knelt in mourning on the front row of the cathedral in the old city of Monaco for a funeral Mass. Once again, Caroline, her eyes swollen nearly shut from weeping, leaned on the arm of her shaken, silver-haired father for support.

The slick Paris newspapers and magazines put in headlines the questions that burned in peoples’ hearts: Can the aging prince weather another blow to his family? Can the beautiful princess comfort her own children and resume her role, thrust on her by the premature death of her mother, as the First Lady of Monaco? Will her wild-at-heart sister, the beautiful Princess Stephanie, give up her wicked ways and settle down? Will handsome Crown Prince Albert take his mind off ski slopes and soccer balls long enough to ponder the future of the principality he will someday govern?

Even with the looming danger of a Persian Gulf war, the queries seemed immensely important in Europe, especially in France. The leading French television network, TF1, devoted hours of coverage to the Casiraghi death and funeral. Paris Match, the French mass-circulation picture magazine, came out quickly with a special edition and devoted 24 pages of its regular weekly issue to the tragedy. The scandal sheet France Dimanche concentrated on greatly enlarged color photographs of Casiraghi’s limp body floating in the waters of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, midway between Monaco and Nice.

“The British have their Royal Family,” said Paris Match director general Roger Therond, attempting to explain the intense media interest in the Grimaldis. “The French haven’t had a Royal Family for 200 years, but they do have a princely family in Monaco.”

Tourist books and official histories of the principality of Monaco dwell on its past as a Phoenician port, a Greek and Roman colony and a possession of the Grimaldi family since 1512. But the most significant date in the country’s history was much more recent, April 18, 1956, the day the stocky, mustachioed Prince Rainier married a glamorous movie star, Grace Patricia Kelly of Philadelphia.

Until that date, Monaco was known mostly for its elegant gambling casino at Monte Carlo.

Hollywood publicity agents predicted a short marriage. Kelly was at the height of her stardom at MGM. After a few months, they joked, Monte Carlo would be known as “Monte Kelly.” After a short fling as a princess, they said, she would be back where she belonged, in Hollywood, making movies.

But the actress with the ice-maiden image proved them wrong. Slightly more than nine months after the marriage, Princess Grace, daughter of a construction contractor, gave birth to the couple’s first child, Caroline. Slightly more than nine months later, she gave birth to Albert. In 1965, she had her third child, Stephanie.

In a part of France where rumors abound, there was never a hint of scandal in the Grimaldi household. Kelly never made another movie, but she played the role of princess to perfection. Compared to the jaded, chinless European royalty, she was a picture of shining health and beauty. She looked like the princesses in fairy-tale illustrations. In only a few years, she had Europe in the palm of her hand.

“Before Grace Kelly,” recalled Leon Zitrone, a retired French television personality who covered European royalty during four decades, “the principality was just a place for games of chance--roulette, cards, chemin de fer. In those days if you had asked a Frenchman whether or not the principality would go on, he would probably respond, ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

“But from the very moment that Grace Kelly became princess, everything changed. It was amazing. The principality of Monaco became famous all over the world. Heaps of people started visiting--not because Monaco meant anything, but because of Grace. It was not Monaco that made Grace, it was Grace that made Monaco.”

When Kelly died eight years ago at age 53, the attention shifted from the American princess-mother to the bereaved, broken prince and his three children. The interest switched, said Paris Match director Therond, from fairy-tale fantasy to a kind of fellow-man sympathy.

“Beauty played a role to be sure,” said Therond, “but I think the people mainly see a projection of their own lives, their own troubles and destinies. They put themselves in the place of a father who has three children who give him problems. One of them (Caroline) had a bad marriage, divorced, and finally found a marvelous husband. They had three beautiful children and the father dies. The other daughter (Stephanie) is a young girl who has not yet found her way in life. In the case of Albert, he doesn’t seem at all ready to succeed his father.

“But these are exactly the same kinds of problems that face families in daily life. I don’t believe it is a mythic thing at all. To the contrary, it is a kind of a soap opera of real life.”

European journalists have learned to deal carefully with the ruling family. They remember the case of French television anchorman Bernard Langlois, who, on the day of Grace’s death, referred to Monaco as a “comic opera kingdom.” The offhand comment caused a storm of protest. The next day, Langlois was stripped of his job.

For their part, Monegasque officials would prefer a little less coverage of the Royal Family. In particular, they want less zoom-lensed divebombing in helicopters of the Grimaldi Palace and Cote d’Azur beaches, as the paparazzi try for a candid shot of Stephanie in another indiscretion.

When a reporter visited her office the week after Casiraghi’s death, Jacqueline Berti, director of the Monaco Press Center, tried to steer attention to some of the country’s accomplishments. For example, she noted, Monaco boasts one of the Mediterranean region’s most efficient and advanced sewage-treatment plants. Also, she said, there is the experimental floating fish farm anchored off the coast and several important land-reclamation projects.

Inevitably, of course, the conversation returned to the Grimaldis. One of Berti’s jobs is to track news coverage of Monaco. She showed the reporter a four-inch stack of news clippings from only one month, March, 1990. It contained 90 stories on the prince, princesses and crown prince of Monaco, mostly speculations about Stephanie and her chaotic love life.

More than 400 journalists and photographers were accredited to cover the Casiraghi funeral, Berti said, although only one, an official photographer hired by the state, was allowed inside the sanctuary. Tall scaffolding on which the journalists could perch for a glimpse of the grieving family was built in front of the cathedral. There was tension among the paparazzi. In happy times, a good photo of Caroline or Stephanie may be worth thousands of dollars. These were not happy times. The stakes were greater.

Monaco is hardly bigger than the post cards and souvenir stamps sold in front of the cliff-side Grimaldi Palace. Economically, it relies mainly on real estate, tourism, a gambling casino, luxury-car dealerships and a handful of expensive restaurants. Its biggest industry by far is tax evasion. About half of the country’s extraordinarily expensive apartments remain empty most of the year, serving as addresses for absent tenants. Monaco has no personal income taxes.

Politically, it exists as a kind of indulgence on the part of surrounding France. It uses French money, the French language and has a French train station. Since 1963, when then-French President Charles de Gaulle put his foot down and demanded fealty from the pint-sized neighbor, the chief executive official of Monaco has been French. Other key officials, including the police chief, also are French.

However, with its booming real estate market, thriving tourism, gambling and banking, Monaco generates more revenue than many French departements hundreds of times its size. According to the Monaco government, gross business revenue in the country last year topped $5 billion. Monaco’s budget last year topped $400 million, not bad for a city-state with fewer than 27,063 residents.

The relative wealth guarantees Monegasques a privileged life. Some longtime residents seem more fond of the money that poured in during the Rainier-Kelly epoch than the family itself. Despite the lack of income tax, residents receive more benefits than residents of France.

In France, for example, a family of five is given an allowance of $300 a month from the government. In Monaco, the amount is $600. Moreover, Monegasques receive priority on jobs in Monaco. That explains why most of the dealers and croupiers at the high-stakes games in the Monte Carlo Casino are Monegasque. A croupier at a high-stakes roulette table can make $15,000 a month in tips alone.

Sylvio Buonsignore, 57, owner of a small barber shop near the vegetable market, is most proud of the country’s 250-person police force and the bus system that allows citizens to ride free after age 65. Monaco, he points out does not have the serious crime, homeless people or roaming musicians found in France.

“Last year we had a bum,” he said, “but he stayed at the train station, which is technically part of France. Somebody tries to set up a guitar and-- pouf --five minutes later he’s expelled.”