Fast Facts: Monaco Royal Family

The three children of Monaco's Prince Rainier III (search) and the late Princess Grace (search):

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PRINCE ALBERT, 47

Now known as Prince Albert II, Monaco's heir to the throne is the only son of Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace, killed in a car crash in 1982. Shy and retiring, Albert stands apart from his more flamboyant sisters and some have portrayed him as reluctant to succeed his father.

An avid sportsman and bobsled enthusiast, he has been a member of Monaco's bobsled team in the last five Winter Olympics. Despite a vibrant, celebrity-studded life, Albert has never married or had children. The situation forced Monaco to revise its constitution so that Albert could be crowned as His Serene Highness, carrying on the rule of the 700-year-old Grimaldi dynasty (search) assured of an heir: his elder sister Princess Caroline, 48, followed by her eldest son.

Multilingual, educated at Amherst College in Massachusetts, Albert was groomed for two decades to take the throne and, in recent years, became Monaco's veritable ambassador to the world. He has made numerous official visits abroad and been president of Monaco's delegation to the U.N. General Assembly ever since the principality was admitted to the United Nations in 1993.

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PRINCESS CAROLINE, 48

When Princess Grace died, eldest daughter Caroline assumed the role of Monaco's first lady, working for charities with her mother's poise. Today, she is a UNESCO goodwill ambassador and runs the Princess Grace Foundation (search).

One of the most stable members of the scandal-plagued Grimaldi family, Caroline has nonetheless had a tumultuous love life.

In 1978, she married French playboy Philippe Junot (search) despite her parents' disapproval, and the marriage collapsed after two years. In a later marriage to Italian Stefano Casiraghi (search), she had three children before he died in a boating accident in 1990.

In a 1999 civil ceremony, she married a prince, Ernst August of Hanover (search), and the couple later had a child.

Her husband has a reputation as a royal black sheep: In 2001, a German court handed him eight months' probation and a hefty fine for kicking a photographer in the buttocks and beating the owner of a hotel in Kenya.

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PRINCESS STEPHANIE, 40

Princess Stephanie's whims and wild love life have kept paparazzi busy. The royal rebel has three children out of wedlock, and she is currently married to a circus acrobat.

As a teenager, she was riding in the car with her mother when it plunged down a Mediterranean cliff. Princess Grace died the next day.

For two decades, Stephanie has been plagued by rumors that she was the driver. In 2002, she denied that she was behind the wheel and urged reporters to stop speculating.

"Let my mother rest in peace, let me live," she told Paris Match magazine.

Over the years, Stephanie has tried different identities — as a pop singer, a model and a fashion designer.

Stephanie's love life has provided constant tabloid fodder: Her 1995 marriage to her former bodyguard Daniel Ducruet (search) collapsed a year later after he was photographed frolicking with stripper Fili Houteman (search), then the reigning Miss Nude Belgium.

Stephanie was regarded as the wild child of the family even before that scandal, because she and Ducruet had two children before they wed. She went on to have a third child, reportedly with another bodyguard, before marrying a Portuguese circus acrobat in 2003. A palace spokesman declined to say recently if they are still together.