Rumours about Prince Albert scotched

Of all the rumours to have clung to the enigmatic figure of Prince Albert of Monaco one, it seems, can finally be discounted. His Most Serene Highness, Albert II, is not gay.

The magazine Paris Match yesterday carried 10 pages and six photographs of the Prince and a little boy, with a lengthy interview which chronicled, convincingly, the existence of the Prince's 19-month-old son Alexandre.

The little boy is the son of Albert's former girlfriend, Nicole Coste, 33, born in Togo, who worked as an Air France air hostess.

The pictures of a grinning Prince Albert, 47, playing with the child, the exhaustive details in the interview and the "no comment" from the Royal Palace, leave little room for doubt the story is true.

Two obvious questions arise. Why did Coste choose to reveal, at this time, the existence of Monaco's hidden "black prince"?

In her interview with Paris Match, she said elaborate efforts were made to hide the boy from his grandfather, Prince Rainier, who died last month.

Now Prince Albert has become monarch of the caviar-crumb state beside the Mediterranean, Coste presumably believes he will have a freer hand to recognise the boy publicly.

She said he had already provided for them financially. But she admitted she wanted her son to avoid the fate of President Francois Mitterrand's illegitimate daughter, Mazarine, who spent her childhood in a twilight world of state secrecy.

Coste said she had no financial or dynastic ambitions: she just wanted her son to grow up knowing his father had publicly acknowledged him.

Is there any chance of Prince Albert recognising the boy as his heir? He had, Coste said, already signed a document which formally recognised the little boy as his son.

The Monaco royal line is punctuated with illegitimate children who eventually became royal princes and princesses, including Prince Rainier's mother, Princess Charlotte, who was the daughter of an Algerian maid.

But in this case, quite apart from inevitable suspicions of institutional racism and resistance to a mixed-blood prince, it seems unlikely that Alexandre Coste will ever become Prince Alexandre Grimaldi.

The Royal Palace has issued an unequivocal non-statement: "There will be no comment, not today, not tomorrow, not in a month."

Previous illegitimate sons and daughters became part of Europe's oldest royal family because there was little choice. There were no other heirs and the illegitimate offspring were needed to preserve the dynasty. This is no longer the case.

The law of succession in Monaco was changed three years ago, because Prince Albert showed no signs of marrying and producing children.

The crown now passes to his sisters and their children if he dies without producing a legitimate child.

At first, Prince Albert, part of an ostentatiously Catholic royal family, insisted she must keep the child, Coste said.

Later, he changed his mind and tried to persuade her to have an abortion. By this time, she was three months' pregnant and a legal abortion was no longer possible in France.

DNA tests on Albert and the boy proved his paternity, she said.

Asked if she feared Albert might reject her and the child after this week's revelations, she said: "No. I think Albert is a very correct man who finds himself a bit lost in all of this.

- INDEPENDENT