"It was a very difficult moment for me," the Time">
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Monaco's Prince Albert II said he was "set up" for fatherhood by a former flight attendant who says she had his child, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
NEW YORK -- Monaco's Prince Albert II said he was "set up" for fatherhood by a former flight attendant who says she had his child, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
"It was a very difficult moment for me," the Times quoted Albert as saying, adding that he is still "coming to terms" with the unintended fatherhood.
When asked if he believed he was tricked into having a child, as the mother's account months ago in the Paris Match magazine suggested, Albert replied, "Yes, I think I was set up," he was quoted as saying.
In an interview six months after the death of Albert's father, the dashing Prince Rainier III, whose marriage to the glamorous Grace Kelly created the Monaco that the world knows today, the Times said the 47-year-old prince is trying to project the gravitas expected of him as a ruler.
The Times said he felt the pressure of finding a princess who can stand up to his mother's legend.
"There was pressure, not so much from the family but people outside were expecting and are still expecting something big to happen," he told the Times, adding that it has taken him a long time to feel ready for that challenge.
"Some called it immaturity," he said. "I don't think it was immaturity, but I wanted to do it in the right way."
He told the Times that finding someone to fill Princess Grace's shoes "has not only scared me, but also many women I have known."
"It has scared them away," he said. "It will be very difficult for whoever will be with me, not even in marriage, whoever goes out with me seriously. Even if she doesn't look remotely like my mother, she will be compared to her."
He told the Times he was not involved with anyone now and was too busy to look.
Despite the principality's lingering image as "a sunny place for shady people," in W. Somerset Maugham's famous phrase, present-day Monaco is really more of a conventioneer and package-tour destination. Only 4 percent of its state revenues comes from the storied casino, and just 10 percent comes from banking transactions. The biggest chunk of national revenue, about two-thirds, comes from a value-added tax on goods and services sold in Monaco, which the principality shares with France.
"I intend, however, that ethics remain the backdrop for all the actions" of the Monaco authorities, he told his subjects in his first speech as sovereign in July, vowing to respect the French and American tax regulations.
He is resisting proposals to extend Monaco's territory with a man-made peninsula extending off the eastern end of the tiny city-state, arguing that a large project would gobble up beachfront, block views and overwhelm the principality's already car-jammed tangle of narrow, twisting roads.
"How many more thousands of people do we want to add to Monaco?" he told the Times. Monaco now has 32,000 residents, 7,100 of whom are citizens.
But there remains the question of an heir, complicated now by his son, Alexandre, who will eventually inherit a healthy portion of the prince's $2 billion (euro1.61 billion) fortune. Prince Albert acknowledged paternity in July and has installed the mother and child in a villa in nearby Villefranche on the French Riviera.
He told the Times he had seen Alexandre only once, briefly, since the story became public, "because of his mother's attitude toward me."
"It's not a very pleasant situation," he told the Times. "My only concern now is the well-being of the kid."
He told the Times other women had made similar claims. "I don't know of any others that could be true," he said. He denied he had paid money to Tamara Rotolo, a California woman who claimed she had a daughter, Jazmin, by the prince 13 years ago.
Rotolo made a paternity claim shortly after the child was born, he told the Times, but after an American court dismissed the case, he thought the matter had gone away. Since the story of young Alexandre hit the press, though, he said she had contacted his lawyer again.
"Other people will jump on the bandwagon," he told the Times, chalking it up to the large number of women he has known over the years and of being in the public eye.
As for Alexandre, he told the Times there was no chance that the boy would ever be prince.
"He is not a possible successor," he said, citing Monaco's Constitution, which requires that the parents of heirs to the throne be married. "I don't think that will change."
Source: Associated Press/AP Online