Charlene, Princess

Princess Charlene, née Charlene Lynette Wittstock, in full (from 2011) Princess Charlene of Monaco, French Princesse Charlene de Monaco, (born January 25, 1978, Bulawayo, Rhodesia [now in Zimbabwe]), consort (2011– ) of Albert II, prince of Monaco. She previously was a champion swimmer.

When Wittstock was 12 years old, her parents, a sales manager and a swimming instructor, moved her and her two brothers to South Africa. There she began swimming competitively under her mother’s guidance, and in 1996 she won the national championship. Wittstock represented South Africa at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, where the team for which she swam one leg of the women’s 4 × 100-metre medley relay race finished fifth. Two years later she captured three World Cup gold medals and earned a silver medal in the women’s 4 × 100-metre medley relay at the Commonwealth Games. Out of the water, she worked as a teacher.

Wittstock met Prince Albert in 2000 when she went to Monaco to compete in an international swimming event, where she won gold in the 200-metre backstroke. The couple was first spotted in public together at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy, and a few months later she accompanied him to a charity ball in Monaco. Although she qualified to swim for the South African team at the 2008 Beijing Games, she decided to retire from competition in 2007.

That same year she officially moved from South Africa to an apartment in Monaco. Rumours about the royal romance quickly spread as she began to learn French and Monegasque and to participate in charitable causes, including the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the Giving Organisation Trust, where she was appointed co-patron in 2011. Albert, a man 20 years her senior with at least two children born out of wedlock, had long enjoyed a reputation as an international playboy. In 2002, amid doubts that Albert would ever marry, Monaco’s parliament changed the constitution to include female siblings and their heirs in the line of succession, making Albert’s elder sister, Princess Caroline, first in line for the crown if he died without a legitimate heir. Wittstock’s appearance on the scene raised hopes that Albert might marry after all, and in June 2010 Charlene and Albert put an end to the speculation and announced their engagement. Children resulting from the marriage would be first in line of succession for the throne.

Prince Albert II of Monaco and Princess Charlene

Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene: newborn twins

Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene: twins

The two-day royal wedding—the first wedding of a reigning European monarch since Albert’s father, Prince Rainier III, married the former American actress Grace Kelly in 1956—began on July 1, 2011, with a civil ceremony in the palace throne room. The following day a religious ceremony was held in the main courtyard on Palace Square. On December 10, 2014, the couple had twins, Jacques Honoré Rainier and Gabriella Thérèse Marie. In accordance with Monaco’s rules of succession, Jacques was made crown prince, though Gabriella was born first.