In a translated interview with Louis Pawels of Le Figaro, one of the most prestigious French newspapers, found in a Royalty Today dated July 1988, I read this quote : "When I was little, my mother used to leaf through the Gotha to find a husband for me. But I felt this was a constraint. And then, this was not a priority in our family -- my family did not marry someone titled. And when I met this seducer, my mother said to me, as a challenge:"Leave him, or marry this man who is not made for you !" So I married him, naively, or out of a spirit of contradiction. As for him, I think he wanted a solemn wedding so as to have one more celebration. I think it was as simple and as stupid as that."
Princess Caroline sometimes has the unfortunate habit of presenting herself as a victim. In one paragraph, she manages to portray herself as the victim of her mother, of "the seducer", and in the rest of the interview, of the Church's wretched way of dragging her feet in granting her the annulment she seeks.
I felt the whole tone unbecoming in the mouth of the 31 year-old woman who has it all (at the time, she was at the peak of her happy life, with three beautiful children and a husband she adored), and who is photographed smiling, laughing, and radiant. There is one passage that alludes to the sense of duty her mother has instilled into her, but you can sense the general tone of disapproval in how her mother raised her, and the long list of enlightened authors Princess Grace had apparently failed to read for her edification as a mother, such as Bruno Bettelheim and Melanie Klein.
This, in my opinion, is Princess Caroline at her worst : arrogant, complacent, making her mother look like a social climber when her father, in his benevolence, condescended to marry her (who is "our family" that so conveniently has just excluded Princess Grace with her Philistine ways? Does she mean "Daddy's family" ?), brazenly confident that her ways are so much wiser. I have read many interviews given by Princess Grace, and granted, her mother was still alive when she spoke in those interviews, but I have never read anything as superciliously derogatory toward her parents as Princess Caroline dares to do. If she has a problem with her upbringing by her mother, I feel it should be between her and her psychiatrist, not something she expects millions of readers to read. Princess Grace always talked about how difficult raising children was, especially in an environment that did not respect authority as the environment she had been raised in, even if she too, had fled it and found her own way. But her tone toward her parents was never bitter, always respectful and even grateful. Granted also, she never "married the wrong man", although she was no wallflower, as her daughter well knew as an adolescent.
Fortunately, there are also other interviews where that side of hers does not appear, and even this interview reveals the exquisite education she was lucky to receive, as in "I have decided to do what I must for Monaco -- charity works, cultural activities, everything that can help the positive image, etc." It is true that she has never faltered in the "high idea of duty, which she transmitted to me". If only she had been able to see how unkind, even long after adolescence, she could sound toward her mother...