Princess Caroline of Monaco appeared to be heading for the divorce courts, prompting fears that a centuries-old curse on her family had struck again.
The 52-year-old is effectively living a separate life from her husband of ten years, the colourful Prince Ernst of Hanover, 55, who once insulted Queen Elizabeth by kissing her at a royal banquet.
The unhappy split is in line with a superstitious belief that no member of the House of Grimaldi, which has ruled Monaco since the 13th century, can have a happy marriage.
Caroline, who has already lost two husbands, has moved out of the family chateau in Fountainbleau, south of Paris, and gone back to the Mediterranean Principality.
She has not been seen with Ernst since a show jumping competition in early June, and Caroline has removed their daughter, 10-year-old Princess Alexandra of Hanover, from her Fountainbleau school and enrolled her at the Ecole de la Condamine in Monaco.
The couple, who also have five children from previous marriages, also holidayed in different places - Caroline in a Provence farmhouse and on a yacht, and Ernst in other parts of France.
‘It looks like the end,’ said a source at the respected French weekly magazine Point de Vue, which specialises in European royal families and breaks news of the split in its latest edition.
‘Both Caroline and Ernst have been at the centre of scandals in the past, and are well used to controversy, but this really is breaking their hearts,’ added the source.
‘All that is certain is that any divorce settlement will be worth millions.’
The super-rich Monaco royal family was initially cursed in 1297 after the first Grimaldi, Francesco the Spiteful, tricked the principality’s defenders by disguising himself as a monk seeking sanctuary, only to murder them.
The curse decreed that the family will never have long and successful marriages.
Nine years before she married Ernst, on January 23rd 1999, Caroline’s beloved second husband, Stefano Casiraghi, died in an horrific motor boat crash.
Her first marriage, to playboy Paris banker Philippe Junot, also ended in divorce.
Cracks in Caroline’s marriage to Ernst -who was also a divorcee - began appearing within months, starting with pictures of him urinating against the Turkish Pavilion at the 2000 World-Expo in his hometown of Hanover.
A year later, a German court handed him suspended prison sentence and a hefty fine for beating up a hotel manager and kicking a photographer in the buttocks. He also admitted verbally abusing two newspaper executives.
In 2005 the royal black sheep was admitted to the Princess Grace Hospital in Monaco, suffering from an acute pancreatic disorder - a disease commonly associated with heavy drinking.
Caroline has not been a shrinking violet either, gaining a reputation as a leading member of the multi-millionaire rat pack in hotspots like Monte Carlo and St Tropez.
Caroline’s sister, Princess Stephanie, is another notorious hell raiser who appears to have suffered under the Grimaldi curse.
Stephanie had two children with Daniel Ducruet, her bodyguard, before marrying and then divorcing him. Stephanie then had a third child, reputedly by another bodyguard, and then married a circus acrobat before divorcing him too.
And Caroline’s brother, the reigning Prince Albert of Monaco, still shows no sign of marrying or producing an heir, despite being 51 and having at least two illegitimate children around the world, including one whose mother was an air hostess from Togo.
The lack of heir would previously have led to Monaco becoming part of France, but the constitution was changed to allow Albert’s sisters and their descendants to succeed.
Other tragic events which have been attributed to the Grimaldi curse have included the death in a mysterious 1982 car crash of Caroline’s mother, Princess Grace, the former Hollywood film star Grace Kelly.