Monaco's royal soap opera sudsing on

The residents of Monaco, when not busy counting their money, used to wonder whether the heir apparent, Prince Albert, would ever marry and have children.

The marriage question is still open. The children question has changed.

The 32,000 Monegasque residents no longer wonder whether Albert will have children. They wonder how many His Serene Highness already has.

Just before his formal enthronement yesterday as the new ruler of the speck of gold dust on the French Mediterranean coast, Prince Albert II, Prince of Monaco, Duc de Valentinois, Duc de Mazarin, Comte de Farette, Sire de Matignon et de Marchais, etc, etc, came close to admitting he had several illegitimate offspring.

Albert, 47, the only son of Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, formally recognised last week that 22-month-old Alexandre Coste, the child of Nicole Coste, a former air hostess from Togo, was his son.

In an interview with French television, he said: "I know that there are other people out there who are in more or less the same situation ... We will give them an answer at the appropriate time."

Other "people"? Just how many other people? In the midst of the flummery and the would-be informality of yesterday's ceremony, the 32,000 Monegasque residents faced the prospect of huge changes in the tiny principality in the months ahead.

Prince Albert, a fundamentally decent man, promised a transparent approach to the alleged financial laxity of the statelet's scores of banks.

Not only will Monaco no longer launder the world's dirty money; it will also be seen to be clean, Prince Albert promises. He is considering, he says, abandoning the principle of banking secrecy - the principle on which both his country's, and his family's, fortune has been founded in the past 20 years.

Albert has also said that Monaco, somewhat smaller than Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, will sign the Kyoto Treaty and take action to clean the one square mile of air over its territory. This will be a relief to environmentalists everywhere and a powerful incentive to President George W. Bush to fall into line.

But some things will stay the same.

The eventful love lives of Albert's sisters, Caroline and Stephanie, have filled glossy magazines for two decades. Albert always seemed relatively discreet. Rumours circulated that he was gay.

He never married, he has told friends, because all of the women failed one of three tests. First, Prince Rainier did not approve. Secondly, Albert did not believe that they could match his beloved mother, Grace. Or thirdly, the women themselves made it clear that they could not live in the Monaco media fish-bowl.

The status of Monaco as a kind of Dallas-sur-Mer, a permanent soap opera of royal escapades, is assured into a new generation.

- INDEPENDENT