Stephanie packs her trunk and says goodbye to her elephant taming

Sunday Mirror, Mar 24, 2002 by LARISSA NOLAN

ROYAL wild-child Princess Stephanie brought shame on her family by running away to the circus with an elephant tamer.

But now two years later the black sheep of the House of Grimaldi has quit her caravan and gone back to the luxury home of her daddy, Prince Rainier of Monaco.

Heartbroken circus owner Franco is said to be devastated at her departure and is too upset to comment on the matter.

"Now it's over between them, a friend said. "She got fed up with life on the road, getting up early, feeding animals, always smelling of elephants and horses.

"It is not the life she is used to and one she could not tolerate any longer.

"It didn't work out for them and now she has decided to return to Monaco."

Since the split, the Princess has been spotted back in the tiny principality and has enrolled her children in a school there.

Stephanie, who has had a string of high profile relationships, has not wasted any time since her split with Knie.

She was recently seen in the company of Canadian singer Garou, a huge star in France.

The Grimaldi family will breath a sigh of relief at the news that Stephanie has left her circus lover.

The daughter of the legendary Princess Grace caused a stir when she moved in with circus director Franco Knie.

She was so taken with Franco - owner of the famous Swiss circus Cirque Knie - that she spent two months touring Europe in his caravan with her three children.

During her life with the circus, she was photographed outside her caravan - which she named the Palace - wearing a grubby dressing gown and with a cigarette hanging from her lips.

She allowed her circus-loving daughter Pauline, 7, to perform with an elephant under the Big Top.

There were even rumours that the Princess was pregnant after she appeared in a loose white dress at last year's circus festival.

But now the couple have decided to finish their two year relationship and go their separate ways.

The unlikely pair met up in 1999, after meeting at the International Circus Festival in Monaco.

The festival is an important date in the Monaco social calendar and Stephanie's father Prince Rainier acts as honorary ringmaster.

Thousands turn out draped in red and white scarves and wearing clown's head masks.

The Knie dynasty and the Grimaldis have been friends for two generations.

Circus ties to the Grimaldi family are so strong that the only time the 30-year-old festival was cancelled was in 1982, when Princess Grace was tragically killed in a car crash.

Stephanie, the youngest child of Princess Grace and Prince Rainier, was just 17 at the time and survived the car crash in which her mother died.

At the 1999 circus festival, Stephanie, 37, presented Franco with the award for Best Animal Trainer and the spark ignited.

The handsome circus owner - who is six-foot tall and of Italian heritage - caught the Princesses' eye.

They started a relationship a few months later, with both parties sacrificing a lot to be together.

The couple did not go public with their clandestine relationship until March 2000.

Twice-married Franco, 47, left his second wife Claudine, 51, to be with the stunning Princess.

Franco and Claudine had been married for 14 years and have a teenage son Anthony.

He also has a daughter from his first marriage to Doris Knie.

Claudine was furious to learn that her husband was having an affair with the Princess.

About the split from Franco, she said: "I thought Stephanie was my friend. She stayed as a guest at our house and ran around in pyjamas.

"I was kind to her and dried her tears when she was unhappy. Now I see I have been used."

Heart-broken Claudine suffered a nervous breakdown and refused to give her husband a divorce.

Knie's difficulties in divorcing his wife is said to be an important factor in the split from Stephanie.

The Princess was also upset that her children were finding it hard to settle in at the school they attended in Zurich, Switzerland.

Stephanie also had a lot to lose. She was aware that her new love would embarrass her regal family, but threw caution to the wind and went ahead with it anyway.

It wasn't the first time that the Princess had landed in hot water with the Grimaldis over her questionable choice in men.

She has found it impossible to settle down with one man and now has three children by two different fathers.

Her first controversial move was to have two children by her bodyguard Daniel Ducruet before they married.

But one year later the marriage was over following the publication of lurid photographs and a video of Ducruet cavorting intimately by a swimming pool with a sometime stripper and former Miss Bare Breasts of Belgium.

The Princess was awarded a "quickie" divorce in 1996.

She then embarked on a string of brief affairs including a romance with Fabien Barthez, the Manchester United goalkeeper, and the actor Jean-Claude Van Damme.

In July, 1998, she gave birth to a third child, a daughter Camille Marie Kelly, named after her mother, but refused to name the baby's father on the birth certificate.