This may only interest me, but I find the royal family of Monaco fascinating, so we’re going to enter into the marriage of Princess Caroline and her third husband Prince Ernst August of Hanover. They’ve been married for 11 years, and from what I’ve read throughout the years, they’ve always been somewhat mismatched. Oh, did you know that Princess Caroline is a homewrecker? Prince Ernst was married to a nice Swedish Swiss woman when he and Caroline began their affair, and then he left his wife for Caroline, and he and Caroline went on to have a daughter. Since then, there have been tons of stories about the prince’s drinking, carousing and general unpleasantness.

There are always split rumors about Caroline and Ernst, but last fall the rumors seemed to be getting more serious. Still, no split came, and I haven’t heard anything about them for a while. Now it seems that they spent their holidays apart – Caroline went skiing with her kids, while Ernst spent time in Thailand with a lady friend. How do we know this? Because there are photos of Ernst with this lady friend! Scandal!

The already-tumultuous marriage of Monaco’s Princess Caroline and husband Prince Ernst August of Hanover appears to have hit a new bump with the publication Thursday of photos showing the 55-year-old Ernst August over the Christmas holiday walking the sand, sunbathing on a beach in Thailand and kissing in the surf – all with someone other than his wife, who was skiing with the couple’s children in Switzerland.

In a four-page photo spread headlined “Amorous Escapade in Thailand,” Thursday’s editions of France’s Paris-Match show Ernst August and an unidentified woman locked in an embrace. “The Prince and his friend,” the publication says, “only had eyes for each other.” Meanwhile, Germany’s Bunte also published the photos, declaring, “Monaco’s First Lady Is Being Publically Duped.”

The photos raise a new round of rumors concerning a possible divorce action by the thrice-married Her Royal Highness Caroline Princess of Hanover, Duchess of Brunswick and Lüneburg, 52, the eldest child of the late Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly.

They also show the latest in a chain of indiscretions that has made the couple’s 11-year marriage a royal soap opera starring Ernst August in incidents of public drunkenness, hospitalizations, scuffles, alleged infidelity and one all-too-well-documented episode of public urination at Expo 2000.

The couple – who were seen together on only three occasions in 2009 – have been living apart for some time. In September, photos allegedly revealed the Prince’s close friendship with a Parisian socialite. Days later, while Ernst was in Libya celebrating the 40th anniversary of Colonel Khaddafi’s reign, Caroline moved out of the family’s Fountainebleu home, taking their 10-year-old daughter Alexandra with her and resettling in Monaco.

A press spokesperson in Monaco told PEOPLE on Thursday that the Palace had “no comment” regarding the photographs.

Publication of his holiday snapshots couldn’t possibly have taken place at a less opportune moment for Ernst August. Next Wednesday, after months of negotiations, a court in Hanover is to hear testimony from a newly discovered eyewitness in Ernst’s appeal to have a 2000 battery assault conviction against him overturned.

That eyewitness is none other than his wife.

[From People]

It’s juicy, I think. I’m actually hoping Princess Caroline has had enough. My opinion – just from reading the odd Vanity Fair hit piece – is that Prince Ernst has always been a buffoon. A drunk baffoon. Of course, I think Caroline probably has some secrets she wants to keep hidden, and God knows she isn’t perfect. But she carries out her royal duties flawlessly, and she needs to rid herself of the dead weight, so to speak.