Fourth Creation
On 20 October 1715, Antoine's eldest daughter and heiress Louise-Hippolyte married Jacques-François de Goyon-Matignon, who had signed a contract on 5 September 1715 by which he was obliged to take the surname Grimaldi. Louis XV thereupon recreated the title of Valentinois by letters patent, signed in December 1715 and registered on 2 September 1716, for Jacques, who was to succeed his father-in-law Antoine as Prince Jacques I; like the previous creation, its inheritance was restricted to male heirs.
After Jacques's abdication in 1733, the title passed uninterrupted for several generations from Prince to Prince: from Jacques to Honoré III, Honoré IV, Honoré V, Florestan I, Charles III, Albert I. Albert bestowed the title of Duchess of Valentinois upon his adopted granddaughter Charlotte, thenceforth known as Princess Charlotte, Duchess of Valentinois, on 20 May 1919. On 20 March 1920, shortly after Charlotte's marriage to Pierre de Polignac, he, like Jacques-François de Goyon-Matignon, took the title of Duke of Valentinois, having already changed his surname to Grimaldi.
Louis II, who succeeded Albert in 1922, never held the title of Valentinois himself. Though his father had granted the title of Valentinois to Charlotte, its right to succession remained with Louis and his descendants; consequently, on his death without a male heir in 1949, it became extinct in French law and under Salic Law. However, his successor, Rainier III, still claimed it, possibly in the belief, as suggested by François Velde, that it was "implicitly recreated for Charlotte by the French Republic in 1919 when her adoption was approved". However, the various French Republics have never created nor re-created any dukedom.
With the death of Prince Rainier on 6 April 2005, the title passed to his son, now Albert II of Monaco.
Read more about this topic: Duke Of Valentinois
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