Louis II, Prince of Monaco
On 26 June 1922, Prince Albert I died in Paris. Louis Grimaldi ascended to the throne as Louis II, Prince of Monaco. While his reign never achieved the grandeur of his father, Louis II left an indelible imprint on the tiny principality. In 1924 the Monaco Football Club was formed and in 1929, the first Grand Prix of Monaco automobile race was held, won by Charles Grover (aka "Williams") driving a Bugatti painted in what would become the famous British racing green color. He collected artefacts belonging to Napoleon I which are now assembled and displayed in the Napoleon Museum attached to the Royal Palace in Monte Carlo.
Monaco succession crisis of 1918
The duke, a descendant through a morganatic marriage of the royal family of Württemberg, was the elder son of Albert's aunt, Princess Florestine of Monaco. Although he was ineligible to inherit the crown of his patrilineal ancestors in Germany, given the line of succession to the Monegasque throne at that time, there was every likelihood that the principality would pass by lawful inheritance into Wilhelm's "German hands" upon the death of Prince Louis. However, given the bitter relations between France and Germany at that time – a socio-political legacy of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 and then of World War I – France deemed it unacceptable for a country over which it had exercised "de facto" or "de jure" hegemony, intermittently since the 17th century and consistently for half a century, to fall into the hands of a German aristocrat.