Monaco's Princess Charlene 'very happy': brother

Wittstock was reported to have tried leaving just days before the wedding. By Valery Hache (AFP/File)

CAPE TOWN (AFP) - Monaco's newly wed Princess Charlene is "very happy", the South African bride's brother told a local magazine, rejecting rumours that her marriage to Prince Albert II is troubled.

"Everyone's making up their own stories. I can promise you, my sister is very happy," younger brother Sean Wittstock told the latest edition of the country's top selling English weekly magazine YOU.

"She and her bridesmaid were in SA on a game farm a week before the wedding. She could have stayed behind if she'd wanted to."

It would not be as easy for the former South African Olympic swimmer now, the 27-year-old added.

"She's a Roman Catholic now and they don't believe in divorce," he told the newspaper.

Prince Albert and the Monaco government haved lashed out at media spreading what they describe as false rumours and threatened to sue French magazine L'Express.

Rumours that Wittstock tried to leave the principality in a huff just days before the royal wedding have already been rejected by the palace, a lawyer for the princely pair, as well as by Albert himself.

L'Express had reported on its website that Wittstock, now Princess Charlene, interrupted preparations for the lavish celebrations and prepared to take a flight for her home country South Africa.

As for the allegations that Albert fathered a third child out of wedlock while engaged to Charlene, the government head Michel Roger said there was proof that this was false.

© 2011 AFP