The marriage of Christina Onassis and Thierry Roussel had not turned out to be a happy one. Although Aristotle Onassis’s only daughter was in love with the heir to the pharmaceutical family, he quickly lost whatever interest he had in her.
Christina Onassis and Thierry Roussel. Credit: Paper Photo Archive
When Christina and Roussel first met, a decade earlier, he had told her he was in love with a Swedish model, Gaby Landhage, with whom he was living.
Christina did not know that his relationship with Gaby continued even after his marriage to her in 1984.
The biggest blow for Christina came, however, when she learned that the child Gaby had given birth to just a few months after the birth of Athina, the daughter Christina had with Thierry, was also fathered by Roussel.
Athina Roussel-Onassis, the last descendant of Greek shipping tycoon Aristote Onassis, is pictured in Athens 20 November 1988 with her mother Christina. AFP PHOTO
The shock was great, but her love for him was incurable. She was determined to play her strongest card: money.
According to Onassis’s biography by William Wright, for every night Roussel spent with her, she gave him a hundred thousand dollars.
Wanting to keep her family together, she even spent time with Gaby.
She would go on to spend the summer of 1986 in Monaco together with the woman competing with her for her husband’s heart, and the child that woman had had with him.
When she learned, however, that Gaby was pregnant again, Christina accepted Roussel’s request for divorce, on terms favorable to him.
And yet, a few months before her sudden death, and even though they had by then separated, Christina Onassis was once again seen with Thierry Roussel on the French Riviera.
The golden heiress was determined to risk everything. Her marriage had ended ingloriously, but her obsession with Roussel was not yet over. According to her biographer, William Wright, Christina remained in love with Roussel and made a point of enticing him with expensive gifts, and above all, cash.
She wanted more than anything to have another child with Roussel and give their three-year-old daughter, Athina, a sibling. So in the summer of 1988 she rented the Villa Trianon on the French Riviera, moved there with Athina, and Thierry soon joined her.
The couple even made a public appearance at Monaco’s Red Cross Ball, with the heiress noticeably thinner and doing her best to look as radiant as possible next to Thierry.
Christina could not hide her obsession. Paparazzi photographed her caressing Roussel’s bare backside by the villa’s pool. In the end, she offered him ten million dollars to father another child with her. Roussel refused. The vacation with her was his way of saying goodbye, since he intended to marry Gaby, as he informed her, leaving her heartbroken. A few months later, in November 1988, she would be dead.
