The heir to the Onassis billions is to marry in Brazil today - but her father fears she is poised to relive her mother's tragic mistakes, writes Helena Smith
Like her late step-grandmother, Jackie Kennedy, she'll be wearing Valentino with a £1,000 hairdo to match. As befits a 1.88-metre-tall equestrian champion, he'll be dashing in his costume of white and gold. And when they exchange vows in Brazil's hot summer heat, the groom will swear in front of their 750 guests that he is marrying her for love, not money.
Six weeks before her 21st birthday, after years of waiting, months of preparation and days of runaway rumour, Athina Onassis, the reclusive heiress, will finally say "I do" today when she puts on the fattest Greek wedding of all time.
With 1,000 bottles of bubbly already on ice and the likes of Jennifer Lopez reputedly lined up to entertain the newlyweds, this, say celebrity-watchers, will be the "wedding of the decade". Among those invited to attend the ceremony in the lush tropical gardens of São Paolo's £40,000-a-day Maria Luisa and Oscar Americano charitable foundation will be most of Brazil's elite, its riding set and several of the world's rich and famous.
Konstantinos Kotronakis is the couple's best man, and still has vivid memories of Athina's grandfather, the "golden Greek" shipping tycoon, Aristotle Onassis. ""Everything is ready," he told the Guardian newspaper. "They are greatly in love, a wonderful pair. It will be a hot summer wedding."
But for all the exquisite stage management of the big day, the portents are not good. Before Athina or the Olympic medal- winning Alvaro "Doda" Alfonso de Miranda Neto walk down the aisle, there are signs that the wedding may also be replete with the farce and drama that has plagued the Onassis dynasty for decades.
Much of the gossip focuses on the question of whether Athina's father, French boulevardier Thierry Roussel, will actually be at the ceremony to give his daughter away. This week, a source close to the family confirmed that neither Roussel nor his Swedish wife, Gaby, who raised Athina with her three half-siblings in Switzerland, had received an invitation. Instead, Athina appears to have spurned the couple.
"Only Sandrine, her half-sister, is definitely going. It's not at all sure whether Thierry or Gaby will show up," said the family friend. "Talk is that one of the groom's relatives will give her away."
The filial rejection follows Roussel's open disapproval of Athina's marriage to a divorcee 12 years her senior. Shocking her family, the shy teenager dropped out of school after meeting the Brazilian showjumper at Belgium's prestigious Nelson Pessoa riding academy in 2002.
Fearing his oldest offspring is poised to relive the tragic mistakes of her hedonistic mother, Christina - found dead in a bathtub at the age of 37 in Buenos Aires 17 years ago - Roussel has not hidden his displeasure.
"Athina is the third generation Onassis woman to marry young, and to an older man," said Alexis Mantheakis, the family's former spokesman and Athina's biographer. "But, like all fathers, Thierry wants the best for his daughter. He would, for example, have liked her to go to university. It's her life, of course, but Thierry isn't very happy at her being so young and living so far away - and, understandably, that has put strain on the relationship."
Acutely aware of the unhappiness that devoured his late wife, the French former playboy prides himself on having given Athina a normal childhood, ensuring that she went to state-run schools and shared her ponies and mountain bikes with youngsters from a children's home. By contrast, Christina had showered her daughter with sumptuous gifts, including her own zoo and an £8,000 toy Rolls Royce.
Despite all this, the horse-crazy heiress last year employed lawyers in London to wrest control of her immense fortune from Roussel. The lawsuit had put "immense strain" on their relationship, according to Mantheakis, author of Athina Onassis: In the Eye of the Storm.
Although similar accusations were levelled at him when he became Christina's fourth husband in 1985, Roussel has also voiced fears about the Brazilian's motives.
Given that the groom is the father of a six-year-old daughter, whom he had with former model Sibele Dorsa, Roussel worries that his future son-in-law may influence Athina to adopt the child and so make her an heiress to the incredible Onassis fortune. As the dynasty's sole survivor, Athina's empire is worth close to $1 billion. Hotels, a fleet of ships, assets in 217 bank accounts, priceless works of art and properties in six countries - including the Aegean isle of Skorpios, where the Onassis family is buried - are all hers.
Believing the house of Onassis to be cursed - seven people connected to the family have died in tragic or inexplicable ways - Athina once declared she wanted nothing more to do with it. But, in what is seen as a prelude to further wrangles over the fortune, she recently indicated that she intends to take over all her inheritance, not least the part invested by her grandfather in a philanthropic foundation named after her late uncle, Alexander. The fund would enable Athina to make millions of dollars worth of charitable donations in Greece.
Yet, while her fiancé seems to have encouraged her to reclaim her Greek heritage - Athina has renewed her Greek passport, deepened her ties with elderly Onassis relatives, and signed up with an Athenian riding school in the hope of representing the country at the Beijing Olympics - there, too, lies trouble. The men who run the foundation have said flatly they will not hand over the reins to somebody who, like Athina, does not speak fluent Greek.
"The Onassis drama is not over yet. This is the first act of a very long play that will, I think, be very unpredictable," said Alexis Mantheakis. "You will see that the wedding is just the beginning of it."