On her 18th birthday one fine winter morning in January, Athina Roussel Onassis made a trip to a Swiss accountant's office to collect a sum of $2.7 billion (about Dh10 billion).

Next month, when she reaches 21, Athina inherits sole control of her own financial destiny and the chair of the fabulously rich Onassis Foundation - the other half of the fortune left behind by the late Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis.

Between one half of the inheritance and the other, the richest young woman on the planet has hitched herself firmly to a handsome riding master from Brazil.

And her lavish wedding party in Sau Paulo on Saturday night was not a modest affair.

The Valentino dress she wore while exchanging vows with Olympian medallist Alvaro Afonso de Miranda, 32, was worth nearly Dh130,000 and the hairdo Dh64,000.

There was enough sparkle - 1,000 bottles of Veuve Cliquot champagne - to add to the glitz at the Dh257,000-a-day reception venue (which, incidentally, was the Maria Luiza and Oscar Americano Foundation, a 7.5 hectare private estate that includes a museum, tea house and cultural centre in Sau Paulo's upscale Morumbi district).

But amid the splatter of food and the mirth of guests at the lavish ceremony, there was also a sense of foreboding: the spectres of past Onassis marriages floated like elegiac leitmotifs and speculations intensified whether this would be another one where wealth might remain a mute spectator to tragedy.

Athina's shipping tycoon grandfather Aristotle left Greece with just about Dh100 in his pocket.

He made his first million by the age of 25 and when he died, he possessed a shipping fleet larger than many national navies.

But his personal life was not always on the upswing - his first marriage ended when his wife found him in bed with Maria Callas.

An unabashed Aristotle then went on to marry Jacqueline Kennedy in the Greek island of Skorpios in 1968.

The wedding probably brought over the curse of the Kennedys to the Onassis family - within four years Aristotle lost his son Alexander and forner wife, and seven years later he, too, was dead.

Callas followed him in two years.

Aristotle's daughter Christina had four husbands, the last being Athina's father Thierry Roussel.

Christina's barrage of tragic mistakes came to a premature end when she was found dead in a bathtub at the age of 37 in Buenos Aires 17 years ago.

Drug abuse was blamed for her death. Athina was then only 3.

And after Saturday's wedding, fresh concerns are brewing.

Lonely bride

The Greek press, which has closely followed Athina growing up from a small girl, said she was a lonely bride with very few people from her family attending.

"I have no one beside me at this beautiful moment," the Greek newspaper Espresso quoted Athina as saying.

Athina's father Roussel, who fought his daughter for control of her fortune and has even questioned Miranda's motives for marrying her, was not present, according to local media.

Neither was anyone else from her family. Athina was given away by the groom's father, businessman Ricardo Miranda.

Complicating the financial implications of the marriage is the other half of the Onassis fortune, which the man known as the "Golden Greek" ploughed into a charitable foundation named after Alexander.

The Liechtenstein-registered foundation, one of Greece's most prestigious charities, has long been at odds with both Roussel and his daughter over the management of the shipping-based fortune.

While Roussel's claims were reportedly settled with a Dh3.5billion pay-off, Athina launched a lawsuit against the foundation, accusing it of seeking to prevent her from taking control on her 21st birthday, as she claims her grandfather had intended.

More complications

The foundation recently amended its statutes, requiring candidates for president of the board to be fluent in Greek and to be aged between 30 and 70.

Although Athina still owns the Greek island of Skorpios, she rarely visits her homeland and speaks little Greek.

Alvaro is reported to have encouraged Athina to reclaim her Greek heritage and to press for control of the foundation.

As money rears its ugly head, will the latest couple in the Onassis dynasty be able to embark on the road to happily ever after?

"The Onassis drama is not over yet. This is the first act of a very long play that will, I think, be very unpredictable. You will see that the wedding is just the beginning of it," the Greek author of a book on Athina was quoted as saying by news agencies.

It might just well be.