An artist has won a seven-year legal battle to be confirmed as a princess and the official daughter of former Belgian King Albert II, her lawyer said on Thursday.
Delphine Boel, 52, becomes Delphine Saxe-Cobourg after a Brussels appeal court endorsed the results of a DNA test, lawyer Marc Uyttendaele said.
“The court affirms that King Albert II is her father,” the lawyer said, a claim confirmed by a judicial source. “She will henceforth bear the patronym of Saxe-Cobourg. Her other requests that she be treated on the same footing as her brothers and sister were also granted.”
Photo: Reuters
Albert reigned between 1993 and 2013 before abdicating in favor of his legitimate son, Philippe.
Boel, a sculptor, had been reported to be Albert’s illegitimate daughter since the 1990s — or as she once put it his “dirty laundry” — but it was only last year that a court obliged him to submit a DNA sample.
“She is delighted with this court decision, which puts an end to a lengthy procedure that was particularly painful for her and her family,” the lawyer said. “A judicial victory will never replace a father’s love, but it does offer a sense of justice, which is further strengthened by the fact that many more children who have gone through similar ordeals may be able to find the strength to face them.”
Uyttendaele said that Boel would address the media next week, when she had gathered her strength.
Albert, 86, acknowledged in January that he was Boel’s father after a DNA test came back positive, ending a paternity battle that had dragged on for seven years, but the court case continued, as she sought recognition as “Her Royal Highness Delphine de Saxe-Cobourg.”
The judicial source said that her children would be known as prince and princess of Belgium.
Boel in August gave an interview at a retrospective of her work in the Belgian resort Knokke.
After living in London from the age of eight with her mother, Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, Boel considers herself “Anglo-Belgian.”
She turned to art at an early age as “a good soothing medicine” and graduated from the Chelsea School of Art in 1991.
Her exhibition drew on the pain of her long court battle, which began after a failed attempt at reconciliation with her father.
Boel said that Albert’s belated decision to recognize her changed her life and allowed her to be taken seriously by those who had doubted her claim.
The change of heart came only after a court ordered the DNA test and levied a fine of 5,000 euros (US$5,859) per day for each day that he refused.
A journalist in 1999 revealed the existence of then-King Albert’s secret daughter, born from his affair of nearly 20 years with De Selys Longchamps, but the king continued to deny his paternity — even though he had been in contact when she was a child.
Despite her experiences, Boel remains a committed monarchist and finds accusations to the contrary deeply painful.
“I was treated constantly as a sort of anti-royalist, who was trying to demolish such institution and so on, and I really suffered of that because it’s not true. I am royalist,” she said.
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