NEW DELHI: King Albert II, the former Belgian monarch, conceded this week that DNA tests showed he was the biological father of Delphine Boël, an artist who claimed to be his daughter from an extramarital affair, an extraordinary admission after years of lawsuits that exposed the royal family to unusual levels of scrutiny.
King Albert’s lawyers said on Monday that the 85-year-old former monarch, who initially refused to comply with courtordered DNA tests before finally submitting last year after a Brussels court levied a fine of €5,000 for each day he refused, had “taken note” of the results.
The lawyers added there were “legal arguments and objections” establishing that “a legal paternity is not necessarily the reflection of a biological paternity.” Boel, 51, is an artist who has claimed for years that she was conceived during an affair in the 1960s between her mother, Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, and Albert, who was then a prince and married to Paola Ruffo di Calabria, an Italian princess. Albert and his wife already had three kids.
Rumors of an illegitimate child were first alluded to in a 1999 book about Queen Paola and Boel made her first public claim that Albert was her father in 2005. While Albert has never explicitly denied Boel’s claim, he refused to acknowledge it, and Boel filed a lawsuit seeking recognition as his biological daughter in 2013. King Albert ceded the throne to his eldest son that year, ending his immunity from prosecution.
Marc Uyttendaele, Boel’s lawyer, said on Tuesday that she was “relieved” to be “considered as a legitimate child”, but added that she had been “hurt” by the “coldness” of the king’s statement which said Albert had “never been involved with any family, social or educative decision regarding Boel”.
Boel will not enter the royal line of succession, but she will be in line to inherit some part of the king’s private fortune. Her lawyer said she had filed the suit for emotional reasons, not financial ones, noting that Jacques Boel, who raised Boel as his only daughter, was a wealthy man.
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