It seems every Royal house has it's scandals but the one that occurred in Belgium and got international attention a couple years ago is not one that I could ignore. In April of 2020 I posted about the book that had come out in 1999 about Queen Paola that was supposed to be the outing that pushed the issue. I wanted to see how it all played out and also I wondered if I could perhaps give this story a different angle before I posted. In 2013 legal action began in Belgium. That time has come.
SYBILLE DE SELYS LONGCHAMPS
1941 - ALIVE
Sybille is still alive, as is King Albert II of Belgium, but perhaps there would be no story if it were not that Albert astutely refused to be identified as Delphine Boel's father until he was forced by Belgium courts to take a DNA test. It was the day he abdicated and no longer could hide from legal action that their daughter, Delphine, decided to take that action. He was about seventy-nine years old and was still married to his one and only wife, Queen Paola. What was Delphine's motivation?
It wasn't that the King had never been in her life. Sybille, her mother, was the King's Mistress for eighteen years and as one article stated, eighteen years is not a sex scandal. Yes, he was a married man and he was not King yet. He'd married one of the most beautiful women in the world, compared often with Grace Kelly at the time, Paola Ruffo di Calabria, an Italian noble woman. They met and were married within months, in 1959, and had three children. He knew of Delphine's birth in 1968. It was towards the end of what is sometimes called "The Swinging Sixties." Had the devout Catholic King been influenced to go with the easy sexuality of the era or was he just not happily married? Albert II of Belgium had been around Delphine as she was growing up, though he says he did not make important decisions about how she was raised. The relationship and her existence was an open secret in royal circles. Why had he fought so hard to avoid recognition of a love child?
It is my opinion that Albert II's resistance was not just about reputation or pride but had to do with money and eventual inheritance, not just of titles, but a substantial percentage of the net worth he possesses as a King, I think he did not want to fork that over eventually because even Kings can go broke. Belgium is a small country and one that we rarely hear about in the media. Few remaining Royals want to give up their positions coming from families who have so much to do with history, who have had power and authority, even if they no longer do. Belgium has a type of government called Federal Parliamentary Democracy. It's more like Great Britain than the United States. In this case the government of Belgium proved to be more powerful than the King.
Albert II may have also felt that Delphine's defacto father, her mother's husband Jacques, a billionaire + with more money than he, amply provided for Delphine and would and that he was already the father figure in her life. This is the decision many men make, particularly if there is a divorce and their wife remarries and a stepfather is living in a household with the children. Like other extra-matrimonial children of Mistresses to rich men, Delphine and her mother were not entirely abandoned or impoverished.
Both Delphine's parents were Belgium nobility and so she was already a Countess.
As well, within noble households, traditionally, when a married man's wife has a child it is considered to be his, to support and raise. That's the ethic.
Some nobles would wait to seduce a married woman until she had birthed an heir so there could be no confusion about those heirs. Of course every situation is different.
Before it was all over Delphine also got tried in the media. The question came up, was she doing this to her birth father because she wanted or needed money? (What if she did? I'm rather disgusted with reading in the press the suggestion that any woman poorer than the person she is suing is not seeking justice, just going after money. This excuse to get away with bad behavior is sometimes used by celebrities.) The existence of Boel and his money resolved that issue in her case because she probably lost her eventual inheritance from him which would arguably be more than she'll receive someday from the King. it was viewed that her win of recognition actually hurt her financially.
Which brings us to her mother Sybille de Selys Longchamps, our Mistress of the Month. Delphine's desire for the truth of her heritage, for herself and her children, further outed her mother and proved that the very Catholic King was an imperfect man.
Implied also was that his wife Queen Paola was either long suffering, accepting, or maybe a fool. If there was difficulty enough in her marriage for her husband to stray or cope by finding love with another woman, perhaps the couple worked that out. They had a Kingdom and children to consider. Also reportedly a devout Catholic, there would be no divorce. Would she be the first Queen to have a husband who had a Mistress? Of course not. Did the Courtiers of the Belgium Royal Family put an end to Sybille and Albert? I'll post about that this month. What of the power of the Catholic Church? Ahmmm.
Sybille has stated that she did not think she could get pregnant. She married Jacques Boel in 1962, Delphine, born in 1968, is her only child. You know, when you are considered to be infertile and a pregnancy happens it can really feel fated. Sybille and Jacques divorced in 1978. She remarried in 1982 to a British widower, the Honourable Michael Anthony Bathborne Cayzer, who died in 1990. So she was widowed.
As a perhaps surprising "one-eighty," after King Albert II of Belgium was forced to admit he begot Delphine with Sybille, all was forgiveness. I suspect Queen Paola has had influence behind the scenes. It would have been easier, as Delphine has said, and I agree, if this had all been settled without legal action. She wanted recognition simply because she wanted the truth to come out and for her children to know their heritage. Delphine, a successful artist, is the mother of two children. She is now a Princess of Belgium, is a recognized daughter, and was granted the use of the surname Saxe-Coburg. But what of Sybille? She reportedly left England after being widowed and moved back to Belgium, and is living in Brussels and Provence. I can't prove it.
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References for this months posts include numerous articles on the internet and encyclopedias, many with repetitive information. Stick with me as we explore more about Sybille, Delphine, and the King!
