The Secret Princess: King's love child in court battle for recognition | 60 Minutes Australia

I always thought the British royal family owned and owned the scandal. Well, tonight they may have to hand over their crown to the Belgian royal family, who have been ordered to recognize a new

princess

. There will be no official celebration on the day. However, the streets of Brussels because, rather embarrassingly, the new royal is the 52-year-old

love

son of former King Albert II in the 1960s, when he was a mischievous prince. The supposedly happily married and deeply religious Alberto took a long-term

love

r. Delphine Bowell was As a surprise consequence of her illicit relationship for most of her life, she obediently kept silent about her parentage until a fight with her father made her change her mind.

One of the most revered and respected royal families in Europe. They have ruled their

king

dom since 1830, but behind the pomp and pageantry of the Belgian monarchy a dirty little

secret

has festered - the existence of an illegitimate daughter - the beloved daughter of former King Albert II - for much of her life she was almost invisible. Her name is Delphine Bowell and she refused to stay in the shadows in which I became famous but out of shame you know it was King Albert's dirty laundry I felt extremely betrayed okay now I want to be treated the same as his other

child

ren that's all I have a private life and i have no comments from denial to defiance i only give you dna it's okay no big deal delphine bowell fought for her royal birthright she deserves to go down in history as your extraordinary

princess

who fought for who she was and their right to exist by ta

king

on the king and the establishment in a real-life game of thrones I had.

Fight for something that truly belongs to me Become the world's newest princess Do you still love your father? I don't know I don't know Living a charming life in the Belgian capital Brussels Delphine Bowell seems to have it all She is a highly successful artist and a content wife and mother of two

child

ren. It's hard to believe that she was once one of the most divisive figures in the country. What kinds of things did you experience? They would tell me: "Couldn't your mother have taken the pill um you know or you're a bastard I've been called a bastard many times that I'm a troublemaker I'm putting Belgium under pressure that must have been very difficult to accept it took me a long, long time, a long time to say wait you can't treat me like this because if I continue to be treated like this I'm going to die slowly inside really the love match of Prince Albert and Princess Paula has stimulated a great warmth of Belgian affection for the royal house It all started with a wedding royal fairy tale in 1959.

Charles and Diana of their time, the handsome Prince Albert of Belgium, had found love with the glamorous power of the Italian princess. It is no wonder that Belgium took her into its heart in the decade. 1960. The European royal couple with three children, Philippe Astrid and Laurent, but the happy family photos were all a facade, the prince had found himself as a lover in the Belgian aristocrat, Baroness Sabile Dasilis Longshot, better known as Delphine bowell like her mother, you are the product of an affair between your mother and the king that lasted 18 years, that's right, and it's longer than some marriages like yes, exactly because they had an incredible love story, I really mean she was the one man of his life, they were really good. friends too, you know, they were a very normal good couple, but the royal affair was anything but normal and the prince's fourth son would become a source of shame and secrecy.

Delphine's mother had been trapped in her own unhappy marriage to billionaire steel magnate Jacques Bowel for the By the time Delphine was born in 1968, they had long since separated, but for the sake of appearances they maintained the pretense that Jacques was her father. She found out when she was 17 years old. um, who was my real father. um, my mother didn't want to say it. Me before because she was worried that I would say something and he would create a big scandal for my country even though he was a prince at that stage, yes he played a role in your life when you were a little girl.

Wasn't it like that because he came in and out from time to time, but you thought he was just your mother's best friend, the best friend, because you were together a lot? I mean, they spent hours and hours talking on the phone. We used to go on vacation together. usually on his ship so no one would really recognize us, so yes, it was, but a big part of my life, even today, loyalty to the crown is the glue that holds together a nation deeply divided between speakers of Dutch and French at that time. It was essential to live in separate wings of the royal residence.

Albert was on the verge of divorcing Paula to be with his lover, but Sabile convinced him not to, literally for the good of king and country. Terrified of overthrowing the monarchy, she ended their 18-year relationship. and she walked away she didn't want to be a troublemaker she was very patriotic she preferred to sacrifice herself to save the country in 1993 she reconciled with paula prince albert became king and although the existence of a beloved royal son was an open

secret

in royal circles, it was never publicly revealed until 1999 the bombshell when it came came from the most unexpected place a skinny flamenco teenager named mario i think they saw me as an innocent schoolboy a lot of people you know when i went in for an interview a lot of people said oh is this for the school? and I said no, no, I'm writing a book, but people didn't believe I was going to deliver it.

He spent his adult life in Ireland, but Mario Daniels grew up in Belgium, his childhood ambition was to be an author. Incredibly at the age of 16, he made his way to the palace to write a biography about Queen Powell. I found that she was a very glamorous, beautiful and stunning woman in the 60s and 70s and then she became a bit boring. queen in '93, when King Albert became king and I was wondering what had happened to him, you know, after dozens of interviews, the lovely teenager got a meeting with a palace official who told her all about the royal affair and the existence of delphine bowell and he just looked at me and said, but everyone knows that Albert has another daughter and I looked at my editor and he looked at me and I our eyes were moving like no, no one knows, so you choked with your lunch practically in 1999, the schoolboy.

The writer complied and his book included a single line about the existence of a royal son. I finally chose to, you know, just mention it cryptically in half a sentence without mentioning Delphine's name. I just talked about, you know, Paula's half-sister. children and the fact that the queen wasn't just willingly accepting the fact that she existed and that's all I said after having sat on the royal love story for decades, that cryptic half sentence was all the excuse the media needed faith when it came When it came to the book, it highlights what Mario went through, it was an incredible media circus, but because it was something that had never happened in Belgium before, you know, exposing the private life of a king so openly that the The media didn't really know what to do. but at the same time, the day after my book was published, everyone was camping outside Delphine's front door in London, so there was also a standard of hypocrisy and this 18-year-old boy was merely an excuse to expose what that the media already knew. private life and I have no comment, but he is our king and we have uh, I don't know if you've seen the movie Nottingham Hill, you know, I just had this wall of papahatsi outside my house in London and it suddenly turned into this. great news, this about Delphine and King Albert's beloved son, it became a big event around the world.

In reality, for the deeply conservative king and queen, the scandal and shame were too much. Albert and Paula made a pact. She was willing to give him another chance basically the condition that Delphine would never be talked about again basically and that she would certainly never get any kind of

recognition

that he didn't want and this is what he kept telling his friends and um, he didn't want to hurt her with that old story. Again, to them, Delphine became an old story and then exploded on the phone saying, "Never call me again, you're not my daughter." and that was when she was 33 years old and the last thing she said to you was: yeah, why did she do that?

I don't know, in the palace, the shutters were closed. Delphine was ostracized and ignored. He was unapproachable. I tried a lot of different things. Ways I wrote letters, my phone calls, forget it. I tried to do it through the cardinal. I tried to see politicians and friends, but when someone is in power like a king, you don't want to upset them, you don't want to be on the wrong side. of them, so not even his friends would approach them and say, "I think you need to do something about this." Go away, but how can you tell someone to go away? someone with feelings someone would have a history with their own past their own personality everything they could do wrong they did wrong the royal family in this whole saga that is coming if they have a title I have a title, a girl scorned and loved when the DNA came out I I felt so betrayed that she refuses to be forgotten the gods she simply defended herself how Delphine fought against the king it could have been so simple it could have been so normal and a princess Delphine has a very royal tone that continues in 60

minutes

in 2013, in the end After a 20-year reign, King Albert II abdicated the throne to his son Philip and was forced to deal with the skeleton in his closet for the daughter he disowned 11 years ago.

Before I thought it was okay, now I want to be treated equally with her other children, so if they have a title, I have a title over the years as a successful artist. Delphine Bowell had a growing public profile and became increasingly vocal about her father's treatment of her. He was no longer the king so he was no longer immune from prosecution, she decided to take him to

court

, where this royal confrontation became very ugly, in fact these

court

s lasted a long time during those years, it was extremely unpleasant on Albert's part. and their lawyers were horrible, I think.

That's what's so sad about this story is that it could have been so simple, it could have been so normal and it just became a saga and it should never have been like this, all of this should have been done behind the walls, behind, already You know, in private during all of this, Albert gave Delphine the coldest of shoulders and when a judge took the extraordinary step of ordering a DNA paternity test, he flatly refused, which is actually very unpleasant if you ask it. You think because you can't allow, I think, a human being to not be sure where it comes from I just give you DNA, it's okay, it's not a big deal, public opinion went from thinking that Delphine was going too far to that Albert was a sad man who He simply did not assume his responsibility as a father and father. human being with his reputation in tatters in the end it seems to have been money more than morals that influenced the former king forced by the court to pay eight thousand dollars for each day he did not undergo a DNA test, relented and in January this year, in the face of irrefutable scientific evidence, Albert reluctantly admitted that Delphine was his biological daughter and then when the DNA came out, his lawyer said, well, he never really felt like he was Delphine's father, he had no feelings for her. and so on. so betrayed because you have to remember that for all those years I protected him completely, you know he loved him as an observer.

I really can't understand why the rejection of royalty at this stage, I would have thought in 2020 an illegitimate child in a scandal for a royal family really isn't that big of a deal. I know you would think so and it's really not a big deal. I don't know, I don't know why all this rejection might have something to do with it. religion, you know, they're very, very religious, they're very Catholic, well, he can't be too Catholic, he had an 18-year affair with your mother, well, that's the point, I don't know, maybe they're scared, you know ? last week what began with a book came to a final chapter after a seven-year fight a court ruled that delphine and her children had won the right to royal titles once ridiculed as a bastard delphine bowell has been officially anointed as princess of Belgium Princess Delphine has a very royal tone, doesn't she?

Yes, I will ask people to still call me dolphin because that is me and that is my artist name and I will always be an artist. Well, it wouldn't be so easy with your husband. make him kneel every time he enters the room, don't downplay it, okay, I will remember that for this new princess it is an emotional victory for the former king, a humiliating defeat, a

battle

fought not for money or fame, but for principle of that a father should always take care of his children. I'm proud of myself because it was hard and I had to fight for something that really belongs to me and belongs to my children and I hope for what I've done.

It can help other people not to give up and that is very special to me I feel very proud because I know how important it really is It is important to know where you come from It was Mario Denis who revealed Princess Delphine's secret lineage to the world It triggered a chain of events that would lead to scandal and royal humiliation, but perhaps his greatest achievement is that he ultimatelyUltimately, it gave Delphine Bowel the power to not only confront her past but also take ownership of her present to be the princess she always was. Think of dolphin, what do I think of Delphine?

I mean the gods she has. She just stood up for herself and said this is not right, this is not right, you know, and she stood up to a king, um, the establishment of an entire country, basically, um, and she. he fought for his right, she did everything she could for so many years to get back in touch, he refused, it's all up to him. you know, and everything that followed from headlines all over the world about him, he took That decision was his choice. One thing that makes me very happy is that the courts listened to me, they agreed that this should not be accepted and that for me has given me enormous hope, okay, I will not have the love of my father and maybe my brothers and sisters, but Now I feel very respected, that's good, right?

I mean, I'm alive again and that's very beautiful. beautiful hello, I'm sarah arbo, thanks for watching to stay up to date with the latest news from 60

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