Albert II of Belgium

Albert II (born 6 June 1934) is a member of the Belgian royal family who reigned as King of the Belgians from 9 August 1993 to 21 July 2013.

Albert II is the son of King Leopold III and the last living child of Queen Astrid, born a princess of Sweden.

Queen Astrid died in a car accident on 29 August 1935, in which King Leopold was lightly injured but survived, when Prince Albert was one year old.

During World War II, on 10 May 1940, at the time when Belgium was being invaded, Prince Albert, his elder sister Princess Joséphine-Charlotte and his elder brother Prince Baudouin, left the country for France and later Spain.

The Prince and the Princess returned to Belgium on 2 August 1940.

The King remarried to Mary Lilian Baels (later became Princess of Réthy) in 1941.

The couple produced three children: Prince Alexandre, Princess Marie-Christine and Princess Marie-Esméralda (who is also Albert's goddaughter).

Albert and his siblings had a close relationship with their stepmother and they called her "Mother".

They continued their studies until 1944, either at Laeken, or at the Castle of Ciergnon in the Ardennes.

In June 1944, at the time of the Allied landings, King Leopold, his wife Princess Lilian and the royal children were deported by the Germans to Hirschstein, Germany, and later to Strobl, Austria, where they were released by the American 106th Cavalry Regiment on 7 May 1945.

Owing to the political situation in Belgium, King Leopold and his family moved to the villa "Le Reposoir" in Pregny, Switzerland, when they left Austria in October 1945 and stayed until July 1950.

During that time, Prince Albert would continue his education in a secondary school in Geneva.

King Leopold III, accompanied by Prince Baudouin and Prince Albert, returned to Belgium on 22 July 1950.

In so doing, he was also the second Belgian monarch to abdicate, following his father, Leopold III, who abdicated in 1951, albeit under very different circumstances.

Prince Albert was born at the Château of Stuyvenberg in Laeken, northern Brussels, as the second son and youngest child of King Leopold III and his first wife, Princess Astrid of Sweden.

He was second in line to the throne at birth, and was given the title Prince of Liège.

In 1958, Albert went to the Vatican to witness the coronation of Pope John XXIII.

At a reception at the Belgian Embassy, he met Italian Donna Paola Ruffo di Calabria.

Prince Albert proposed marriage to her, to which she accepted.

Two months after their meeting, the prince introduced his future wife to his family, and four months later to the press.

The couple were married on 2 July 1959, one-and-a-half years before Albert's older brother, the king, got married (a marriage which would prove childless).

Albert and Paola have three children, twelve grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Their children are:

In 1997, the Belgian satirical magazine Père Ubu reported that the Belgian sculptor Delphine Boël (born 22 February 1968) was King Albert II's extramarital daughter.

It took some years for the Belgian mainstream media to report this news.

According to Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, the mother of Delphine, she and Albert shared an 18-year-long relationship into which Delphine was born.

He is the younger brother of the late Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg and King Baudouin, whom he succeeded following Baudouin's death in 1993.

He married Donna Paola Ruffo di Calabria (now Queen Paola), with whom he had three children.

Albert's eldest son, Philippe, is the current King of the Belgians.

On 3 July 2013, King Albert II attended a midday session of the Belgian cabinet.

He then announced that, on 21 July, Belgian National Day, he would abdicate the throne for health reasons.

He was succeeded by his son Philippe on 21 July 2013.

Albert II was the fourth monarch to abdicate in 2013, following Pope Benedict XVI, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and Emir Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar.

In June 2013, Boël summoned the then King and his two older children (the then Duke of Brabant and the Archduchess of Austria-Este) to appear in court.

She hoped to use DNA tests to prove that she is the King's daughter.

As the King enjoyed complete immunity under the law, Boël decided to summon his elder children as well.

The king abdicated the following month, in July 2013.

After the King's abdication, Boël abandoned her first suit to introduce a second one only against the former King as he was no longer protected by immunity and the first claim would have been judged according to the situation at the time of the introduction of the claim.

In March 2017, the Court ruled that her claim was unfounded, and her lawyers said she would take the claim to appeal.

On 25 October 2018, the Court of Appeal decided that Delphine Boël is not a descendant of Jacques Boël, and ordered King Albert to undergo DNA testing.