Tender Moments

Two pictures taken by the royal photographer Robert Marchand capture some moments of family tenderness.  Above, we see Queen Astrid with one of her children.  Below, Astrid's daughter, Josephine-Charlotte, and her half-brother Alexandre, play with their baby sister Marie-Christine. 

Catholic Princesses

This page has some beautiful photographs of the Confirmation and First Communion of Princess Marie-Christine in 1962 and of her younger sister, Princess Marie-Esméralda, in 1964.  Bishop Fulton Sheen officiated on both occasions.  Apparently, he was a friend of the girls' parents, King Leopold III and Princess Lilian. Still, I am not sure why a Belgian bishop was not chosen for the purpose.

Argenteuil: Pour garder intacte la mémoire du domaine royal

This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever seen. Published by the late Prince Alexandre of Belgium, son of Leopold III and Lilian Baels, it is a magnificent pictorial history of the estate of Argenteuil. Superb photographs, in black and white, and in color, help to trace the development of Argenteuil, from the construction of the mansion in the Sonian Forest by American entrepreneur William Tuck in 1930 to the sale of the property to industrialist and philosopher, Jean-Marie Delwart, in 2004. Purchased by the Belgian government in 1949, Argenteuil was placed at the disposition of Leopold, Lilian, and their children from 1960-2002. 

The arrival of this politically inconvenient, rejected, but richly talented branch of the royal family inaugurated the golden age of the chateau. Lilian's lavish but exquisitely refined tastes transformed the bare and dilapidated mansion into a distinguished and elegant home for the former King of the Belgians. Here, with energy and passion, yet with discretion and delicacy, the royal couple devoted themselves to scientific, cultural and humanitarian pursuits; Leopold to his Fonds Léopold III Pour l'Exploration et la Conservation de la Nature and Lilian to her Fondation Cardiologique Princesse Lilian. 

After Leopold's death in 1983, Lilian cherished his memory and hoped to preserve the royal heritage of Argenteuil for future generations. In her Will, she requested that she be buried on the estate and that the chateau be maintained, essentially, as she left it, as a memorial to her husband and as a centre for scientific and cultural reunions. She hoped that, in the future, her descendants would be able to visit Argenteuil often, on their vacations. After Lilian's death in 2002, the Verhofstadt government respected none of these rather poignant last wishes. Instead, Lilian was interred at Laeken and the mansion was stripped bare and sold to the highest bidder. Nonetheless, books like Prince Alexandre's help to preserve at least the memory of the legendary royal estate. 

Little Princess Marie-Christine

I am pained by her behavior as an adult, but it would be hard to find a more adorable little girl. She always loved her stuffed animals, as her sister Esmeralda recalls in her book, Léopold III, mon père.

Interview with Princess Marie-Christine

Here is a brief clip of Princess Marie-Christine, the elder daughter of King Leopold III and Princess Lilian, discussing the rift between her parents and her half-brother, King Baudouin, in an English-language interview from 1994.  For once, she sounds sympathetic towards one of her parents, explaining that her father suffered deeply from the estrangement. Unfortunately, the clip is embedded in a Flemish television report from 1998 about historian Karel De Clerck's insinuations, based upon the papers of Leopold's old adversary Achille van Acker, that Lilian had an affair with Baudouin prior to his marriage to Queen Fabiola. Readers of this weblog will know that I find these accusations revolting, although the young Baudouin was undoubtedly devoted to his step-mother, the trés chère Mammi of his letters in this period. Nevertheless, since I have posted interviews with her older brother, Prince Alexandre, and younger sister, Princess Esmeralda, it may be interesting to see a clip of Marie-Christine.

A Ball for Daphné

One of the grandest celebrations of Argenteuil's days of glory as a residence of King Leopold III and his second family was the ball given for his daughter, Princess Marie-Christine, in the summer of 1971. Born February 6, 1951, Marie-Christine, fondly known as "Daphné" since childhood, had grown up into a handsome, if willful, young woman and her parents decided it was time to launch her into society with a splendid coming-of-age party. Organized by her talented, forceful mother, Princess Lilian, it was to be the first ball in the history of Argenteuil. Family friction arose over the invitations; Daphné's brother, Prince Alexandre, had hoped to include certain members of his own circle, while Lilian preferred to give precedence to European nobility and families of foreign heads of state. As a result, Alexandre did not attend the party! Nevertheless, it was a glamorous affair, hosted outside, to accommodate twenty-five round dinner tables, under a big tent tastefully decorated with flowers. In attendance, among many other notables, was Princess Maria Gabriella of Savoy, Marie-Christine's cousin and a good friend of Leopold and Lilian. Meanwhile, Givenchy dresses set off the beauty of Daphné, her mother, and her younger sister Esméralda. Daphné wore a white gown adorned with hand-embroidered daisies. At table, she sat with a grandson and namesake of Charles de Gaulle. The ball continued all night, as Lilian danced with the Count of Paris and Leopold with his daughters. The festivities ended around sunrise with a traditional onion soup. (Le mythe d'Argenteuil, Michel Verwilghen, 2006, pp. 291-292).

A Waltz with a Princess

Quite by accident, I came across this odd, rather snide little anecdote about Princess Marie-Christine and her mother, Princess Lilian, from the relentlessly name-dropping memoirs of British designer Nicholas Haslam.

Another less fulfilling Parisian coup de foudre began at Isobel Goldsmith's exotic debutante ball, where all the girls were instructed to wear tête fleuriée. Next to me at dinner a towering tiara of flowers encircled the head of a rather pretty blonde named Marie-Christine. We danced frequently, and suddenly she held me very close, whispering that this moment was all she had dreamed of, waltzing with a handsome young Englishman; she would like it to last forever, and even hinted at something more permanent. Somewhat alarmed, I asked Isobel the name of this forthright friend. I was even more alarmed to learn she was a princess of Belgium, daughter of King Leopold III and Mme de Réthy. And within a few minutes I was bowing to that supremely elegant woman, who was clearly giving me the once-over. I failed her testing eye. But not, it turned out, entirely. A year or so later, at Patrick Lichfield's wedding to Leonora Grosvenor, there again was ma princesse, with the same intentions; so much so that I was asked to spend the night at Cholmondeley Castle, where she and Mme de Réthy were staying. I declined, I hope politely. Later I rather proudly told the story to Tom Parr. "Good God", he said."Just imagine being the Tony Snowdon of Belgium". (Redeeming Features: A Memoir, 2009, pp. 270-271)

A Modern Bride

I came across this picture of the two marriages of Princess Marie-Christine of Belgium, to Paul Drucker (1981) and Jean-Paul Gourges (1989). The bride's rather brashly contemporary style on both occasions is a striking contrast to the quiet, traditional dignity of her niece Princess Mathilde's wedding dress.

I wish I could find wedding photographs of Marie-Christine's younger sister, Princess Marie-Esméralda, but I gather that hers was a very private ceremony.

Night and Day

Princesses Marie-Christine and Marie-Esmeralda, the daughters of King Leopold III and Princess Lilian, as little girls and as young women.

February 6, 1951: The Birth of Princess Marie-Christine

A portrait of Princess Marie-Christine, at the age of fourteen, by Agustin Seguro. From childhood, the princess enjoyed the arts; she liked music, painting, and acting, and adored stuffed animals and pets. This image, then, seems quite emblematic of Marie-Christine's personality as a young girl, and it also, of course, shows off her ethereal, blonde beauty.

Today is a landmark anniversary, the 60th birthday of Princess Marie-Christine of Belgium, second child and eldest daughter of King Léopold III and Princess Lilian. Nearly a decade separated her birth from that of her eldest full brother, Prince Alexandre-Emmanuel, who came into the world, just over ten months after his parents' wedding, on July 18, 1942. For Marie-Christine's parents, it had been a dreadful decade, marked by the Second World War, the royal family's imprisonment in Germany and Austria from 1944-1945, and five years of exile in Switzerland from 1945-1950, all amidst the sordid intrigues and violent controversies of the "Royal Question". In 1950, left-wing strikes and riots had forced the newly-returned King Léopold to delegate his royal powers to his eldest son and heir, Prince Baudouin. He would formally abdicate on July 16, 1951, five months after his little daughter's birth. Five years later, Marie-Christine gained a younger sister: Princess Marie-Esméralda, born September 30, 1956. Despite the considerable age difference between the two girls, they were close playmates in their youth, according to Marie-Esméralda.

Desolation at Argenteuil

Here is a rather sad slideshow of the estate of Argenteuil fallen into disrepair. The photographs date from 2004, two years after the death of Princess Lilian, and the same year that Jean-Marie Delwart purchased the property. Although I have nothing against Monsieur Delwart, I wish Argenteuil could have been maintained, as Lilian had hoped, as she left it, as a memorial to Leopold III and his second family. It seems tragic that such a rich chapter in Belgian royal history should slip into oblivion. I can understand why Madame Jeannine Degrève, the most faithful member of the household of Argenteuil, who had remained in Princess Lilian's service for 53 years, locked up the empty, deserted mansion for the last time with tears in her eyes.

It must have been even more painful for Prince Alexandre and Princess Esmeralda to see their youthful home stripped bare. While the state furnishings, borrowed in 1961, returned to Laeken, the children had to preside over the sale of many family treasures, including Princess Lilian's wardrobe and much of King Leopold's library, since they were unable to keep them at Argenteuil or accommodate them in their own homes. Their sister Marie-Christine's insistence on receiving her portion of her mother's inheritance in cash rather than in goods also made it necessary to sell family goods for profit. Furthermore, forced to empty Argenteuil in haste, Alexandre and Esmeralda could give only general instructions to those responsible for classifying the chateau's contents and setting items aside for sale. Objects of special historical value, intimately linked to the lives of past Belgian kings, were dispersed because Lilian's heirs could not oversee everything in detail.

Unfortunately, however, often unaware of these practical problems, many Belgians harshly criticized Alexandre and Esmeralda. In the press, they were portrayed as heartless, greedy individuals, crassly dilapidating the "national heritage" for money. The attacks seem quite unfair and ironic, as Lilian's heirs had battled, for months, to preserve Argenteuil, essentially intact, as a memorial to their parents' cultural, scientific and humanitarian work, and it was the Belgian state that had made this impossible... Ironically, too, there was a singular lack of public indignation at the government's sale of Argenteuil itself!


Photographs courtesy of Tatiana Faber

More photographs, of the interior of the mansion

More on Marie-Christine

In "Ma mère telle qu'on l'a peu connue," an interview published September 26, 2002, in La Libre Belgique, Princess Marie-Esmeralda of Belgium commented on her sister's tragic estrangement from her family:

Elle-même a pris ses distances à partir du moment où, en 1980, elle est partie au Canada pour se marier et aussitôt divorcer. Elle a eu, à ce moment-là, une brouille avec mes parents qui a rejailli sur toute sa vie passée. Une coupure s'est faite en elle. Elle n'est jamais revenue en Belgique. Elle vit actuellement dans le Nevada, est remariée et n'a pas d'enfant. Mon frère et moi avons gardé le contact. Bien que de cinq ans plus jeune, j'étais très proche de ma soeur. Durant toute sa maladie, Maman a espéré un signe. Mais il ne s'est pas fait. Papa attribuait à Marie-Christine, au-delà de la reine Elisabeth, quelque chose du tempérament indépendant, excessif, imaginatif des Wittelsbach, du côté de Sissi, de Louis II...

She herself distanced herself from the moment in 1980 when she left for Canada to get married and then divorced. At that moment, she had a fight with my parents which spilled over her whole past life. There was a break in her. She has never returned to Belgium. She now lives in Nevada, has married again, and has no children. My brother and I have kept in contact with her. Although five years her junior, I used to be very close to my sister. Throughout her illness, Maman hoped for a sign. But it never came. Papa attributed to Marie-Christine, through Queen Elisabeth, something of the independent, excessive, imaginative temperament of the Wittelsbachs, on the side of Sissi, of Ludwig II...

Recently, Jorge raised the issue of Marie-Christine's tragic claim to have been physically molested in her youth and deeply wounded and disappointed by her family's reaction. According to Marie-Christine, she was raped as a teenager, by one of her cousins, no less, and when she told her mother, Lilian did not believe her and severely punished her. If the story is true, it is heartbreaking and I can understand why Marie-Christine would be very hurt. I have to say, though, that I cannot help wondering a bit about this story, since Marie-Christine has herself admitted she was always a liar (Michel Verwilghen, Le mythe d'Argenteuil, 2006, p. 54). I also cannot help wondering whether a real rape victim would use such a terrible trauma for publicity. In any case, though, the princess is obviously a very troubled lady, and I feel sorry for her.

Death of a Princess

On June 7, 2002, Princess Lilian of Belgium, born Mary Lilian Baels, widow of King Leopold III, died peacefully, after a long illness, at her home at Argenteuil, near Waterloo. One of her doctors, and close collaborators in the Princess Lilian Cardiological Foundation, Charles van Ypersele de Strihou, later testified:

During her long illness, the Princess never complained. Although aware of her prognosis, She nevertheless fought step by step with a courage that commanded the admiration of physicians and nurses. She kept her sense of humour, confronted the physicians with the limits of their art and obtained the best of their talents. She remained attached to life despite the hardship of illness and some moments of discouragement. A few weeks before her death, She confided gratefully that She had enjoyed her long, full life. (Charles van Ypersele de Strihou, "Princess Lilian: some personal recollections," in Proceedings of the Princess Lilian Cardiology Foundation Symposium to commemorate its Patron, HRH Princess Lilian of Belgium, "Cardiology and cardiovascular surgery at the onset of the XXIst century," Acta Cardiologica - An International Journal of Cardiology, suppl. to volume 59, 2004, p. 20, quoted by Michel Verwilghen in Le Mythe d'Argenteuil: demeure d'un couple royal, 2006, p. 39)

Verwilghen adds:

She who, during her life, had morally suffered so from the innumerable calumnies of which she was the victim, did not know the physical pains of the end of life. Some of her intimates said that Providence spared her a long and painful agony. As if she were falling asleep, she slipped, little by little, into unconsciousness, a few moments after the final auscultation. She ceased to breathe less than an hour later. Death came shortly before 1 pm, while Princess Lilian was surrounded only by her silent doctors and supported by her maid, whose sobs, restrained with difficulty, expressed her profound emotion.

The chatelaine of Argenteuil, who royally personified that marvelous corner of Belgium, transfigured by her talent, had left it, after living there for more than 41 years. Her mortal remains would rest there for eight days yet, before passing, for the last time, through the gates of the royal dwelling over which, at her suggestion, had been forged two "L's", interlaced and surmounted with a crown, monograms of Leopold and Lilian, evocative of their common destiny. (p. 40, translated from the French original)

Before her death, Lilian had the joy of becoming a grandmother twice, with the birth of Alexandra and Leopoldo to her youngest daughter, Marie-Esmeralda. It had been highly uncertain whether Lilian would ever have grandchildren, since Marie-Esmeralda married very late in life, and Alexandre and Marie-Christine, who had married earlier, never had children. But, at long last, Lilian had the consolation of knowing that the family she had founded with King Leopold would continue....Tragically, however, although she had hoped for a healing of the rift with her eldest daughter, Lilian died without ever being reconciled with Marie-Christine.

Belgium's Rebel Princess

One of the most tragic, rebellious and controversial Belgian royals is HRH Princess Marie-Christine, the second child and eldest daughter of King Leopold III and Princess Lilian. Marie-Christine Daphné Astrid Elisabeth Léopoldine was born February 6, 1951, just five months before her father's forced abdication. She came into the world at a painful time for her family, towards the end of the agonizing "Royal Question" that brought great grief and humiliation to her parents and nearly plunged her country into civil war. Tragedy would continue to mark Marie-Christine's life in the years to come...

Photographs of the young Marie-Christine (or " Daphné" as she was called, affectionately, in the family) reveal a beautiful, blonde girl, with the fair complexion and the fine, sensitive and noble features of her father, Leopold III.  A night-and-day contrast with her younger sister, Esmeralda, a dark brunette strongly resembling Lilian. During Marie-Christine's childhood, magazines reported that she was musically talented and that her grandmother, the music loving Queen Elisabeth, encouraged her in this interest. Marie-Christine also had an overriding romantic streak which led her to dream continually of shining knights and ideal loves (See Patrick Weber, Amours royales et princières (2006) pp. 168-169).

Rash, headstrong, restless and unhappy, feeling imprisoned in a "golden cage," Marie-Christine frequently rebelled against the restraints of her royal position. Her love interests, in particular, gave rise to a long series of family quarrels (Weber, pp. 168-169). Lilian wanted her children to make prestigious matches, and forcefully pressed her views, but her passionate and willful daughter stubbornly refused all the marriages her parents suggested. Meanwhile, Marie-Christine's own choices, apt to be wildly inappropriate for her regal station, met with their disapproval and consternation. Tragically, Marie-Christine also, apparently, fell into quite a dissolute lifestyle, experimenting with drugs and debauchery. Her relations with her parents, especially her mother, became more and more tormented. In 1981, at the age of 30, she moved to Canada, bitterly turning her back on Belgium forever.

Ahead of her lay dreams, disappointments, dissipation, financial ruin, sorrow and bitterness. She mingled with the Hollywood set and longed to be a movie star, but her fairytale dreams have never come to fruition. She has married twice, but never had any children. In 1981, against her alarmed parents' advice, she defiantly married Paul Drucker, a Quebecois bar pianist, thirteen years her senior, a widower with two children, and, reportedly, a homosexual. With Marie-Christine's connivance, the press then published lurid photographs of the newlyweds, scantily clad in their hotel room. Leopold and Lilian were appalled. For the old, ailing King Leopold, this final family rupture, coming after the estrangements from his brother Charles, and son Baudouin, was the last in a long series of painful ordeals. The marriage, predictably, proved a fiasco; within weeks, Marie-Christine had abandoned her husband to live with another man (see Weber, pp. 169 -170) and Michel Verwilghen, Le mythe d'Argenteuil: demeure d'un couple royal (2006), pp. 349-350). In 1989, after divorcing Drucker, Marie-Christine married a French restaurateur living in the USA, Jean-Paul Gougues. Over the years, Marie-Christine has moved around quite a bit, living, at different times, in Toronto, Las Vegas and San Diego.

In recent years, in vitriolic interviews and memoirs, Marie-Christine has bitterly attacked the Belgian royal family. In an article published April 17, 2007 in Humo magazine,  she even declared that "abolishing the monarchy might prove to be of benefit to Belgium." Claiming to have broken all contact with her family, she did not attend the funerals of her father, her mother, her half-brother, King Baudouin, or her brother, Prince Alexandre. She has consistently portrayed Princess Lilian, in particular, as a harsh, unloving, domineering, controlling, and even cruel mother.

I find this hard to believe. I know Lilian was a difficult woman at times, but we must remember that she also won the abiding love and devotion of her three step-children, Josephine-Charlotte, Baudouin and Albert, over many years. As for her two other children, Alexandre and Marie-Esmeralda, both have honored her memory with love and respect. Esmeralda, in particular, in her memoirs, recalls Lilian's tender care in creating a beautiful and elegant home at Argenteuil for her family. She also emphasizes that her relations (and, in fact, her siblings' relations) with their parents were very warm and affectionate. Surely, Marie-Christine's bitter statements ought to be weighed against these contrasting testimonies?