Princess Delphine of Belgium, the half-sister of King Philippe, has done a podcast interview where she shared the details of her life as King Albert II’s illegitimate daughter.
The princess joined host Daniel Rosney on the It’s Reigning Men podcast this week for a two-part interview talking about her life as one of Belgium’s newest royals.
Delphine is the daughter of King Albert II and Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps; she was born in 1968 when both were married to different people.
The princess revealed that when she was growing up, her mother kept an apartment in Belgium that Albert was able to enter through underground car parks so that he would not be spotted.
She called him “papillon” (the French word for butterfly) when she was a child and believed that he was just a friend of the family. However, when she was 17, she learned that he was not a friend but her biological father.
Delphine’s life largely continued on as normal. In 1999, everything changed, though.
A book about Albert’s wife, Queen Paola, was published that year and it mentioned an illegitimate child. While the press were able to find Delphine and name her as the child, the Belgian Palace denied the claims and she did not comment.
Albert refused to even speak to his daughter, and Delphine told the podcast “I wasn’t protected by my father then, you know? He kind of left me like a piece of meat to, to the dogs, really.”
In 2013, King Albert abdicated in favour of his son, Philippe. Delphine was then able to legally launch paternity proceedings in 2018, and through DNA testing, it was confirmed that she was the half-sister of King Philippe, Princess Astrid and Prince Laurent.
In October 2020, Delphine, and her two children, were granted royal titles in accordance with current royal rules in Belgium.
