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BelgiumOther

First Great-Grandchild for King Albert II and Queen Paola of Belgium

The Belgian royal court has confirmed that Prince Amedeo of Belgium and his wife Elisabetta are expecting their first child together and the baby is due in May. Prince Amedeo of Belgium is the eldest son of Princess Astrid of Belgium and Archduke Lorenz of Austria-Este. Princess Astrid is the second child of the abdicated King Albert II and Queen Paola.

Prince Amedeo was born in 1986 and he obtained successions rights, along with his mother and younger siblings in 1991. All the children of Princess Astrid and Archduke Lorenz, bear the title “Prince(ss) of Belgium” by Belgian Royal Decree of 2 December 1991, distinct from their traditional Austro-Hungarian titles. When his grandfather Albert II succeeded to the throne in 1993 he was third in the line of succession. The marriage of his uncle, now King Philippe, and the birth of his first child, now the Duchess of Brabant, his prospects of inheriting the throne substantially diminished. He is currently to sixth in line.

Prince Amedeo married Elisabetta “Lili” Maria Rosboch von Wolkenstein on 5 July 2014 in Rome’s Basilica Santa Maria in Trastevere.  Although the engagement had been published on the Royal Family’s website, no dynastic authorisation for Prince Amedeo’s marriage was published prior to his wedding, as foreseen in Article 85 of the Belgian Constitution. Thus, Elisabetta does not share her husband Belgian title and Amedeo was deemed to no longer be in the line of succession. On 12 November 2015, more than a year after the wedding, a royal decree expressing King Philip’s retroactive permission for the marriage was gazetted in the Moniteur Belge.

Despite this retroactive permission for the marriage, the child will not become a Prince or Princess of Belgium, decreed in the same Royal Decree, which intends to limit the amount of people with a Princely title. The child will be seventh in line to the Belgian throne and if it’s boy it will be also be in line for the headship of the House of Austria-Este. Through his father, Archduke Lorenz, Prince Amedeo is also in line for the defunct throne of Austria-Hungary.

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