Family/Spouse: Henri Baels. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

[royalfam.ged]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Mary Lilian Baels (November 28, 1916 - June 7, 2002) was best known as Princess de R©bthy, th e controversial morganatic second wife of King Leopold III of the Belgians.

Leopold and LilianMary Lilian Lucy Josepha Monique Baels was born in Highbury, London, Englan d, one of eight children of Henri Baels, an attorney and fish trader from Ostend, Belgium, an d his wife Anne Marie de Visscher, who were living in England during World War I.

In 1926, Henri Baels became Belgian Minister of Agriculture and King Leopold III appointed hi m Governor (royal representative) of the province of West Flanders. An avid golfer, and regul ar visitor to the Knokke-le-Zoute golf course, Baels's daughter Lilian attracted the attentio n of King Leopold, a widower, and the two became frequent golf partners. (The king's popula r first wife, n©be Princess Astrid of Sweden, had been killed in an automobile accident in 193 5 at age 29; her husband, who had been king for just a year, was at the wheel and lost contro l of the vehicle in what has been described as "a moment of inattention.") Eyebrows were rais ed at the still-grieving king's frequent outings with the alluring commoner but Queen Mothe r Elisabeth reportedly played Cupid. According to an unauthorized biography of Lilian, Leopol d's mother invited the young woman to distract the king from his troubles. The details of th e couple's celebrated courtship will become clearer in 2033, when their love letters will b e available for study.

On September 11, 1941, Lilian Baels reportedly married the king in a religious ceremony. A bi ography of the monarch, written by Antoine Giscard d'Estaing, states that the marriage actual ly took place on December 6, with the September date given to conceal the fact that Lilian wa s pregnant with the couple's first child. The public announcement of the king's second marria ge was made in December when Cardinal Van Roey, primate of Belgium, wrote an open letter to p arish priests throughout the country. The letter revealed that the king's new wife would be k nown as Princess de R©bthy, not Queen Lilian, and that any children they might have would hav e no claim to the throne. The marriage was considered morganatic, and the R©bthy title does no t appear to have been officially established in royal records, though it was the name by whic h she was popularly known (she was, however, made a royal Princess of Belgium).

That fateful date of December 6, 1941 has been called king's personal Pearl Harbor. The publi c disapproval was stunning. According to an obituary of Lilian that appeared in the London Te legraph on October 6, 2002, a leading Belgian newspaper expressed the thoughts of many in th e country at the time when it published the following words: "Sire, we thought you had your f ace turned towards us in mourning. Instead you had it hidden in the shoulder of a woman."

The king's new wife was widely suspected of Nazi sympathies (one source reports that upon hea ring of the wedding, Hitler sent flowers and a letter of congratulations), and the marriage w as to many Belgians an affront to the memory of the beloved Queen Astrid. Leopold's reputatio n would be further undermined by lingering questions about his wartime actions, among them hi s surrender of Belgium to the Germans in 1940, an action that resulted in the Belgian governm ent in exile declaring the king unable to rule and naming as regent his brother, Prince Charl es, Count of Flanders. (Revisionist historians have sifted through the evidence, however, an d discovered that the king was braver and more concerned about the welfare of his country tha n he appeared and may well have been a scapegoat.) Unable to overcome the nation's low opinio n of his remarriage and distressed by left-wing riots against his return to the throne afte r the war -- Leopold, his wife, and his four children had been held under house arrest by th e Nazis in Belgium, Germany, and Austria, and spent some years in Swiss exile before returnin g to Belgium in 1950 after a national referendum -- the king handed over his constitutional p owers to his son Baudouin on August 10, 1950. He relinquished the title of king 11 months lat er and became H.R.H. Prince Leopold of Belgium, Duke of Brabant.

Soon, however, concerns were raised by royal insiders that the Baudouin, who was 20 when he a ssumed the throne, might be in love with his glamorous stepmother, who was 14 years his senio r. Secretly recorded telephone calls between young king and the princess raised alarms in min isterial circles. Disturbing, too, according to an article written by journalist Jean-Claud e Broch©b after Princess de R©bthy's death, was the pair's trip to the Tyrol in the winter of 1 952-53, when they travelled in adjoining train compartments. (Information about that journe y was publicly revealed when the journals of Achille Van Acker, a Belgian prime minister, wer e published.) As time went by, the concerns appear to have subsided but observers surely cluc ked after they learned of the unexplained actions of Princess de R©bthy and Prince Leopold i n the weeks after December 15, 1960, the day Baudouin married a Spanish noblewoman two year s his senior, Dona Fabiola Fernanda Mar©Ua de las Victorias Antonia Adelaida de Mora y Aragon . When the newlyweds returned from their honeymoon, they discovered that Lilian and Leopold h ad abruptly moved out of Kasteel Laeken, the sprawling royal palace where they had lived wit h Baudouin for a decade, and set up house in a country castle near Waterloo. A prolonged an d mysterious period of estrangement between the couples followed.

The three children of King Leopold III (later Prince Leopold of Belgium, Duke of Brabant), an d his second wife, Princess Lilian of Belgium, are:

Alexander Emmanuel Henry Albert Marie Leopold, Prince of Belgium, born in Brussels on July 18 , 1942. Married, in 1991, L©ba Inge Dora Wolman (married became public knowledge in 1998); sh e was created a Princess of Belgium in her own right.
Marie-Christine Daphn©b Astrid Elisabeth Leopoldine, Princess of Belgium, born in Brussels o n February 6, 1951. Married first, in 1981 (separated 1981, divorced 1985), Paul Drucker, a.k .a. Paul Drake, divorced; married second, in 1989, Jean-Paul Gourgues. Resides in California .
Maria-Esmeralda Ad©bla©de Lilian Anne L©bopoldine, Princess of Belgium, born in Brussels on Sep tember 30, 1956. Married, in 1998, Salvador Enrique Moncada. A journalist, her professional n ame is Esmeralda de R©bthy.
Princess Lilian of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant was interred next to her husband in the roya l vault at the Church of Our Lady in Laeken, Belgium. Her surviving stepchildren attended th e funeral, as did her stepdaughter-in-law, the widowed Queen Fabiola. Her son and younger dau ghter and their spouses also were present at the ceremony; Daphn©b, her long-estranged eldes t daughter, however, "stayed away," according to the royal-watching website www.nettyroyal.nl .

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Lilian_Baels"

Mary married King of Belgium Leopold, III on 11 Sep 1941 in Laeken. Leopold (son of King of Belgians Albert Lbeopold Clbement Marie, I and Elisabeth of Bavaria) was born on 3 Nov 1901 in Brussels, Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium; died on 25 Sep 1983 in Near Brussels, Belgium; was buried in Church of Our Lady in Laeken, Belgium. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Alexander married L©ba Inge Dora Wolman [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Paul Druker. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Marie-Christine married Jean-Paul Gourgues [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Maria-Esmeralda married Salvador Enrique Moncada [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]