Constrained and forced, King Albert II finally admitted in January to be the real father of Delphine Boël. A decision which “changed the life” of this woman who became a painter, after years of suffering and a long legal battle.
Delphine Boël, a 52-year-old visual artist who rarely speaks in the media, confided in AFP during a retrospective exhibition in an art gallery in Knokke, a posh resort on the Belgian coast. An interview also granted a few weeks before the appointment scheduled for September 10 before the Brussels Court of Appeal, which has yet to rule on the legal consequences of this recognition as the fourth child of the former sovereign (1993-2013) today. hui 86 years old.
This coup de theater of January 27 “it’s true that it really changed my life”, exclaims Delphine Boël in English. This slender blonde with light eyes comes across as “Anglo-Belgian” and wants to be interviewed in the language of Shakespeare.
“At first I felt taken seriously, I was finally heard. And then I found it extraordinary that justice can thus give hope to all those who seek their identity”, she adds.
This late January day, Albert II admitted to being his “biological father“, confronted with the evidence of a DNA test to which the justice had forced him the previous year, in this soap opera with multiple twists.
Since 1999, the year of the revelation by a journalist of the existence of this hidden girl, born of his long affair with Baroness Sibylle de Sélys Longchamps, the husband of Queen Paola had always denied this paternity. Yet he had been in contact with his daughter when she was a child.
It was a day of victory for Mme Boël even if “emotional injury, nothing will dress her up“, underlined his lawyer Me Marc Uyttendaele.
Perceived as an “enemy of the monarchy”
As “remedy to make pain tolerable”, Delphine Boël was very passionate about drawing very early on, she says.
In London, where she followed her mother and spent all her youth from the age of 8, Delphine (she signs her works with her first name only) attended the Chelsea Art School from which she graduated. at 23, in 1991.
For this exhibition entitled “Attitude”, which runs until September 13, the artist has brought out the intimate writings of one of the darkest periods of his life, five years ago, when Belgian justice still inflicted on him setbacks and made her doubt the merits of her fight to be recognized.
She threw them on large frames. And these large-print sentences evoking “shame” or “guilt” on a dark background sit alongside brightly colored abstract paintings with the words “hope”, “love”, “be strong”. The proof that “sadness can be happy”, the artist is convinced.
Half a word, Delphine Boël assures that her media exposure was particularly difficult for her and her family.
“My fame was shameful, I was Albert II’s dirty laundry “, she blurted out.
“I was constantly treated as a sort of enemy of the monarchy, accused of wanting to demolish this institution. I really suffered because it is not true, I have always been a royalist”.
Today, Delphine Boël says she is “proud”
The battle before the courts against Albert II was launched in 2013 after the failure of an attempt at conciliation. This is the year in which the ex-sovereign abdicates and passes the crown to his son Philippe, the current King of the Belgians.
Today Delphine Boël says to herself “proud“of a battle waged both for herself and for her two children aged 16 and 12, who were also to”know their history “.
“At school, we sometimes asked them ‘are you sure your mother didn’t make all this up (…) that she’s fine in her head?’ I’m really happy that no one can anymore never tell them that “.
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