Princess Delphine of Belgium: A Life Claimed

From secret love-child to Her Royal Highness – the extraordinary, decades-long journey of Princess Delphine of Belgium; a woman who refused to be erased.

An extraordinary story

The story of Princess Delphine of Belgium is one of the most remarkable in modern European royal history. This decades-long drama involves a secret affair, a denied inheritance, a bitter legal battle, and, ultimately, a hard-won reunion. Born in 1968 as the illegitimate daughter of a man who would become King of the Belgians, Delphine Boël spent years invisible to the palace, the public, and the law. Today, she is Her Royal Highness Princess Delphine of Belgium, recognised in law, reconciled with her royal family, and the author of her own extraordinary life. This is the story of how she got there.

The parents: An affair that shook a kingdom

To understand Delphine’s story, one must first understand her parents, and the world their relationship created and concealed.

Albert, Prince of Liège. The man who would one day become King Albert II of Belgium was born on 6 June 1934, the second son of King Leopold III and his first wife, Queen Astrid. As a younger royal, Albert was not initially expected to rule; the crown was destined for his older brother, Baudouin. In 1958, attending a reception at the Belgian embassy in Rome during the coronation of Pope John XXIII, the 24-year-old prince met a stunning 21-year-old Italian aristocrat named Paola Ruffo di Calabria. “We were both shy, so we only talked a little,” Paola would later recall. But the attraction was immediate, and the couple married at the Cathedral of Saint Michael and Saint Gudula in Brussels on 2 July 1959, to great public rejoicing. They would go on to have three children together: Philippe (born 1960), Astrid (born 1962), and Laurent (born 1963).

Yet the marriage, for all its fairy-tale beginnings, was under severe strain within a decade. Paola, a vivacious, sun-loving Italian beauty, found herself trapped in the solemn, grey world of the Belgian court, dominated by the deeply religious King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola. The cold Belgian winters, the rigid court protocol, and her own youthful restlessness all contributed to a profound unhappiness. As royal biographer Mario Danneels would later reveal, the marriage began to crumble in the late 1960s. It was into this fraught, fractured space that a separate relationship entered the picture.

Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps came from the Belgian aristocracy. Married to the Belgian nobleman and industrialist Jonkheer Jacques Boël, she was a woman of considerable beauty, intelligence, and social standing. At some point in the late 1960s – the precise date remains a matter of some uncertainty – Sybille began an affair with Albert, then still Prince of Liège. According to Delphine’s own account, this affair would last approximately eighteen years, finally ending around 1982 when Albert abruptly severed contact. Sybille later confirmed to her daughter that the relationship was passionate and long-lasting, and that at one point, when she and Delphine moved to England, Albert had even considered divorcing Paola to be with them – a plan Sybille reportedly discouraged, aware of the constitutional devastation it would cause.

Early life: A childhood in two countries

Delphine Michèle Anne Marie Ghislaine Boël was born on 22 February 1968 in Uccle, a wealthy municipality in Brussels. She was registered as the daughter of Jacques Boël and Sybille de Selys Longchamps, and, legally speaking, that was what she was. Yet, unknown to the world and initially unknown to herself, the man she would come to call her true father was one of the most prominent figures in Belgian public life.

When Delphine was approximately nine years old, her mother moved with her to England. For much of her formative youth, Delphine was educated at exclusive boarding schools. These were in England and, notably, at the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, one of the most prestigious schools in the world, known for educating the children of royalty and nobility from across Europe. The education she received was refined, multilingual, and thoroughly international, shaping the sophisticated, art-inclined young woman she would become.

Crucially, it was during her teenage years, at the age of seventeen, that Sybille finally told Delphine the truth about her parentage – that her biological father was not Jacques Boël, but Albert, Prince of Liège, soon to be King of the Belgians. The revelation was seismic. In Delphine’s own words, she believed her mother: the physical resemblance to Albert’s family was striking, and Sybille’s testimony was detailed and consistent. Yet the knowledge came without any public recognition, any paternal warmth, or any acknowledgement from Albert himself. It was a truth that Delphine would carry privately, and often painfully, for years.

A life in art: From Chelsea to the world stage

Whatever difficulties marked her private life, Delphine pursued her artistic vocation with genuine determination and commitment. After completing her education in Switzerland, she enrolled at the Chelsea School of Art and Design in London (now Chelsea College of Arts) where she studied painting and sculpture. She graduated with a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art in 1990, a distinction that speaks to the seriousness of her artistic ambitions.

Settling in London, Delphine built her career as a visual artist and sculptor. Her early works incorporated papier-mâché and mixed media, reflecting a hands-on, experimental approach to three-dimensional form. Over time, she developed a distinctive sculptural voice: bold, sometimes provocative, frequently emotional, working in materials ranging from steel and bronze to neon and crepe paper. Her art often engaged directly with human emotion, vulnerability, and identity, themes that were inseparable from her own complicated history.

Notable among her works are the neon sculpture Love Child (2011) and the confrontational crepe paper piece Fuck You, I Exist.

Both addressed her disputed paternity directly and defiantly. These works attracted both praise and criticism: supporters celebrated their raw authenticity and emotional courage, while some monarchist commentators dismissed them as provocative stunts driven by her legal battles rather than genuine artistic merit. Delphine rejected such characterisations, asserting that her work dealt with profound questions about humanity, identity, and vulnerability. “I’m not interested in political suck-ups who overlook the intent,” she has said of her critics.

In 2003, Delphine and her family relocated from London to Brussels, where her public profile as an artist began to rise significantly alongside the growing attention surrounding her alleged royal parentage. She exhibited extensively across Belgium, with solo and group shows at venues including the Guy Pieters Gallery, and her work was shown alongside pieces by artists of the calibre of Salvador Dalí and Anish Kapoor. In 2008, she published a memoir, Couper le cordon (Cut the Cord), and in 2017, Never Give Up, both in French, offering her own account of her family struggles.

Her artistic endeavours extended beyond the gallery wall. In 2021, she designed the external decorations of a Lamborghini Art Car. It was a prestigious commission that placed her work in a global, luxury context. Her monumental steel sculpture Ageless Love was permanently installed in the Gerdapark in Sint-Niklaas in 2020.

“It’s hard to break, just like love,” (describing the piece). “And just like love, it also ages beautifully.” – Princess Delphine of Belgium

She has served as a guest lecturer at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK) in Antwerp and at the Maastricht Art School, sharing her experience with emerging artists. She is also the founding patron of the Princess Delphine of Saxe-Coburg Fund at Ghent University Hospital, which promotes the use of art in healthcare settings. It’s a cause that reflects her belief in art as a therapeutic and humanising force.

The schoolboy who changed everything: Mario Danneels

In any history of Princess Delphine, one figure stands apart as both improbable and indispensable: Mario Danneels, born in Bruges in 1981. In 1999, at the age of just eighteen, Danneels caused a national commotion by publishing an unauthorised biography of Queen Paola that would shatter the palace’s decades of silence.

Danneels had begun his journalistic career as a teenager, writing articles for De Daklozenkrant (The Homeless Paper) and Het Volk. Dissatisfied with a series of articles he had written about Queen Paola, he began conducting interviews with dozens of intimates of the Belgian royal family, accumulating a remarkable dossier of insider knowledge for someone still in secondary school. When he approached royal circles claiming to be writing a biography of the Italian-born queen on the eve of her sixtieth birthday, few took him seriously. He was, as one account described him, “a skinny 16-year-old, still in secondary school” when he first began his research. And yet his persistence and his sources proved extraordinary.

On 19 October 1999, Danneels published Paola, van ‘la dolce vita’ tot koningin (Paola, from ‘la dolce vita’ to Queen) through the publisher Van Halewyck. The book contained a single, carefully worded sentence that detonated a scandal: it referred, obliquely but unmistakably, to the existence of a daughter born out of wedlock to King Albert. The relevant passage alluded to the wives of the Belgian royals having to accept their husbands’ illegitimate children, describing Paola as one who, unlike the others, had refused to passively accept “the half-sister of her children.”

The Belgian press seized on the passage. Journalists began investigating, and before long the name Delphine Boël, until then entirely unknown to the public, was appearing in newspaper headlines across the country. The palace reacted swiftly, dismissing Danneels’ book as “gossip and rumour.” Delphine herself and her mother at first refused all comment. Yet the damage – or, from Delphine’s eventual perspective, the liberation – had been done. The secret was out.

King Albert never directly addressed the allegation in 1999, but in his Christmas address that year, he made a strikingly oblique reference to a “crisis” in his marriage “some thirty years ago” that had been “recently highlighted,” adding cryptically, “we wish not to go into this much deeper – it is part of our private life.” It was the closest thing to an admission the palace would offer for more than two decades.

Mario Danneels went on to become a respected Belgian journalist and author, ultimately based in Ireland. His subsequent books include further explorations of the Belgian royal family, among them Het trauma van de troon (2007), a broader study of royal grief and dysfunction, and Laurent: Zondaar van Laken (2012), a biography of Prince Laurent. He remains the journalist most closely associated with one of Belgium’s most seismic royal revelations; achieved when he was barely old enough to vote.

The long legal battle: A daughter denied

For nearly a decade after Danneels’ book ignited the controversy, the situation remained stalled. Delphine gave her first public interview on the matter on 15 May 2005, on the French television programme On ne peut pas plaire à tout le monde (You Can’t Please Everyone). It was the first time she openly stated on record that she believed King Albert was her father. She described learning the truth from her mother at seventeen, and recounted a deeply painful telephone call she had made to Albert when she was thirty-three – Albert’s alleged response being: “Never call me again. You are not my daughter.”

Albert, now King and therefore immune from prosecution under Belgian law, remained silent on the matter publicly. The palace position that the claims were unsubstantiated held firm throughout his reign. Delphine continued her life and her artistic career, but the unresolved question of her parentage cast a long shadow over everything.

Everything changed when King Albert II abdicated on 21 July 2013, Belgium’s National Day, citing health concerns. His eldest son was crowned King Philippe. Crucially, Albert’s abdication stripped him of the legal immunity he had enjoyed as a reigning monarch. Almost immediately, Delphine launched formal legal proceedings to have her paternity established through DNA testing.

The legal battle that followed was labyrinthine, exhausting, and at times farcical. In her initial suit in June 2013, Delphine named not only Albert but also his legitimate children, Philippe and Astrid, in the hope of obtaining DNA samples. When Albert abdicated and lost his immunity, she was able to narrow her suit to him directly. In March 2017, a court ruled her claim unfounded – a ruling her lawyers immediately appealed. In November 2018, the Court of Appeal reversed the decision, ordering Albert to submit to a DNA test.

Belgium does not legally compel individuals to submit to DNA testing, but refusal is treated in law as evidence of paternity. Albert’s response was to launch an appeal in January 2019. The Court of Appeal was unmoved, and in May 2019 issued an extraordinary ruling: the former king would face a daily fine of €5,000 for every day he refused to provide a sample. Within weeks, Albert capitulated. The sample was taken.

On 27 January 2020, the DNA test results were made public. King Albert II was confirmed, beyond any scientific doubt, to be the biological father of Delphine Boël. Albert issued a brief acknowledgement, and in a press statement recognised his paternity. It was a statement he had fought for seven years and tens of thousands of euros in fines to avoid making.

“A legal victory will never replace the love of a father, but it provides a sense of justice.”— Yves-Henri Leleu, Princess Delphine’s lawyer, October 2020

Princess of Belgium: The title and what it means

Paternity confirmed, the next legal question was whether Delphine was entitled to the titles and privileges that flowed from being a daughter of the former king. On 1 October 2020, the Brussels Court of Appeal issued its ruling: Delphine Boël was entitled to be styled Her Royal Highness Princess Delphine of Belgium, and to adopt the surname of Saxe-Cobourg. Her two children, Joséphine and Oscar, were correspondingly elevated to Princess and Prince of Belgium with the style of Royal Highness.

The ruling was nuanced in important respects, however, and it is worth understanding precisely what it granted and what it withheld. Delphine was awarded court costs totalling some €3.4 million on a substantial indemnity basis. It was a recognition of the legal outrages she had been subjected to. She was also granted the right to inherit one-quarter of Albert’s estate upon his death, a share equal to that of his three legitimate children.

What the court did not grant, and what Belgian law firmly precludes, is a place in the line of succession to the Belgian throne. As she was born out of wedlock, Princess Delphine and her descendants have no succession rights. Nor was she granted a royal endowment, which is the state stipend that supports the legitimate members of the royal family in their public duties. In this respect, her position differs fundamentally from that of her half-siblings Philippe, Astrid, and Laurent, whose titles are bound up with constitutional and financial support structures that Delphine does not share.

Her legal position might best be described as that of an acknowledged member of the royal house, carrying the full dignity of the title, inheriting the familial surname, and entitled to a share of her father’s estate, but standing outside the constitutional succession and without public funding. It is a position without precise precedent in modern Belgian royal history, and one that reflects the singular circumstances of her life.

Acceptance within the Belgian monarchy

The legal recognition of Delphine’s status, while a significant milestone, did not instantly resolve the deeper human and dynastic questions of belonging. Belgium had watched the saga with a mixture of fascination, sympathy, and no small degree of unease, as the story implicated not only Albert but the entire institution of the monarchy, which had for decades prioritised palace silence over a daughter’s right to know her father.

The weeks following the October 2020 ruling produced a series of meetings that, while carefully stage-managed, were genuine in their emotional significance. On 9 October 2020, Delphine met her half-brother, King Philippe, for the first time at the Palace of Laeken. In a joint statement, the two half-siblings described the encounter as “warm” and said they had engaged in “a long and rich exchange” about each other’s lives and interests. “This bond will now develop in a family setting,” they concluded together.

On 25 October 2020, Delphine met her father, Albert, and his wife Queen Paola for the first time since her recognition, at Belvédère Castle in Brussels. The three released a joint statement of striking emotional resonance:

“On Sunday, October 25, a new chapter began, filled with emotions, appeasement, understanding and also of hope… After the turmoil, suffering and hurt, it is time for forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation. Together we decided to take this new path.”

The following year, on Belgium’s National Day on 21 July 2021, Princess Delphine and her husband James O’Hare appeared alongside the royal family at the military parade for the first time. It was a public gesture of inclusion that carried enormous symbolic weight. To watch her stand alongside the family that had denied her existence for so long was, for many Belgians, a moment of genuine resolution.

Marriage and family life

Even as she navigated the turbulence of her paternity case, Delphine built a family of her own. She met James O’Hare, an American businessman of Irish descent, during her years in London. The couple married in 2003, the same year they relocated from London to Brussels.

Together they have two children. Their daughter, Her Royal Highness Princess Joséphine O’Hare de Saxe-Cobourg, Princess of Belgium, was born on 17 October 2003. Their son, His Royal Highness Prince Oscar John Patrick Tobias Léopold Michel O’Hare de Saxe-Cobourg, Prince of Belgium, was born on 28 April 2008.

James O’Hare has maintained a largely private profile throughout the tumult of the paternity proceedings, offering quiet support through the long years of litigation. His joint appearances with Delphine at Belgian royal events since her recognition speak to a settled and committed partnership. The family lives in Brussels, where Delphine continues her artistic work and public engagements.

Legacy and significance of the story of Princess Delphine

Princess Delphine’s story is, at its core, a story about identity – the right to know who you are, to be acknowledged by those responsible for your existence, and to claim the name and the place in the world that is rightfully yours. That she pursued that right through the courts, against a former king, in the full glare of international media, and over the course of more than two decades, speaks to a tenacity that is extraordinary by any measure.

Her case has had broader implications beyond her own story. Her lawyers noted, after the October 2020 ruling, that it would provide encouragement “to numerous children who have had to go through the same ordeal” – children born out of wedlock who have been denied recognition by powerful, reluctant fathers. In winning her case, Delphine established a precedent not just in Belgian royal history, but in the sphere of human rights and family law.

She has also, throughout everything, remained herself: an artist, a mother, a woman defined not merely by her royal blood but by her own creative voice. The sculptures she has made, the memoirs she has written, the fund she has founded are not the works of a woman content simply to claim a title. They are the works of a woman determined to live a life of genuine substance, shaped by her own choices as much as by the circumstances of her birth.

That the Belgian royal family has cautiously, imperfectly, but genuinely moved towards acceptance of her reflects something important about the capacity for human institutions to evolve. King Philippe’s warm welcome at Laeken, Albert and Paola’s joint statement about “forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation,” Delphine’s presence at the National Day parade in 2021: these are small gestures in the sweep of history, but they carry enormous weight for those involved.

Princess Delphine of Belgium is today HRH, sculptor, mother, memoirist, and patron of the arts. She is also, in some sense, a symbol of what courage looks like when brought to bear on the most intimate and painful of injustices, and of what it means to refuse to be erased.

Denzil Walton

I created Discovering Belgium in 2011 to share the country’s hidden stories, fascinating places, and remarkable people. Through articles, photography, and audio walks, I share discoveries that reveal Belgium beyond the obvious. Hope you enjoy this site.