Mary Lilian Baels

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Mary Lilian Baels , full name Mary Lilian Henriette Lucie Joséphine Ghislaine (born November 28, 1916 in London , England , † June 7, 2002 in Brussels ), later Princess of Réthy , was the controversial second wife of the Belgian King Leopold III.

Childhood and youth

Mary Lilian Baels was born in Highbury in the London borough of Islington as one of eight children of Henri Baels, a lawyer and politician from Ostend , and his wife Anne Marie de Visscher. Her parents lived in England during the First World War . Lilian Baels spoke French, Dutch (Flemish) and English.

In 1936 Henri Baels became Belgian Minister of Agriculture and King Leopold III. appointed him governor (royal representative) for the province of West Flanders . As a passionate golfer, he was a frequent guest at the golf tournaments in Knokke , where King Leopold became aware of his daughter Lilian. King Leopold was widowed and the two became frequent golf partners. (The king's first very popular wife, Queen Astrid , died in a car accident in 1935 at the age of 29. Her husband had only been king for a year. He drove the car and in a careless moment lost control of the vehicle) . The frequent meetings between the king, who was still in mourning, and the commoners were viewed with suspicion, but Queen Mother Elizabeth supported the connection. According to an unofficial biography, the young Lilian was invited by her to help her son over his worries. The exact details are not expected to emerge until 2033, when the young couple's love letters are made available for study purposes.

Marriage to the King

On September 11, 1941, Lilian Baels married the king in a secret, purely ecclesiastical, ceremony that had no validity under Belgian law. It was not until two months later, on December 6, 1941, that the couple were married in a civil ceremony, although in Belgium the civil marriage usually precedes the church marriage. The exact reasons for this are not known. Presumably, the king initially only regarded Lilian as an unofficial, secret wife and only later changed his mind. Between the two weddings, the two of them may also have found out that Lilian was pregnant because the first child of the two was born seven months after the second ceremony.

The public was only informed one day after the civil ceremony through a letter from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Brussels-Mechelen, Jozef-Ernest Van Roey . The letter also mentioned the title of the king's new wife: "Princess of Réthy" (and not: Queen Lilian) and also announced that the couple's children, although they are Prince and Princesses of Belgium, are excluded from the line of succession. However, the title "Princess of Réthy" never became official as it was not confirmed by the government. (However, Lilian automatically acquired the title “Princess of Belgium” through her marriage).

Controversy and intrigue

December 6, 1941 is known as King's Pearl Harbor Day. The public rejection of the second marriage was great. An obituary in the London Daily Telegraph dated October 6, 2002 by a Belgian journalist expressed what thousands across the country thought: “Your Majesty, we thought you turned your gaze on us and our grief, instead you buried your face in your shoulder another woman. "

The king's new wife was also widely and unjustly suspected of sympathy with National Socialism , among other things because Adolf Hitler sent flowers and a congratulatory telegram for the wedding. In the eyes of most Belgians, the marriage was an affront to the beloved late queen. Leopold's reputation was further undermined after Belgium surrendered to Nazi Germany in 1940. The government had to go into exile and the king was declared incapable of governing and his brother Karl was appointed regent.

Leopold and his family lived under house arrest by the Nazis in Belgium, Germany and Austria and after the war they spent a few years in exile in Switzerland until they were allowed to enter Belgium again after a referendum in 1950. Since he was unable to calm his resentment towards his second marriage and because of left-wing protests against his return to the country, he resigned on August 10, 1950 in favor of his son Baudouin and abdicated eleven months later.

However, royal insiders soon began to fear that Baudouin, who was only 20 years old, was in love with his stepmother, who was only fourteen years older. Secretly tapped phone calls between the young king and the princess caused excitement in the circles of ministers. Allegedly, in the winter of 1952-53, the two went on vacation to Tyrol in two separate train compartments . Details about this trip were made public after the princess' death.

Over time these rumors subsided, but the marriage of King Baudouin on December 15, 1960 to the Spanish nobleman Fabiola de Mora y Aragón, who was two years older than him, provided new topics of conversation . When the two returned from their honeymoon, Leopold and Princess Lilian had abruptly moved out of the royal palace in Laeken , where they lived with Baudouin for ten years, and moved into the Domaine d'Argenteuil country house near Waterloo . There they received numerous guests in discretion, including the British Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The couple became increasingly estranged, however, and only appeared together once in public: at the funeral services of Queen Mother Elisabeth in 1965. Lilian never won the hearts of the Belgians, but had a close relationship with her three stepchildren.

Princess Lilian's dress style was very provocative and was copied in certain circles. For example, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote to her designer Oleg Cassini when she was supposed to take on the role of First Lady that she would like her dresses "in the style of the Princess of Réthy, but younger".

children

King Leopold III. and his second wife Lilian had three children:

• Prince Alexander Emanuel Hendrik Albert Maria Leopold , Prince of Belgium, born in Brussels on July 18, 1942, married to Léa Inge Dora Wolman since 1991 (the wedding was only made public in 1998); died on November 29, 2009.
• Princess Marie-Christine Daphné Astrid Elisabeth Léopoldine , Princess of Belgium, born in Brussels on February 6, 1951. She was married to Paul Druckner (also Paul Drake) from 1981 to 1985. In 1989 she married Jean-Paul Gourgues in California.
• Princess Maria-Esmeralda Adélaïde Lilian Anne Léopoldine , Princess of Belgium, born in Brussels on September 30, 1956, married to the pharmacologist Sir Salvador Moncada since 1998. She has two children, is a journalist and writes under the pseudonym Esmeralda de Réthy .

title

Grave of King Leopold III. and his two wives

• Madame Mary Lilian Baels (1916–1941)
• Her Royal Highness Princess Lilian of Belgium, Princess of Réthy (1941–2002)

burial

Princess Lilian of Belgium, Duchess of Brabant, was buried in the Notre-Dame von Laeken church , Brussels, in the same marble sarcophagus as her husband Leopold and his first wife, Queen Astrid. Her surviving stepchildren (King Albert II and Grand Duchess Joséphine Charlotte of Luxembourg ) as well as her stepdaughters-in-law Queen Paola and ex-Queen Fabiola, widow of King Baudouin, attended the funeral. Her son and her younger daughter were also present, only her second daughter, with whom the relationship had increasingly deteriorated, stayed away from the funeral service.

Web links

• Biography (french)