The Secret Princess: King's love child in court battle for recognition | 60 Minutes Australia

i always thought the british royal family were the masters and mistresses of scandal well tonight they might have to hand over their crown to the belgian royal family who've been ordered to acknowledge a brand new princess there won't be any official celebrating on the streets of brussels though because rather embarrassingly the new royal is the 52 year old love child of the former king albert ii back in the 1960s when he was a naughty prince the supposedly happily married and deeply religious albert took a long-term lover delphine bowell was the surprise consequence of the illicit affair for most of her life she dutifully kept mum about her lineage until a falling out with her father changed her mind one of europe's most revered and respected royal families they have ruled their kingdom since 1830 but behind the pomp and pageantry of the belgian monarchy a dirty little secret has festered the existence of an illegitimate daughter the love child of former king albert ii for much of her life she was all but invisible her name is delphine bowell and she refused to remain in the shadows i became famous but by shame you know i was the dirty laundry of king albert i felt extremely betrayed okay now i want to be treated equally to his other children that's it i have a private life and i have no comment from denial to defiance just give you dna okay no big deal delphine bowell battled for her royal birthright she deserves to go down in history as his extraordinary princess who fought for who she was and her right to exist taking on the king and the establishment in a real-life game of thrones i had to fight for something that really belongs to me to become the world's newest princess do you still have any love for your father i don't know i don't know living a charmed life in the belgian capital brussels delphine bowell looks to have it all she's a hugely successful artist and a contented wife and mother of two it's hard to believe she was once one of the most divisive figures in the country what sort of things did you experience i would be told like uh couldn't your mother have taken the pill um you know or you're a bastard i've been called a bastard a lot that i'm a trouble maker that i'm putting belgium under pressure that must have been very hard to take it took me a long long long time to say hold on i can't be treated like this because if i carry on being treated like this i'm gonna slowly die inside really the love match of prince albert and princess paula has stimulated a great warmth of belgium affection for the royal house it all began with a fairytale royal wedding in 1959. the charles and diana of its day belgium's dashing prince albert had found love with italy's glamorous princess power it is not to be wondered at that belgium has taken her to its heart in the 1960s they were the it couple of european royalty with three children philippe astrid and laurent but the happy family snaps were all a facade the prince had found himself a mistress in belgian aristocrat baroness sabile dasilis longshot better known to delphine bowell as her mum you're the product of an affair between your mum and the king that lasted for 18 years that's right and it's longer than longer than some marriages like yes exactly because they had such an amazing love story they really i mean that was her the man of her life they really were good friends as well you know they were very normal good couple but the royal affair was anything but normal and the prince's fourth child would become a source of shame and secrecy delphine's mother had been stuck in her own unhappy marriage with billionaire steel magnate jacques bowell by the time delphine was born in 1968 they had long since split but for the sake of appearances they kept up the pretense that jacques was her father i learned when i was 17 years old um who my real father was um my mother didn't want to tell me earlier because she was worried that i would say something and that it would crea create a big scandal um for for for my country even though he was a prince at that stage yes he played a part in your life when you're a little girl didn't he because he was sort of dropping in and out but you thought he was just your mum's friend best friend best friend because they were a lot together i mean they were hours and hours on the telephone we used to go on holiday together on usually on his boat so that there wouldn't be anybody to really recognize us so yes he was but a big part of my life even today loyalty to the crown is the glue that holds together a nation deeply divided between dutch and french speakers back then it was critical living in separate wings of the royal residence albert came close to divorcing paula to be with his mistress but sabile talked him out of it literally for the sake of king and country terrified of bringing the monarchy down she ended their 18-year affair and walked away she did not want to be a troublemaker she was very patriotic she preferred to sacrifice herself to save the country in 1993 reconciled with paula prince albert became king and while the existence of a royal love child was an open secret in royal circles it was never revealed publicly until 1999 the bombshell when it came was from the most unexpected of places a skinny flemish teenager named mario i think they saw me as some innocent school boy a lot of people you know when i walked in for an interview a lot of people went oh is this for school and i said no no i am writing a book but people didn't quite believe that i was going to deliver [Music] he spent his adult life in ireland but mario daniels grew up in belgium his ambition as a boy was to be an author incredibly at the age of 16 he charmed his way into the palace to write a biography on queen powell i found that she was a very glamorous beautiful stunning uh woman in the 60s and 70s and then she became this kind of slightly dull queen in 93 when king albert became king and i just kind of wondered what had happened to her you know after dozens of interviews the disarming teenager scored a meeting with a palace official who spilled the beans about the royal affair and the existence of delphine bowell and he just looked at me and said but everyone knows albert has another daughter and i just looked over at my publisher and he looked at me and i our eyes were going like no nobody knows this so you choked on your lunch pretty much in 1999 the schoolboy writer did deliver and his book included a single line about the existence of a royal love child ultimately i chose to you know just kind of cryptically mention it in a half sentence without naming delphine's name i just spoke of you know the half-sister of paula's children and the fact that the queen wasn't just willingly accepting the fact that she existed and that's all i said having sat on the story of the royal love child for decades that cryptic half sentence was all the excuse the media needed faith when it came out when it hit the book stands what happened mario it was an incredible media circus but because it was something that never really happened in belgium before you know um exposing the private life of a king so openly the media didn't quite know what to do but at the same time the day after my book was published they were all camping outside delphine's front door in london so there was a standard of hypocrisy as well this 18 year old boy was a mere excuse to expose what the media already knew i have a private life and i have no comment but he's our king and we have uh i don't know if you've seen the film nottingham hill you know i just had this wall of papahatsi outside my my house in london and so suddenly it became this big news this thing of delphine and the love child of king albert became a big event worldwide actually for the deeply conservative king and queen the scandal and the embarrassment were too much albert and paula made a pact she was willing to give him another chance basically on the condition that delphine would never be spoken of again basically and that she certainly would never get any recognition of any sorts he didn't want and this is what he kept telling friends and um he didn't want to hurt her with that old story again so to them delphine became an old story and then he just exploded on the telephone saying never call me again you're not my daughter. and that was when i was 33 years old was that the last thing he said to you yes why did he do that i don't know at the palace the shutters were down delphine found herself ostracized and ignored he was unapproachable i tried lots of different ways i i i wrote letters my phone calls forget it i tried to do it through the cardinal i tried to see politicians and friends but when somebody's in power like king you don't want to upset them you don't want to get on the wrong side of them so not even friends would approach them to say i think you have to do something about this you can't do this to your daughter you know communicate to her at least try to say what's going on they just wanted her to remain hidden to go away but how can you tell someone to go away someone with feelings someone would with a history with her own past her own personality everything they could possibly do wrong they they did wrong the royal family in this entire saga coming up if they have a title i have a title a scorned love child when the dna came out i felt so betrayed refuses to be forgotten the gods she just stood up for herself how delphine fought the king could have been so simple it could have been so normal and one princess delphine has a very royal ring to it that's next on 60 minutes in 2013 at the end of a 20-year reign king albert ii abdicated the throne to his son philippe and was forced to deal with the skeleton in his closet by the daughter he disowned 11 years earlier i thought okay now i want to be treated equally to his other children so if they have a title i have a title over the years as a successful artist delphine bowell had a growing public profile and was increasingly vocal about her treatment by her father no longer the king so no longer immune from prosecution she decided to take him to court where this royal showdown got very ugly indeed these courts lasted for a very very long time during those those years it was extremely unpleasant albert's side and his lawyers were horrible i think that's what's so sad about this story is that it could have been so simple it could have been so so normal and it just became a saga and and it should have never been like that all this should have been done behind walls behind you know in in in in private through it all albert gave delphine the coldest of shoulders and when a judge took the extraordinary step of ordering a dna paternity test he point blank refused which is really very nasty when you think of it because you can't allow i think a human being to not be sure where they come from i just give you dna okay no big deal public opinion went from thinking that delphine was taking it too far to albert being a sad man who just would not take his responsibility as a father and as a human being with his reputation in tatters in the end it appears to have been money rather than morals that swayed the former king forced by the court to pay eight thousand dollars for every day he failed to submit to a dna test he relented [Music] and in january this year faced with irrefutable scientific proof albert grudgingly conceded that delphine was his biological daughter and then when the dna came out his lawyer said well you know actually he never really felt he was the father of delphine he had no emotions for her and so on i felt so betrayed because you have to remember that during all those years i completely protected him you know i loved him as an observer i really can't understand why the pushback from the royals at this stage i would have thought in 2020 an illegitimate child in a scandal for a royal family is really not such a big deal i know you'd think so and it really is not a big deal i don't know i i don't know why why all this pushback it could be a little to do with religion you know they're very very religious they're very catholic well he can't be too catholic he had an 18-year affair with your mother well that's the whole point i don't know maybe they're frightened you know just last week what started with a book reached a final chapter after a seven-year struggle a court ruled delphine and her children had won the right to royal titles once derided as a bastard delphine bowell has been officially anointed as a princess of belgium princess delphine has a very royal ring to it doesn't it yes well i will ask people to still call me delfin because that's me and that's my artist name and i will always stay an artist well i wouldn't be so easy on your husband i'd make him kneel whenever he came in the room don't play it down too much okay i'll remember that for this new princess it's an emotional victory for the former king a humiliating defeat a battle fought not for money or for fame but on the principle that a father should always look out for his kids i i'm proud of myself because it was difficult and i had to fight for something that really belongs to me and belongs to my children and and i hope that by what i've done it can help other people not to give up and that's very special for me i feel very proud because i know how important it is it really is important to know you know where you come from it was mario denis who revealed princess delphine's secret lineage to the world setting off a chain of events that would lead to royal scandal and humiliation but perhaps his crowning achievement is that ultimately he gave delphine bowell the power not only to confront her past but to own her present to be the princess she always was what do you think of dolphin what do i think of delphine i mean the gods she has she just stood up for herself and said this is not right this is not okay you know and she took on a king um the establishment of an entire country basically um and she fought for her right she did everything she could for so many years to get back in touch he refused it's all on him you know and everything that ensued since the headlines all over the world that's on him he made that decision it was his choice one thing that makes me extremely happy is that the courts have listened to me they have agreed that this shouldn't be accepted and that for me has given me enormous amount of hope okay i i i won't have the love of my father and maybe brothers and sisters but i feel really respected now that's good isn't it i mean i'm alive again and that's very beautiful very beautiful hello i'm sarah arbo thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the nine now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 2,642,851

Rating: 4.8018031 out of 5

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Tom Steinfort, Sarah Abo, Belgian Royal family, delphine boel, king albert, royal family scandal, royal love child, illegitimate child, royal scandal, secret princess, court battle, fight to be a princess, dna test, king albert the second, belgium, belgian palace, belgian royals, princess delphine, windsors scandal, royal family uk scandal, illicit affairs, delphine artist, artist delphine boel

Id: -AsRLLdwviM

Length: 20min 27sec (1227 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020