10 things you didn't know about the Belgian royal family

Did you know that Belgian King Leopold I was relatively poor in his youth? And that Leopold III married when his fiancée was already pregnant? Here are 10 facts you didn't realize you wanted to know about the royal family of Belgium.

The Belgian king has been paying taxes on his private income and inheritances for a long time, but they became especially high in 2023, according to the Belgian outlet Het Nieuwsblad.

In 2013, purchases from the court were no longer exempt from VAT and excise duties. The largest part of the king's civil list, 11,554,000 euros annually, goes to these expenses, especially to staff wages.

Photo: Sally V, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

King Baudouin, the monarch from 1951 to 1993, was not only an avid golfer but also an adept skier in his youth. However, according to VRT Nieuws, his dedication to sports decreased later in life due to back problems. This forced him to do careful power training.

Boudouin was among the few Catholic kings in Europe among mainly Protestant monarchs. He refused to sign a bill permitting abortion and even resigned temporarily on the day of the law's passing so he wouldn't have to touch the law with a ten-foot pole.

The members of the royal family bear the surname "of Belgium" or "de Belgique". They have titles such as prince or princess 'of Belgium'. Although the male descendants of Leopold I in principle also bear the titles Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Duke in Saxony, these German titles have not been used since the First World War.

Let's go back in time, to the beginning of the Belgian monarchy. The youthful Leopold I, born in 1790, experienced relative poverty for a royal, according to Belgian VRT News. The Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, over which his father ruled, was in serious debt and had limited financial resources.

Photo: Emil Kalibradov / Unsplash

Leopold had to live frugally, even when it came to simple things like sweets. He retained his frugal habits even when he traveled around Europe as an adult to attend to business and family affairs.

Photo: Royal Collection Belgium / Wikimedia

According to the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, an interesting aspect of Leopold I's funeral was that his remains were not allowed to enter the Church of Our Lady in Laeken through the vestibule. Leopold I died in 1865 and he wasn't a Catholic.

Photo: Mayron Oliveira / Unsplash

His Protestant faith led the Catholic clergy to deny carrying his coffin through the main portal, resulting in an awkward entry through a side entrance.

Photo: Michel Wal, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia

Leopold II prided himself in never carrying out the death penalty in his 19th-century nation, the VRT News channel reports. However, he did not mind applying the death penalty in his (new) colony of Congo, where violence was an important part of the country's exploitation.

Photo: Ye Jinghan / Unsplash

A notable intention of Leopold II was to transfer the Congo to his granddaughter, Archduchess Elisabeth Maria of Austria. However, this plan never came to fruition, as Elisabeth ultimately did not marry Albert, the later King Albert I.

Photo: Jay Monty / Unsplash

An intriguing fact about Leopold III is that he married Lilian Baels when she was pregnant. According to the newspaper BN de Stem, the couple first secretly had a church wedding in 1941, but the legal marriage followed just a few months later. The initial hesitation to legally marry, due to political considerations, changed when Lilian's pregnancy became clear.

A remarkable fact in the history of Belgian coins is that for a long time, Belgium had no coins with the image of the king. During national debates about the monarchy in 1948, new coins were introduced without the image of King Leopold III. King Baudouin did not appear on coins until 1969, and it was not until 1986 that he appeared on the 5-franc pieces.

Photo: King Baudouin Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia

Many Belgian queens have come from other countries. In fact, before Mathilde became queen, Paola was the only Belgian queen with authentic Belgian ancestors. Despite her Italian origins, Queen Paola had a Belgian grandmother: Laura Mosselman du Chenoy.

Her grandmother belonged to a prominent Brussels family. Her grandfather, the Belgian politician Jacques Coghen, was even a minister of Leopold I.

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