Belgian ex-king concedes claimant is his daughter

Belgium’s former King Albert II is no longer fighting a claim that he is the father of artist and sculptor Delphine Boel, bringing a major breakthrough in the decades-old royal paternity scandal after years of court battles.

A statement delivered by his lawyers to Belgian media on Monday said that “scientific conclusions indicate that he is the biological father of Mrs Delphine Boel”.

It came after the monarch last year finally agreed to a DNA test.

Boel had tried to establish paternity for years, and Albert never publicly denied being her father but had long refused to provide DNA.

The king, who abdicated in 2013 for health reasons, said Monday that even if there were judicial arguments left to pursue, legal and biological paternity was not necessarily the same thing.

He added that even if the case could be continued on procedural grounds, he decided not to do so  “to end with dignity this painful procedure".

Rumours about Albert and Boel’s mother, the aristocratic wife of a well-heeled industrialist, had been around for years.

But the news that the king may have had a child with her broke into the open with the publication in 1999 of a biography of Albert’s wife, Queen Paola, who passed away in 2014.

King Albert alluded to past infidelity in his Christmas message to the nation in 1999.

He said he and the queen lived through a “crisis” in the late 1960s that almost wrecked their marriage, but that “a long while ago” they overcame their marital problems.

Six years ago, Boel, who bears a striking resemblance to some members of the royal family, opened court proceedings to prove that Albert is her father.

Boel has always said that she brought the paternity case in protest at being cold-shouldered by the royal family.