Lilian Baels

Mary Lilian Henriette Lucie Josephine Ghislaine Baels , girl of the upper middle class (November 28th 1916 (London) - June 7th 2002) was the second wife of the king Léopold III, carrying the title of princess of Rethy.

Born in 1916 in London, it is the seventh child of a couple of Ostendais taken refuge in England because of the war. His/her father Henri Baels will be in particular lawyer, alderman, shareholder of companies of fisheries, deputy to the Room, Minister for Agriculture and Public works, and governor of the province of Flanders Occidentale as from 1933. She attends the elementary school of the Sisters of Saint-Joseph to Ostend, then the Institute of the Ladies of the Sacred Heart. She speaks French, Dutch and English. Its family settles in Knokke in 1931.

The December 7th 1941, the cardinal Van Roey makes read a letter in all the churches of Belgium: the King married religieusement Lilian Baels the September 11th. This new makes the effect of a bomb in the Belgian people and will be one of the elements which will start the royal Question, of which the true reasons resident in the seduction which the authoritarian regimes had exerted on the king, and in the fact that it had been disunited of his government, refugee in London. In infringment with the Belgian legislation, which specifies that only the civil wedding through law, and that the religious mariiage must thus follow it, and not to precede it, the civil wedding will take place later only two months. The feelings pro-Nazis which one lent to the princess of Réthy will be accredited near the Belgian population which learns that Hitler sent flowers. Lilian gives up under queen (and receives from the monarch the title of princess of Réthy) tandis the Palate states that the future newborns of this second union will not be dynastes. The bomb is all the more large as this marriage was anticonstitutional and that the Palate is not qualified to decide if the children of the King are dynastes or not: only the Constitution can it.

The July 18th 1942, Lilian Baels gives the day to the prince Alexandre. In June 1944, the Belgian royal family is taken along by the Germans and will be released one year later in Austria. The king Léopold III, the Lilian princess and their children do not return to Belgium following the royal Question and settle in Prégny in Switzerland of 1945 to 1950. They will attenderont the popular consultation of 1950 before returning to Brussels in a very tended environment. The remarriage of the monarch was indeed, with his political positions and the attitude which it had with respect to his government, one of the elements which attracted criticism to him

After the abdication of the king Léopold III, the couple will have two more other children: the princess Marie-Christine in 1951 and the princess Marie-Esméralda in 1956. During the first decade of the reign of king Baudouin, the princess Lilian de Réthy occupies the role of First Lady of Belgium and manages the life of the Court with firmness and refinement, but she will never manage to be made love Belgians. She is very close to her three beautiful-children (Joséphine-Charlotte, Baudouin and Albert).

In 1958, it creates the Cardiologic Foundation Lilian Princess who aims to come to assistance of the patients and particularly of the children reached of cardiac affections and cardiovascular, in order to return health to them and to enable them to live a normal life. A few years later, the Foundation will start to organize conferences between doctors of the whole world. It should be stressed that prince Alexandre was the operated first in open heart of Belgium.

Following the political pressures of the Belgian government, the king Léopold III and the Lilian princess agree into 1959 to leave the field of Laeken. One year later, they settle with their two daughters with the royal field of Argenteuil, restored and placed at their disposal by the Belgian State. The couple will receive there in the discretion of very many people: ambassadors, ministers, scientists, war veterans, sportsmen, etc But the most prestigious visit will remain that of the Queen Elizabeth II and prince Philip of England in 1966. The princess devotes herself to Argenteuil with the management of her Foundation, the organization of the frequent receptions and her herd of stags.

From 1960, the relations become tended between the king Léopold III and the Lilian princess on the one hand and king Baudouin and the Fabiola queen of the other. They will not appear together than only once in public at the time of the funeral of the Queen Elizabeth in 1965.

After the death of the king Léopold III in 1983, the continuous Lilian princess of living with the royal field of Argenteuil, has finally the joy of being grandmother in 1998 and 2001 and makes publish the posthumous memories of its husband entitled " For Histoire". She was in argument with her daughter the princess Marie-Christine who left to live with beginning of the year 80 in America.

In 1989, two prestigious foreign institutions reward the action for the Lilian princess in favor of the medical research: the Royal College off Physicians of London accommodates it like member of honor and the Medical Foundation Giovanni Lorenzini (Texas) decrees to him its annual price for the biomedical advance in knowledge.

Its relations were better with his/her son-in-law the king Albert II, become the new household head after the death of king Baudouin in 1993 qu ' it had made a point of learning to him personally before it knows it by the media. The King went then on several occasions to the royal field of Argenteuil and attended the sides of the princess of Réthy to the marriage of the Marie-Esméralda princess in 1998 in London.

The princess Lilian de Réthy dies the June 7th 2002 with the royal field of Argenteuil. Its funeral took place in the church Notre-Dame de Laeken in the presence of all the Belgian royal family, of the Jean large-duke and the large-duchess Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg. Only the princess Marie-Christine had not wanted to assist to with it. The Lilian princess rests in the crypt of the royal family with Laeken at the sides of the king Léopold III and the Astrid queen.

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