A Belgian court ordered King Albert II to take a DNA test, and his secret daughter became a princess with inheritance rights

Delphine Boël, an artist born in 1968, is the daughter of Baroness Sybille de Sélys Longchamps. A 1999 biography reported that her father was Albert, then Prince of Liège^†. Albert became king in 1993 and denied paternity. He abdicated in July 2013 and lost the immunity that had protected him as king. Boël sued that year. Belgian courts first ruled against her because her legal father, Jacques Boël, had raised her. In 2018 the Brussels Court of Appeal ordered Albert to give a DNA sample and set a fine of €5,000 a day for refusal^†. He gave the sample in 2019. In January 2020 his lawyers announced the result: he was her father. On 1 October 2020 the court ruled she was entitled to the title Princess of Belgium and the name of Saxe-Coburg, the same as Albert's legitimate children. As his legal daughter she shares in his estate under Belgian forced-heirship rules. Albert met her that month.