The Belgian royal family has gained a new member.
Prince Laurent, the younger brother of King Philippe, has finally admitted to fathering a secret love child — a bombshell confession that has finally solved the years-long mystery.
The royal, 61, confirmed to Belgian news outlet Belga on Tuesday that he has a 25-year-old son, saying he “publicly recognizes” the paternity of Clement Vandenkerckhove.
Laurent now becomes a father of four, as he already shares daughter Princess Louise, 21, and 19-year-old twin boys, Prince Nicolas and Prince Aymeric, with his wife of 22 years, Claire Coombs.
The identity of Vandenkerckhove’s father had long been the subject of constant whispers in Belgium, with it being rumored that the prince had fathered him before his marriage to Coombs in 2003.
The prince fathered the love child with Belgian actress and singer Wendy van Wanten, 65, whose real name is Iris Vandenkerckhove.
The bombshell shake-up does not affect the Belgian royal family’s line of succession.
What’s more, it’s not the first time the family has recognized an illegitimate child in its lineage.
In 2020, Laurent’s father, King Albert II — who abdicated the throne in 2013 — confirmed that he had fathered a secret love child with Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps.
Delphine Boël, who is now recognized as Princess Delphine, was the result of the former monarch’s 18-year affair with the Belgian baroness.
The princess, 57, born during King Albert’s marriage to Queen Paola — his wife since 1959 — was long kept at arm’s length from the Belgian royal family by her father in a desperate attempt to preserve the marriage.
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After Delphine was born in 1968, Albert had initially kept loosely in touch with his love child and her mother, but this drastically changed once she turned 16.
In 2013 — the same year Albert passed the crown to Philippe — Delphine launched a legal bid to be officially recognized as Albert’s daughter.
The bid was successful, and in Oct. 2020 the Brussels Court of Appeal ruled that she was entitled to the same royal titles and privileges as her father’s three other children.
Following the ruling, Delphine had officially rebranded to “Delphine of Saxen-Coburg-Gotha, princess of Belgium.”
“The legal victory will never replace the love of a father but it provides a feeling of justice,” she said at the time.
The princess, who is an artist, had claimed Albert was her real dad for two decades before turning to the courts over his paternity.
The ex-monarch rejected Delphine as his daughter until Jan. 2020 — when he agreed to take a court-ordered DNA test, under threat of a $5,500 fine for each day he refused.
Delphine had long maintained that her aristocratic mother had an affair with Albert between 1966 and 1984.
Rumors of the paternity scandal had first emerged in an unauthorized 1999 biography about Albert’s wife, Queen Paola.
In addition to Philippe and Laurent, King Albert and Queen Paola are also parents to Princess Astrid, 63.
