Belgium’s Prince Laurent has legally recognised 26-year-old former car salesman Cl\u00e9ment Vandenkerckhove as his son and heir.<\/p>\n
Vandenkerckhove, the result of a relationship between the royal and Belgian singer Wendy Van Wanten, was quietly brought into Prince Laurent’s family at a town hall ceremony six months ago, although details have only just emerged.<\/p>\n
While he formally becomes a prince, he will not receive a royal allowance.<\/p>\n
The new prince has had several years to get used to the idea of having a royal father, and he said recently he was not yet sure he would begin using his father’s name Saxe-Coburg.<\/p>\n
“I might want to do that, but I am proud of the name Vandenkerckhove,” he told Het Nieuwsblad.<\/p>\n
“If I were to sacrifice that family name, it would be a betrayal of everything my mother has done for me.”<\/p>\n
He will not be part of Belgium’s royal line of succession, unlike his half-sister Princess Louise and half-brothers Prince Aymeric and Prince Nicolas. Nor will he take part in public royal activities.<\/p>\n
Vandenkerckhove is already well known to Belgians, having been the focus of a Flemish TV documentary last September, in which he described how he got to know his father.<\/p>\n
His father had been in a relationship with Wendy Van Wanten, whose real name is Iris Vandenkerckhove, before he went on to marry Princess Claire in 2003.<\/p>\n
During the VTM documentary, Cl\u00e9ment described meeting the prince unexpectedly in a shopping centre in 2013, without realising who he was. It was only when he was 16 that his mother revealed his father’s identity.<\/p>\n
Four years later he plucked up the courage to ring him up, and after several more calls they met in person and eventually Prince Laurent suggested they take a DNA test.<\/p>\n
“We went to the hospital together and I remember him saying ‘I’ll go first so you’re feeling at ease’,” he told VTM. Then he received an email from the laboratory which told him of a 99.5% DNA match.<\/p>\n
Prince Laurent’s DNA test is reminiscent of his father, former King Albert II, who had a test after a lengthy paternity battle. Albert admitted in 2020 that he had fathered a daughter during an affair and eventually recognised her as his own.<\/p>\n
Albert II abdicated as king of the Belgians in 2013 as the paternity issue became a royal scandal.<\/p>\n
Delphine Bo\u00ebl, a well-known artist, eventually won her court battle and gained the right to the title of princess, and now calls herself Delphine de Saxe-Coburg.<\/p>\n
Under changes to Belgian law in 2013, only a few members of the royal family are entitled to public allowances – King Philippe, his father King Albert II, Prince Laurent and Princess Astrid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Belgium’s Prince Laurent has legally recognised 26-year-old former car salesman Cl\u00e9ment Vandenkerckhove as his son and heir. Vandenkerckhove,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":744071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-744070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=744070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/744071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=744070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=744070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=744070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}