{"id":153429,"date":"2025-09-13T07:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-13T07:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/153429\/"},"modified":"2025-09-13T07:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-13T07:59:08","slug":"prince-laurent-of-belgium-spotted-with-secret-look-alike-son-in-new-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/153429\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince Laurent of Belgium Spotted With Secret Look-alike Son in New Photo"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Belgian prince has been photographed with his look-alike love child for the first time.<\/p>\n

Prince Laurent of Belgium took a photograph with his previously unknown 25-year-old son that shows an uncanny resemblance between the two. <\/p>\n

The photograph comes days after Laurent, 61, publicly recognized<\/a> Cl\u00e9ment Vandenkerckhove as his child with singer and actress Wendy Van Wanten, whose real name is Iris Vandenkerckhove.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have spoken openly and honestly about this over the past few years,\u201d the prince\u2019s statement read<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"PrincePeas in a pod: the prince and his recently acknowledged son. VTM <\/p>\n

Cl\u00e9ment was born in 2000, the same year Laurent met his wife, Claire Louise Coombs, 51, the Daily Mail reports<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The royal couple has three children together: daughter Princess Louise, 21, and twin Princes Nicolas and Aymeric, 19.<\/p>\n

Both the prince\u2019s announcement acknowledging his paternity and the recently released photograph come as VTM premieres<\/a> the documentary Cl\u00e9ment, Son of\u2026, in which Cl\u00e9ment tells his story for the first time.<\/p>\n

\"PrincePrince Laurent of Belgium and his wife, Princess Claire, share three children. Benoit Doppagne\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Belgian royal journalist Wim Dehandschutter\u2019s X account quotes<\/a> the documentary, noting that when the prince\u2019s secret son first called him in 2020, Laurent replied, \u201cHow are you?\u201d The two then spoke for 40 minutes, according to the documentary.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father suggested to take a DNA test. We went to the hospital together. He told me, \u2018I\u2019ll go first, so you feel comfortable,\u2019\u201d Vandenkerckhove said<\/a> in the documentary. \u201cA few weeks later we had the results. I received an email from the lab saying the DNA was a 99.5 percent match.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laurent and Van Wanten met in the mid-1990s. Though they never confirmed a romance, they were spotted together on several occasions, including at the 1999 wedding of Britain\u2019s Prince Edward to Sophie Rhys-Jones, according to Belga News Agency<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\"ClementAn older photograph of Cl\u00e9ment and his mother, Wendy Van Wanten (Iris Vandenkerckhove). NICOLAS MAETERLINCK\/NICOLAS MAETERLINCK\/BELGA MAG\/AFP via Getty Images <\/p>\n

Laurent is the younger brother of King Philippe, who has been the monarch since 2013. Their father, former King Albert II, also officially recognized<\/a> an illegitimate daughter\u2014now known as Princess Delphine of Belgium\u2014in 2020.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Laurent was accused<\/a> of fraud and extortion by Libya\u2019s sovereign wealth fund over a failed reforestation project run by his NGO, which collapsed following the outbreak of the Libyan Civil War in 2011.<\/p>\n

Laurent\u2019s various other troubles<\/a> in Belgium have earned him the nickname \u201cThe Cursed Prince\u201d in his home country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Belgian prince has been photographed with his look-alike love child for the first time. Prince Laurent of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153430,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[15106,236,88,94167,5416],"class_list":["post-153429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-belgium","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-prince-laurent","tag-royal-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153429\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}