Belgian car salesman becomes Emir after DNA test - Sarmad
A Belgian young man who worked as a car salesman has officially become a prince in the Belgian royal family, after a DNA test confirmed he is the biological son of Prince Laurent, brother of King Philippe, in a case that reopened the file on “royal family secrets,” which had seen a similar precedent a few years ago.
Legal recognition after a decade of secrecy
Clement Vandenkerckhove, 26, has assumed the title of prince following a quiet ceremony held at the town hall about six months ago, after DNA testing established his link to the royal family, as reported by Western media this week.
The US network CNN, citing the UK’s Telegraph which first published the story last Wednesday, reported that Prince Laurent officially registered his paternity of Vandenkerckhove in the Belgian civil registry.
The story began years earlier. Clement’s mother, Belgian singer Wendy Van Wanthie (her real name is Iris Vandenkerckhove), had an emotional relationship with Prince Laurent in the 1990s, after a chance meeting between them at a fashion show in Paris. The relationship was short-lived, amid speculation at the time that the former king, Laurent’s father, opposed it.
Wanthie gave birth to her son in August 2000, but she did not reveal his true father’s identity until he turned 16, a full decade before the latest official recognition.
From family acknowledgment to DNA testing
In a documentary broadcast by the Belgian network VTM last September, Vandenkerckhove recounted how his mother revealed the truth to him, and how he contacted Prince Laurent four years later to inform him of what he knew. The prince immediately agreed to undergo a DNA test to establish paternity.
Vandenkerckhove told the channel that his father accompanied him to the hospital for the test, adding: “I remember he said to me: ‘I’ll start first so you can feel at ease.’” After the results confirmed paternity, the two began, in his description, “open and frank conversations” that had not been possible before.
Limited rights... no throne, no allowances
The legal recognition grants the new prince equal rights to inherit Prince Laurent’s private property, similar to his half-siblings: Princess Louise, 20, Prince Nicolas, 20, and Prince Emmanuel, 19, who are Laurent’s children with his wife, Princess Claire, whom he married in 2003.
However, this recognition does not grant him any royal allowances, nor does it impose any official duties on him, nor does it give him any right to inherit the Belgian throne.
In a notable irony, Vandenkerckhove could have abandoned his family name and instead taken his father’s title, “Saxe-Coburg,” but he hinted that he probably will not do so. In previous statements to the Dutch newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, he said: “I am proud of the name Vandenkerckhove. If I had sacrificed this name, it would have been a betrayal of everything my mother did for me.”
Not the first precedent in the Belgian palace
This is not the first time such a secret has emerged into the public eye within the Belgian royal family. Laurent’s father, former King Albert II (currently 92), fought a long legal battle that lasted years before acknowledging in 2020 that he had fathered a daughter out of wedlock.
That case ended with Delphine Boël, 58, winning her legal battle and being officially granted the title of princess; she now bears the name Delphine de Saxe-Coburg.
Thus, Vandenkerckhove becomes the second case of acknowledged royal paternity out of wedlock witnessed by the Belgian ruling family in less than a decade, indicating that stories of secret paternity are no longer rare exceptions in the history of European palaces.
