Wed 09/04/08 - Nine years after being revealed as the out-of-wedlock
daughter of the Belgian king, Delphine Bo=EBl, 40, says she no longer
craves her father's acknowledgment that she is his daughter.
In a book published this week entitled "Cutting The Umbilical Cord"
Delphine Bo=EBl says she "no longer obsesses" about the fact King Albert
II has yet to accept her as his daughter.
(VRT)
Speaking on VRT television on Tuesday, the artist who currently lives
in London, called her book "a trip back into time. I had so many
questions about my origin, my parents, rejection etc."
"I had to cut the umbilical cord," she said, adding she was tired of
being King Albert's "dirty laundry."
Delphine Bo=EBl's existence was revealed in a 1999 biography of Queen
Paola, King Albert's Italian-born wife, as the daughter of the Belgian
monarch and Sybille Baroness de Selys Longchamps, the wife of a former
Belgian industrialist.
In his Christmas message that year, King Albert admitted to an
extramarital affair in the late 1960s saying it nearly wrecked his
marriage to Queen Paola.
He added, "We won't dwell on this subject which is part of our private
lives."
(VRT)
Black sheep of the family?
Since 1999, Delphine Bo=EBl has made several public appearances in
Belgium hoping to normalise relations with King Albert, who has three
grown-up children with Queen Paola.
That never happened. In the interview Delphine Bo=EBl says "she is fed
up with being seen" as a destabilising factor.
She said she attracted media attention not because of her art "but
because I am the king's dirty laundry."
The interview shows the artist among her art - brightly coloured
papier mach=E9 dolls and collages. |