Belgian car salesman becomes prince after DNA test proves royal parentage

A Belgian car salesman has become a prince at the age of 26 after being acknowledged as the son of the king’s brother, Prince Laurent. Clément Vandenkerckhove’s mother, a Belgian singer who had a relationship with Prince Laurent in the 1990s, only told him who his father was when he turned 16 a decade ago. It emerged this week that he was legally recognized as the son and heir of the 63-year-old younger brother of King Philippe, at a low-key town hall ceremony about six months ago after a DNA test proved his link to the royal family. Prince Laurent has registered his paternity of Vandenkerckhove with Belgium’s civil registry, The Telegraph reported on Wednesday. The formality affords the new prince equal inheritance rights to Laurent’s private estate with his half-sister Princess Louise, 20, and half-brothers Prince Nicolas, 20, and Prince Aymeric, 19, children Laurent shares with Princess Claire whom he married in 2003. But he will not receive a royal allowance, nor will he be expected to take on official duties, and he has no rights to the Belgian throne. Vandenkerckhove could take his father’s family name, Saxe-Coburg, but has indicated he may not choose to. “I am proud of the name Vandenkerckhove,” he recently told Flemish daily newspaper Het Nieuwsblad. “If I were to sacrifice that family name, it would be a betrayal of everything my mother has done for me.” Vandenkerckhove was born in August 2000 to Belgian singer Wendy Van Wanten, whose real name is Iris Vandenkerckhove. She and Laurent dated in the 1990s after a chance encounter at a fashion show in Paris but the relationship did not last and there has been speculation that Laurent’s father, the former king, disapproved. In a documentary that aired on Belgian network VTM last September, Vandenkerckhove recounted his mother’s admission that Laurent was his father. Four years after that, he contacted his father to share what he’d been told and Prince Laurent agreed to a DNA test. “We went to the hospital together and I remember him saying, ‘I’ll go first so you’re feeling at ease,’” Vandenkerckhove told VTM. Once paternity was confirmed, Vandenkerckhove said he and his father had engaged in “open and honest conversations.” This is not the first time a secret involving Belgium’s Royal Family has emerged. Laurent’s father, now 92, fought a paternity battle for many years before admitting in 2020 that he had fathered a daughter during an affair. Delphine Boël, 58, eventually won her legal fight and was granted the title of princess. She now uses the name Delphine de Saxe-Coburg.