{"id":2009839,"date":"2025-09-09T21:05:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T21:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2009839"},"modified":"2025-09-09T21:05:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T21:05:32","slug":"royals-in-belgium-receive-surprising-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/royals-in-belgium-receive-surprising-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Royals in Belgium receive surprising news"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The brother of the King of the Belgians has admitted that he had a son before his marriage.<\/p>\n<p>Prince Laurent, younger brother of King Philippe, has confirmed he is the natural father of the son of a Belgian singer, Wendy Van Wanten.<\/p>\n<p>The young man, Clement Vandenkerckhove, was born in 2000. There have been numerous rumours that he is Laurent\u2019s son. Now the prince has confirmed to news agency, Belga, that he is Clement\u2019s father.<\/p>\n<p>The Belgian royal family is yet to comment officially.<\/p>\n<p>Wendy Van Wanten, whose real name is Iris Vandenkerckhove, didn\u2019t speak immediately after the revelation. However, just hours later it was revealed that she and Clement had given a TV interview in which they spoke about the situation. In the programme, by VTM, Clement is seen speaking about his uncle being the King of the Belgians.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"embed-container\">\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\ud83c\udde7\ud83c\uddea Clement, 25, acknowledged as son of Belgian Prince Laurent, tonight on <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/VTM?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@VTM<\/a>: \u201c[My mother] told me: \u2018Your daddy is a prince.\u2019 If he is a prince, what am I? That means my uncle is the King of Belgium.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wendy Van Wanten says she was \u201cnaive to think she could keep this quiet\u201d. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DXrqcHB0fA\">pic.twitter.com\/DXrqcHB0fA<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 [Wim Dehandschutter] (@WDehandschutter) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WDehandschutter\/status\/1965456673319080163?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">September 9, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Ahead of that and in a brief statement, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/queensconsortofengland.blogspot.com\/2025\/09\/could-belgium-be-about-to-get-new-prince.html#more\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Prince Laurent <\/a>said he was confirming paternity in a sense of \u201dkindness\u201d and \u201dwith respect for all those concerned\u201d. He added that the decision was \u201dthe result of a common journey.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prince Laurent married Claire Coombs in April 2003, three years after Clement\u2019s birth. Prince Laurent and Princess Claire have three children. Princess Louise is 21 and her twin brothers, Prince Nicolas and Prince Aymeric, will turn 20 in December.<\/p>\n<p>Although Prince Laurent has recognised Clement as his natural son, there\u2019s been no judicial recognition. If that takes place, it could mean that Clement could claim the title of prince and HRH as that is promised to all children and grandchildren, legitimate or illegitimate, of Laurent\u2019s father, King Albert II, who abdicated in favour of Philippe in 2013.<\/p>\n<p> <span id=\"tbmarker\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source royalcentral.co.uk \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The brother of the King of the Belgians has admitted that he had a son before his marriage. Prince Laurent, younger brother of King Philippe, has confirmed he is the natural father of the son of a Belgian singer, Wendy Van Wanten. The young man, Clement Vandenkerckhove, was born in 2000. There have been numerous [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2009840,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2009839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Royals-in-Belgium-receive-surprising-news.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2009839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2009839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2009840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2009839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2009839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2009839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}