Sybille de Selys Longchamps
Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps (born 28 August 1941) is a Belgian noblewoman. She is the former mistress of King Albert II, with whom she has a daughter, Princess Delphine.[1]
Sybille de Selys Longchamps | |
|---|---|
| Born | Sybille Michèle Emilie Marie Ghislaine de Selys Longchamps 28 August 1941 Uccle, Belgium |
| Spouse(s) | Jacques Boël
(m. 1962; div. 1978)Michael Anthony Rathborne Cayzer
(m. 1982; died 1990) |
| Children | Princess Delphine of Belgium |
| Parents |
|
Born in Uccle, she is the daughter of Count Michel François de Selys Longchamps (1910–1983) and Countess Pauline Julie Cornet de Ways-Ruart (1914–1953). In 1962, she married Jonkheer Jacques Boël (born in 1929), an industrialist and nephew of Count René Boël. They divorced in 1978 and in 1982 Sybille married a wealthy British widower, the Honourable Michael Anthony Rathborne Cayzer (1929–1990), a younger son of shipping tycoon Herbert Cayzer, 1st Baron Rotherwick.
In 1968, her daughter Delphine was born, in the midst of an 18-year-long extramarital relationship[2] with Albert, who was not king at the time. The relationship was made public in 1999.
De Selys Longchamps lived with her second husband in London and at his rural estate until the early 1990s and lives now in Brussels and Provence.
References
- "Belgium's ex-King Albert II admits fathering child after DNA test". BBC News. 27 January 2020. Retrieved 28 January 2020.
- Higgins, Andrew (2013-07-19). "Belgium Is Also Awaiting Possible News of a New Royal". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-01-27.
- Oscar Coomans de Brachène, État présent de la noblesse belge, Annuaire de 1998, première partie (de Selys Longchamps), p. 187-197, Brussels, 1998.
- Oscar Coomans de Brachène, État présent de la noblesse belge, Annuaire de 2003, seconde partie (Boël), p. 354-358, Brussels, 2003.
- Delphine Boël, Couper le cordon, Brussels, ed. Wever & Bergh, 2008