She is the first queen consort of Belgians with Belgian citizenship. She is one of the few graduate queens and one of the few royal wives to be able to boast aristocratic origins, given that almost all the European princes of her generation married ordinary girls, from Kate Middleton to Letizia of Spain, passing through Sofia of Sweden. Philippe’s wife since 1999, queen consort since 2013, Mathilde is 50 years old and is the mother of the first woman destined for the Belgian throne: Princess Elisabeth.
Bizarre to say, but Mathilde of Belgium is today one of the few queens of blue blood. If all, or almost all, the best known of the European royals are in fact ordinary, bourgeois women, chosen in marriage for love by a royal scion – from Kate Middleton to Letizia of Spain, passing by Sofia of Sweden and the queen consort Camilla of the United Kingdom – Mathilde d’Udekem d’Acoz was born into an aristocratic family. Precisely by a Belgian count, Patrick d’Udekem d’Acoz, married to a Polish countess, Anna Maria Komorowska, in turn the daughter of a count and a princess. So unlike her “colleagues”, Mathilde was born and raised in a castle (Castle Losange in Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, near Bastogne), she had no problems adapting to court life and to a world made up of privileges in which she was born and raised.
Among other curiosities: Mathilde is the first queen of Belgium of Belgian origin, because those who preceded her were always born in other countries, and she is also one of the few queens with a degree: her title is in Psychology, achieved with “distinction” in 2002, after working for a few years as a speech therapist.
Married to Philip, Duke of Brabant, since 1999, after meeting him at a tennis match, she has become queen consort by his side since 2013 because fate got in the way of changing the path of the Belgian crown: Philip found himself to inherit the throne because his uncle, King Baldwin, had been childless.
Mathilde’s Sense of Fashion
Mathilde was born on January 20, 1973, so she turns 50 today.
She is loved and respected by the Belgians for her discreet way of living her role, she is attentive to style (a skill refined over time) and a ‘frugal’ consumer of fashion, attentive to recycling and green dressing. Above all, the Queen has made her role a means to promote the fashion brands of her country; the royal wardrobe featured models by Dries Van Noten, Diane von Furstenberg and Natan Couture. In addition to Fabienne Delvigne, designer of caps that Mathilde wears in every shape and style.
The Queen is also engaged in various sectors: in 2001 she created the Princess Mathilde Fund (now the Queen Mathilde Fund) to promote the care of vulnerable people and to award an annual prize to good works in various sectors, from early childhood education to women’s health. She is also honorary president of Child Focus, a foundation for missing and sexually exploited children, and patron of YouthStart Belgium.
To the curiosities, we can add another one that has to do not so much with Mathilde as a person, but as a queen: she will be the first mother of the Belgian royal family to see a female daughter ascend the throne. In 1991 Belgium abolished the Salic law to introduce absolute primogeniture, which allows princesses to ascend the throne and to have precedence over males according to the natural order of age. Princess Elizabeth therefore, the eldest daughter of the royal couple, 21 years old, is the first in the line of succession to the throne.
Mathilde and Philip have three other children: Prince Gabriel, born on 20 August 2003, Prince Emmanuel (4 October 2005) and Princess Eléonore (16 April 2008).
This article is originally published on repubblica.it