Word: baudouine
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...King's Childhood. When King Baudouin (born 1930) was a few hours old, his maternal grandmother, Princess Ingeborg of Sweden, held him up before a cabinet meeting and said: "See how well-developed he is already! He is almost as big as a Premier!" When Baudouin was four, his grandfather Albert slipped on a mountain crag. The mourning bells for the beloved monarch were among the first impressions in the boy's mind. A year later, his mother, radiantly beautiful Queen Astrid, was killed in an automobile accident on a vacation in Switzerland (the King himself had been...
...unhappy family moved to the coldly formal Châateau de Laeken, just outside Brussels. There Leopold and his mother, Queen Elizabeth, with a regiment of nurses, governesses and tutors, supervised young Baudouin's preparation for the King business. Like his sister & brother, the young prince rose each morning at 7, pattered in to wish his grandmother good morning, did setting-up exercises before breakfast. He was bitter when his sister bested him. "I'm a man," he told the gym instructor imperiously. "The idea of your thinking I can't do as well as a girl...
Most of the boys at school called Baudouin by an affectionate but slightly mocking nickname, "Baudruche," a nonsense version of his name (like "Baldy-Waldy" for Baldwin). Each day, Baudouin would ride to school on his bicycle, followed closely by a tutor on another. He deeply resented the close supervision; one day when the tutor wasn't looking, he let the air out of his tires. "Here," he told the tutor, "you fix this; I'll hold your bike." The tutor complied, and watched open-mouthed as the Belgian prince rode off-alone and, for once, happy...
Introduction to the World. Baudouin was growing up. In 1948, he accompanied his father on a trip to the U.S. "to be introduced to the world," did the standard sights for princely visitors (West Point, Annapolis, Princeton, but no nightclubs). Belgian tempers were wearing thinner & thinner over the question of Leopold's return-the Socialists were dead-set against it; the Catholic conservatives were for it. Suddenly, the statesmen seized on the gangling young prince as a key to compromise. Leopold reached an agreement with Socialist Leader Max Buset: he would live in Belgium as King in name only...
...into Monarch. Few Belgians saw their Prince Royal while he was in final training for the kingship. Every morning at 8:45 sharp for almost a year, his black, limousine entered Brussels almost unnoticed, merged with the traffic of the city and drew up to the palace gates. Baudouin spent the morning reading and signing official papers, receiving dignitaries. He emerged again at noon and went back to Laeken. There was no royal display, no fuss, no court circulars, no grand balls to remind pleasure-loving Belgians that they had a royal family again. An occasional trickle of news seeped...