Word: leopold
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...moment later, on the 120th anniversary of Belgium's birth as a nation, Baudouin Albert Charles Leopold Axel Marie Gustave, Duke of Brabant, Count of Hainaut and fifth King of the Belgians, sat on his throne for the first time...
...King's Oath. From a script held in a trembling hand, the new King read a message to his people first in Flemish, then all over again in French: "After having consecrated himself entirely to the country, King Leopold III ended his reign by a gesture whose grandeur and abnegation excite admiration. I thank the country for having paid him unanimous homage...My father inculcated in me respect for the constitution and traditions of the dynasty. I shall remain scrupulously faithful to them...
...best-loved monarch (in October 1918, in trench coat and battered helmet, Albert surprised the stout burghers of Ostend as the first allied soldier to enter that Belgian city on the heels of the fleeing Germans). But he never forgot the lesson his autocratic grandfather and predecessor Leopold I had learned through hard experience: in Belgium, a King is supposed to govern, not to rule. Albert's son, Leopold III, the father of Baudouin, tended to forget it. But with Leopold's abdication and young Baudouin's succession, the Royal Question seemed at last settled. "The crisis...
...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 driving). Haggard with grief, Leopold returned to his country home at Stuyvenberg. His three children were playing on the lawn: Josephine-Charlotte careening down the paths on her bicycle, five-year-old Baudouin in panting pursuit, and Baby Albert on his nurse's lap. Unable to speak, the King turned away, sent...
...Another common belief, that hemophilia is "the curse of the Habsburgs," is unfounded. It was a lethal gift to the royal families of Europe from Britain's Queen Victoria. Of her four sons only the youngest, Leopold, was a bleeder, died at 31. But two of Victoria's daughters, Alice and Beatrice, carried the disease to their German offspring. Through one of Alice's daughters, it passed to the Czarevitch Alexis (murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918); through Beatrice's daughter to sons of Spain's Alfonso XIII...