Word: leopold
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...Leopold the golfer acts with his own mind, chooses his own partners, and arranges his own schedule. Leopold the monarch behaved in the same independent way. This, as every student of constitutional monarchy knows, can be dangerous for the state. Certainly, it is not good for a king's popularity. Leopold, for example, just before the Belgian parliamentary elections in which the "royal question" of his return was the prime issue (TIME, July 4), decided without consulting anyone to play in the French international golf tournament. Staunch monarchists winced; the King, they said, ought not to compete with just...
Other political oldtimers brooded over the comedown of the royal line. Said one who had served both Leopold and his beloved father, mountain-climbing Albert I: "Leopold has the same passion for golf that Albert had for Alpinism. The big difference is that Albert would not dream of indulging in his favorite sport when there was state business to be transacted, while Leopold simply will not forgo a game of golf...
Those who do not care for blue blood mixed with ordinary red remember dourly how the King's golf led him to his second wife, the commoner Mary Liliane Baels. She used to wait for Leopold at the 18th hole at Le Zoute on the North Sea, a tony resort, but not too tony for nouveaux riÇhes. Like her royal husband, she is a topnotch golfer, plays the Onex course under 80, has twice held the Club de Genève women's championship. Though she is merely the daughter of a newly rich fish merchant...
...Practical Kingdom. The argument over Leopold's return, his taste in wives and golf partners, has nothing to do with the kingship as such. Belgians overwhelmingly want their monarch. A practical people, they know that he serves a very practical purpose-the symbolic link binding them together as a nation...
More Responsibilities. One day in 1934, father Albert, an ardent mountain-climber, fell to his death from a cliff near Namur. A year and a half later the new King Leopold was motoring with Queen Astrid near Lucerne, he at the wheel and she with a map in her lap. When his wife asked a question, the monarch leaned over and the car swerved. It plunged down a grassy slope, hit two trees and fell into the lake. The Queen fractured her skull, died 20 minutes later. The King hurtled through the car's windshield. To the first policeman...