Ex-King Who Refuses DNA Test Must Pay Daily Fine

Delphine Boël could be in a line for a royal inheritance if a DNA test proves she's the love child of Belgium's former king. Until former King Albert II provides a saliva sample, however, Boël will be getting $5,600 a day anyway. A court in Brussels has ordered the 84-year-old retired monarch to pay Boël for each day he refuses to provide the court-ordered sample based on Boël's claim that Albert, then the prince of Liège, had a decades-long affair with her mother, Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, which resulted in her birth in the 1960s, reports the BBC. Rumors of an illegitimate child first surfaced in a 1999 unauthorized biography of Albert's wife, Donna Paola Ruffo di Calabria, whom he married in 1956.

Albert has denied that Boël is his daughter ever since she went public with the claim in 2005, 12 years after Albert ascended to the throne after the death of his brother, Baudouin. Albert abdicated in 2013, and his son, Philippe, in 2013, is now king. Albert had appealed a 2018 court order requiring him to get the DNA test, and that appeal was struck down as part of Thursday's ruling, per the Brussels Times and Reuters. A separate DNA test already has proven that the man who is Boël's legal father is not her biological father. (In November, the court said the former king would be assumed to be Boël's father if a DNA sample wasn't provided within three months.)