{"id":33728,"date":"2026-08-20T21:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/33728\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T21:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T21:21:09","slug":"former-car-salesman-becomes-belgian-prince-after-parentage-confirmed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/33728\/","title":{"rendered":"Former car salesman becomes Belgian prince after parentage confirmed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A former car salesman has officially been named a Belgian prince<\/a> after the brother of the nation\u2019s king recognised his secret child<\/a> formally. <\/p>\n

Cl\u00e9ment Vandenkerckhove was quietly brought into Prince Laurent’s family at a ceremony<\/a> six months ago, magazine Soir Mag reports but the details have only recently emerged.<\/p>\n

Prince Laurent, younger brother of King Phillipe, last year publicly acknowledged his son – the product of a relationship with Flemish model turned singer Iris Vandenkerckhove, better known by stage name Wendy Van Wanten.<\/p>\n

It has given the 26-year-old the right to use a royal title and a share of his father\u2019s inheritance, The Times reports, but he will not receive a royal allowance and will not join the line of succession. <\/p>\n

In an interview with Belgian newspaper Nieuwsblad, Mr Vandenkerckhove said he was not sure if he would take on the royal name of van Saksen-Coburg.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cI am proud of the name Vandenkerck\u00adhove. Sacrificing that surname would be a betrayal to everything my mother did for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Vandenkerckhove was featured in a Flemish TV documentary last September, after he was publicly acknowledged by his father.<\/p>\n

\"PrincePrince Laurent of Belgium (Getty)<\/p>\n

In that documentary, he spoke about the DNA test<\/a> which confirmed he was the prince\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

“We went to the hospital together and I remember him saying ‘I’ll go first so you’re feeling at ease’,” he told VTM.<\/p>\n

He said there was then a 99.5 per cent DNA match. <\/p>\n

Speaking to Nieuwsblad, he mentioned that he felt anxious as a child due to the question about his parentage. <\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cMy whole childhood I struggled with the question, \u2018Who is my father?\u2019 When I knew, the secrecy weighed heavily on me.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine: you know who your father is, but you aren\u2019t allowed to tell anyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter school, I became a car salesman. I liked that job and did it well. But panic attacks were destroying me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now that he has a relationship with his biological father, he feels less anxious, he said, but is not interested in any financial benefits. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat matters most to me right now is that I am a son who is allowed to get to know his father\u201d, he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[15640,18235,7,1157,18236,6234,12688,18234,18233,12692,16268,5802,6235,18237,129,18238,18232],"class_list":["post-33728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-arts-culture-and-entertainment","tag-attending","tag-belgium","tag-brussels-capital-region","tag-capital-region","tag-color-image","tag-full-length","tag-human-interest","tag-national-holiday","tag-one-person","tag-parade","tag-people","tag-photography","tag-prince-laurent-of-belgium","tag-royalty","tag-sunglasses","tag-vertical"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117129936132877151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}