Full name
Dutch: Boudewijn Albert Karel Leopold Axel Marie Gustaaf French: Baudouin Albert Charles Léopold Axel Marie Gustave German: Balduin Albrecht Karl Leopold Axel Marie Gustav

House

Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Father

Leopold III of Belgium

Mother

Astrid of Sweden

Full name
Dutch: Boudewijn Albert Karel Leopold Axel Marie Gustaaf French: Baudouin Albert Charles Léopold Axel Marie Gustave German: Balduin Albrecht Karl Leopold Axel Marie Gustav

Baudouin (Dutch: Boudewijn; 7 September 1930 – 31 July 1993) reigned as 5th King of the Belgians, following his father's abdication, from 1951 until his death in 1993. He was the last and 4th sovereign King of Congo.

He was the elder son of King Leopold III (1901–83) and his first wife, Princess Astrid of Sweden (1905–35). Because he had no children with his wife, Fabiola de Mora, the crown passed to his younger brother, Albert II (formerly Prince of Liège), following his death.

Baudouin was born in the Château du Stuyvenberg, near Laeken, Brussels, in Belgium, in 1930, the son of Prince Leopold, the then Duke of Brabant, and his wife, Astrid of Sweden. His father became King of the Belgians, as Leopold III, in 1934. Baudouin's mother died in 1935 in an automobile accident.

Part of Leopold III's unpopularity was the result of a second marriage in 1941 to Mary Lilian Baels, an English-born Belgian commoner, later known as Princess de Réthy. More controversial had been Leopold's decision to surrender to Nazi Germany during the Second World War, when Belgium was invaded in 1940; many Belgians questioned his loyalties, but a commission of inquiry exonerated him of treason after the war. Though reinstated in a plebiscite, the controversy surrounding Leopold led to his abdication.

During the war the king was deported by command of Adolf Hitler to Hirschstein.

King Leopold III requested the Belgian Government and the Parliament to approve a law delegating his royal powers to his son, Prince Baudouin, who took the constitutional oath before the United Chambers of the Belgian Parliament as Prince Royal on 11 August 1950. He ascended the throne and became the fifth King of the Belgians upon taking the constitutional oath on 17 July 1951, one day following his father's abdication.

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Wikipedia