Belgian prince reveals he had son from an affair with model

Rumours have swirled since the 1990s of a liaison between Laurent and the singer Wendy Van Wanten, whose real name is Iris Vandenkerckhove.

Her son Clement Vandenkerckhove, now aged 25, was once invited to appear on television by her side, and quizzed about his paternity -- questions he gently dodged.

On Tuesday, the 61-year-old prince disclosed in a statement that he indeed had a son from the affair.

"I acknowledge being the biological father of Clement Vandenkerckhove," Laurent wrote.

"In recent years we have had open and honest conversations about this," he added.

Laurent described his public announcement as the result of a "path taken together" with his son.

It also coincides with the broadcast Tuesday of a documentary on Flemish television channel VTM in which mother and son publicly identify Clement Vandenkerckhove's father.

Laurent de Saxe-Cobourg has been married since April 2003 to the British-born Claire Coombs, with whom he has three children: Louise, born in 2004, and twins Nicolas and Aymeric born the following year.

It is not the first case of secret paternity in Belgium's royal family: Laurent's father Albert, who ruled from 1993 until his abdication in 2013, famously fathered a child out of wedlock.

Forced by court order to undergo DNA testing, Albert admitted in 2020 that he had had a daughter with a Belgian aristocrat during an extramarital affair in the 1960s.