Prince Charles, Count of Flanders

Biography

He signed his paintings with the name “Karel van Vlaanderen”, that is, “Charles of Flanders”. The words “prince regent” never appeared on those canvases.

Charles Théodore Henri Antoine Meinrad was born on 10 October 1903 in Brussels, in the palace of the Marquess of Assche. He was the second son of Albert, heir to the throne and the future King Albert I, and Elisabeth in Bavaria, daughter of Duke Karl Theodor in Bavaria. He was named after his maternal grandfather. In 1910 his father made him Count of Flanders. His upbringing at home, according to his biographers, was without much warmth: his parents were busy, strict court protocol left the children to governesses and tutors, and the second son was not expected to reach the throne.

When German troops occupied Belgium in 1914, the royal couple’s children were sent to England. Charles attended Wixenford School in Berkshire, then the Royal Naval College at Osborne and at Dartmouth, and later did training stints aboard ships of the British navy. In 1926 he received an honorary rank as a British naval officer and returned to Belgium, where he studied at the Royal Military School. His love of the sea stayed with him: he assembled a library of books on the navy and on the maritime history of the Belgians. In 1917, as far as is known, the Entente powers offered him the throne of Greece after King Constantine I left it, but Albert I refused.

In the 1930s he began to lay out his seaside estate of Raversijde near Ostend and restored the left wing of the royal palace at Laeken. In 1939 he became a colonel in the Belgian army. In May 1940, during the Eighteen Days’ Campaign, he served on the staff of the Cavalry Corps, visited command posts and reported every evening to his brother, King Leopold III. He approved the army’s capitulation, but their views on what followed diverged: Charles was an Anglophile, while the king’s circle sought good relations with Germany. From 1940 to 1944 the prince lived at Laeken, in the left wing of the palace; his brother lived in the right. Little is known about his life during the occupation.

On 9 June 1944 Leopold III and his family were taken to Germany. Charles avoided deportation: he slipped out of the palace and hid under an assumed name, among other places at Sart-lez-Spa near Liège. The Pierlot government, which returned after the liberation of the country, looked for him, and on 11 September he appeared in Brussels. On 20 September 1944 the United Chambers of parliament elected him regent of the kingdom, and the next day he swore the constitutional oath. Of the 264 members present, 217 voted for him and 47 abstained.

The regency was expected to last until the king was freed. But Leopold, on returning from captivity in 1945, stayed in Switzerland, and the question of his return turned into the “Royal Question”, which divided the country. Charles remained regent until 1950 and in that time appointed nine governments. Under him the social security law came into force; in 1944 the Benelux union was created, in 1945 Belgium joined the United Nations, in 1948 women gained the right to vote in parliamentary elections, and in 1949 the country became one of the founders of NATO and the Council of Europe. The country rebuilt its economy with the help of the Marshall Plan. In Brussels the prince received Charles de Gaulle and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, made visits to Britain and the United States, and travelled to the Belgian Congo. The king’s supporters reproached him for behaving like a real head of state.

Relations with his brother broke down for good. Leopold thought the regent too compliant towards the governments and that he had endorsed the policy of the London cabinet. After the referendum of 1950 the king returned, riots followed, and on 20 July 1950 parliament ended the regency. Soon afterwards Leopold abdicated in favour of his son Baudouin. Charles no longer appeared in company with members of the royal family: he did not attend even his mother’s funeral in 1965.

He withdrew to Raversijde and devoted himself to drawing and painting, producing portraits and views. He held exhibitions from 1972–1973 onwards, about twenty in all; in 1977 the Racine gallery in Brussels showed his work. In 1961, or according to other accounts in 1981, he gave up the annual allowance that parliament paid him, saying that he had performed no official duties since 1950. Later he fell into financial difficulty because of his financial advisers, and in December 1981 he sold the estate to the Belgian state.

Charles died in Ostend on 1 June 1983. He was buried on 7 June in Brussels, in the royal crypt of the Church of Our Lady of Laeken; Leopold III and his wife Lilian did not attend the ceremony. At Raversijde there is now a memorial museum to Prince Charles.