RETIRED KING ORDERED TO TAKE PATERNITY TEST

The retired king of Belgium has been ordered to take a DNA paternity test by a Brussels court, raising the prospect of resolving whether he is the father of Delphine Boël, a 50-year-old artist.

King Albert II, who has refused to recognize Boël as his daughter for more than a decade, must submit to the test within three months or be legally presumed to be the father.

An earlier court-ordered DNA test proved that Jacques Boël, scion of one of Belgium’s richest industrial dynasties, was not her biological father. Since that 2013 test, Boël, who has two children, has tried to prove that Albert is her father.

The former monarch, 83, abdicated in 2013 in favour of his son after 20 years on the throne. The decision also cost him his immunity to court judgments such as the paternity test, which would be a saliva test carried out on Albert, Boël and her mother.

A 1999 biography of Queen Paola, Albert’s Italian wife, alleged the king had a long affair with Boël’s mother, Sybille de Selys Longchamps.