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Last month, 16-year-old Princess Elisabeth left the Belgian royal palace of Laeken in the greater Brussels capital area to start her studies at the United World College of the Atlantic, located in the fairy-tale St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales.
Like every other normal family, the Belgian royals are struggling with having to say goodbye to one of their children.
Queen Mathilde, 45, the wife of 58-year-old Belgian King Philippe, said she has a hard time adapting to life without her eldest daughter after she left for the exclusive boarding school popular with royals and millionaires.
Dressed in an immaculate black-and-white striped dress, the Belgian Queen stopped for a short talk with local media after a memorial service for former Belgian King Baudouin, King Philippe’s uncle who died 25 years ago.
Queen Mathilde said her daughter Elisabeth was “doing very well” in Wales.
She however added: “But we really have to adapt to it.”
Princess Elisabeth was the only child missing, as Prince Gabriel, 15, Prince Emmanuel, 12, and Princess Eleonore, 10, were there with their parents at the memorial service led by Archbishop of Brussels and Mechelen Cardinal Jozef De Kesel.
One major absentee during the memorial service was former King Albert, who took over the reign of his older brother Baudouin in 1993 after he passed away childless.
King Albert did get an invite to the memorial service but according to local media he did not want to return back to Belgium from his holidays abroad.
King Albert has repeatedly come under fire in Belgium for gallivanting around Europe on his yacht on taxpayers’ expenses without appearing in his home country at public events.
Both politicians as well as King Philippe are trying to cut back on his allowances.
The happy family snaps of the Belgian royal couple and their three children are in stark contrast with other fights looming in the extended family.
Scandal-prone Prince Laurent is also in repeated conflict with his older brother King Philippe and Belgian politicians.
Prince Laurent, who is married to British-born land surveyor Claire Coombs, had his state handout axed after he caused a scandal by attending a Chinese embassy event honouring the Red Army, even though the Royal family had made it clear they would not be sending a representative.
The move upset not just fellow royals but also government officials because he had not been authorised to attend the event on behalf of his country.
King Philippe decided together with the Belgian Government to reduce Prince Laurent’s annual state income of 300,000 EUR (£266,985) by 15 percent.
In a bizarre statement, the Belgian Prince compared his situation to the Jewish victims of Nazi concentration camps.
He said he is “sick and tired” of being attacked “just because I’m the son or brother of a king.”
Prince Laurent said that every time he finds himself ‘victimised’ because of his minority position as a member of the Royal family, he remembers the Holocaust, saying: “I often think about the Jews who were shot to death, just because they were Jewish.”
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