Car Salesman Set to Become Belgian Prince After DNA Test Confirms Paternity

Clément Vandenkerckhove used to sell cars for a living. This year he became a prince of Belgium.

The 26-year-old is the son of Prince Laurent, the younger brother of King Philippe, who legally recognized him as his biological child. That recognition gives him a claim to his father's inheritance and, Belgian constitutional lawyers say, the title of Prince of Belgium. VRT and NOS report that a royal decree signed by King Philippe and the government is still needed before he can formally bear it, and none has been announced.

The paperwork was signed at a civil registry office in February 2026. It stayed private for months. The story only reached the public on August 19, when the Belgian weekly Soir Mag first reported it, according to Belgian coverage of the case.

A ceremony nobody heard about for six months

The gap between the signing and the news breaking was almost half a year. Vandenkerckhove was reportedly there at the civil registrar himself and signed the documents. That step was the legal move that turned him into a prince.

Prince Laurent had already gone public about the relationship. In a statement back in September 2025, he ended more than two decades of speculation with a single line: "With this announcement, I acknowledge that I am the biological father of Clément Vandenkerckhove." He asked people to receive the news with discretion, calling it an intimate matter settled through "joint consultation" between everyone involved.

Laurent, 62, is King Philippe's brother and sits 15th in line for the Belgian throne. The crown was never a realistic prospect for anyone in his branch of the family, which takes some of the drama out of who inherits what.

His mom told him at 16

Vandenkerckhove did not grow up in a palace. He spent much of his childhood wondering who his father was, working ordinary jobs, including a stint in a restaurant on top of selling cars.

The answer came when he was 16. His mother decided he was entitled to the truth and told him the whole story. It rearranged everything he thought he knew about himself.

He had actually crossed paths with Laurent years earlier. When he was 13 the two met by chance in a shopping centre, and Vandenkerckhove had no idea he was talking to his own father. He was just a kid running into a stranger.

Roughly four years after learning the truth, he worked up the courage to pick up the phone and call the prince directly. A handful of calls followed. Then they finally met in person, this time both of them knowing exactly who the other was.

The hospital visit and a 99.5% match

Once the relationship grew, Laurent suggested a DNA test to settle it for good. The two went to the hospital together to give samples.

Vandenkerckhove remembered a small kindness in the waiting room. "We went to the hospital together, and I remember him saying 'I'll go first so you're feeling at ease,'" he told the network VTM. It was the kind of gesture a nervous kid remembers years later.

The result arrived by email from the lab. He says it put the match at a 99.5% match. There was nothing left to argue about.

A title, but no royal paycheck

Here is where the fairy tale gets a little more practical. Becoming a prince does not come with the money most people assume.

Vandenkerckhove will not receive a royal allowance. A law of 27 November 2013 restricted royal endowments to the heir to the throne, an abdicated king or queen, and their surviving spouses. Prince Laurent and Princess Astrid keep theirs only under transitional provisions, King Albert II draws a separate lifetime endowment, and the reigning King is funded by the Civil List. Clément is on none of it, so no state check is coming.

He is also shut out of the line of succession. Belgian constitutional law keeps children born outside a government-approved marriage from inheriting the throne. Christian Behrendt, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Liège, laid out that rule when the story broke, explaining that he was not born inside a marriage approved by the government.

What he does gain is real, though. The recognition gives him an equal share of his father's inheritance, the same as Laurent's other children. Vandenkerckhove told Soir Mag he was not interested in the legal fine print. He cared about the chance to know his father, not the technicalities.

The last name he may keep

A prince usually carries a dynastic name, and Laurent's is Saxe-Coburg. His new son is not sure he wants to trade the one he grew up with.

"I could do that, but I am proud of the name Vandenkerckhove," he told the daily Het Nieuwsblad. Sacrificing it, he said, would be a betrayal of everything his mother had done for him. That surname is the one he shares with his mother, and it means something to him.

If he did take the full formal version, royal reporter Rick Evers said he could be styled as "His Royal Highness Clément, Prince of Belgium, Prince of Saxe-Coburg." That is a long way from a car lot.

His mother is a Belgian pop star

The woman at the center of the story is Iris Vandenkerckhove, far better known by her stage name Wendy Van Wanten. She is a Flemish singer, model and actress, a genuine celebrity in Belgium.

She and Laurent were together for about seven years before he married Princess Claire in 2003. Clément was born in August 2000, right in the middle of that relationship.

Whispers about the boy's parentage started almost from birth. His name was read as a quiet nod to Laurent's home in Tervuren, the Villa Clémentine. Van Wanten reportedly slipped hints into her song lyrics over the years. And people noticed the obvious physical resemblance between father and son long before any test confirmed it.

The family has been here before

This is not the first hidden child the Belgian royals have had to reckon with. Laurent's own father, former King Albert II, spent decades brushing off rumors that he had a daughter with Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps.

That one did not end quietly. A Belgian appeals court ordered Albert to take a DNA test in November 2018, and he complied in May 2019 only under a penalty of 5,000 euros a day. The daughter, Delphine Boël, is now recognized as Princess Delphine, and the fight to get there was long and public, as detailed in reporting on the case.

Clément's route looked nothing like that. There was no lawsuit, no court order, no years of denial. Laurent acknowledged him on his own in 2025, and the two of them handled the formal step side by side.

Two dads, one Father's Day post

For Father's Day in June, Vandenkerckhove put up two photos on Instagram. One showed him with Prince Laurent. The other showed him with Frans Vancoppenolle, his mother's long-term partner, who raised him.

His caption made room for both men. "Today I celebrate two fathers who each play an important role in my life in their own way. Thank you for everything. Happy Father's Day!" he wrote, according to a post shared publicly.

Laurent has three other children with Princess Claire: Princess Louise and twin sons Prince Nicolas and Prince Aymeric. At 26, Clément is actually the oldest of the four siblings, even though he is the last to arrive officially.

He first told his story on camera in the two-part VTM series "Clément, zoon van...", which aired in September 2025, walking viewers through how he tracked down his father and slowly built a relationship. The film, along with Laurent's public statement, set the stage for the quiet ceremony that followed a few months later.

For a young man who spent years wondering and then years selling cars, the last twelve months have redrawn his entire life on paper. He has a title, a share of an inheritance and a father he barely knew a decade ago. What he told reporters he wanted, more than any of it, was simply that last part.