All About Royal Families

Mary Lilian Baels, later known as Princess Lilian of Belgium, Princess of Réthy, was born on November 28, 1916, in Highbury, London. She was one of nine children of Henri Baels, a prominent Belgian politician, and her youth was spent between Belgium and the great finishing schools of France, Switzerland, and Austria. Cultivated, elegant, and multilingual, Lilian had a taste for literature, golf, skiing, and the arts. Her charm and refinement soon brought her into royal circles, where the widowed King Leopold III of Belgium noticed her. The first encounters between Lilian and the king took place at public events and during golf outings, some discreetly arranged by Leopold himself. Lilian Baels is the lady on the right side of the picture Wikipedia When the Second World War broke out and Belgium was invaded, Lilian devoted herself to the Red Cross, transporting wounded Belgian and French soldiers to hospitals. It was against this dramatic backdrop that her life took its most fateful turn...

A queen with an artist’s soul Some royals walk into history as majesties. And some royals reshape it. Queen Elisabeth of Belgium (1876–1965) certainly belongs to the second category; a sovereign defined by empathy, curiosity and an extraordinary cultural legacy. A childhood shaped by art and compassion Elisabeth Gabriele Valérie Marie was born on 25 July 1876 at Possenhofen Castle on the shores of the Starnberger See. Her father, Duke Karl Theodor in Bavaria, was both a member of the Bavarian royal family , the House of Wittelsbach ,  and an acclaimed ophthalmologist; her mother, Infanta Maria José of Portugal, assisted him as a nurse, a rare role for a princess in the 19th century. This early exposure to caregiving and human vulnerability shaped Elisabeth’s lifelong compassion. Surrounded by music, painting and sculpture, she grew up in an environment that nurtured her artistic sensibilities. It was a childhood that prepared her for a future where culture and duty would become ins...