To celebrate King Philippe of Belgium’s 65th birthday, his children – Princess Elisabeth, Prince Gabriel, Prince Emmanuel, and Princess Eléonore – have released a video inviting the public to send in their questions for the monarch. While a glimpse behind the scenes of life at the Palace of Laeken never goes amiss, it goes to show that there are plenty of things people don’t know about King Philippe; a crying shame, considering that the son of King Albert and Queen Paola is a true Renaissance man. As King Philippe turns 65, let Tatler reveal his hidden talents and the (several) things he has in common with King Charles.
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While the King now appears to be the head of a truly happy family, his own upbringing was somewhat rocky. Born in 1960, he was described by Politico as ‘the oldest son of a difficult marriage’. Philippe’s parents were reportedly often absent due to the business of ruling. His own status as future king meant that he was unable to make his own decisions with regard to education and was instead required to move to a secondary school in Flanders.
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Much like King Charles, who famously described his Gordonstoun education as ‘Colditz in kilts’, Philippe struggled to make friends during these formative years. ‘In my youth, I had problems at school,’ he admitted to a group of teenagers who had dropped out of education in 2019, ‘I felt treated badly.’
From 1978 to 1981, he followed royal tradition by enrolling at the Belgian Royal Military Acadamy before continuing his studies at Trinity College, Oxford, and Stanford University. His daughter, Princess Elisabeth, would follow in his footsteps, graduating from Lincoln College, Oxford, in 2024. In 1993, Philippe’s grandfather, King Baudouin, died. With Philippe’s father, Albert, now king, the Prince became heir apparent, inheriting the title of Duke of Brabant.
This period of Philippe’s royal career was still not smooth sailing. The Belgian press characterised him as dull, even questioning his capacity to lead the country. At one point, the grand marshall of the royal court remarked that the then-Duke of Brabant ‘just can’t do it’ when it comes to the duties of the crown.
Philippe’s public image was transformed, however, when he married the Belgian aristocrat Mathilde d’Udekem d’Acoz in a fairytale December ceremony in Brussels, compared to the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles by the media. So popular was the couple that commentators pointed to the nuptials as helping to unify the nation, divided between the Dutch-speaking North and French-speaking South.
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On 21 July 2013, King Albert abdicated in favour of his son, and just one hour later, Philippe became the new King of the Belgians. His reign has been the mirror image of his time as heir apparent. He is credited with helping to form a coalition government during the 2014 federal elections, and like King Charles, he has spoken out about his country’s prior acts of injustice – Charles acknowledged the ‘abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans’ during the fight for national independence during a state visit in 2023, and in 2020, King Philippe publicly denounced the ‘acts of violence and cruely’ comitted against those living in the Congo Free State during the rule of his great-great-granduncle, King Leopold II.
This modern attitude is not the only attribute that the two kings share (nor is their shared heritage: Philippe being the fifth cousin of Charles’s mother, the late Queen Elizabeth). Both monarchs are true Renaissance men, famed for their love of painting. In July 2018, Philippe revealed himself as quite the artist when he offered French President Emmanuel Macron a handpainted portrait of Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant. The King had also painted two pictures of his uncle, King Baudouin, to mark the 25th anniversary of his death.
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‘The king has been devoting himself to painting for several years. He started with watercolours and then moved on to painting landscapes and portraits,’ said the palace at the time, explaining that the King, who is said to turn to the canvas in order to clear his mind, ‘did not take lessons, but received advice from various people.’ Were one to accompany King Philippe and Queen Mathilde on the royal jet during a state visit, they might just encounter the monarch working on a project with paintbrush in hand.
Some people might struggle to find one hobby in addition to the business of ruling a country, but not King Philippe. After he ascended to the throne, the Belgian ruler took up piano, turning to the teacher who worked with his wife, Mathilde, when she was still a princess. Starting from scratch at the age of 50, Philippe showed the nation his talent, releasing a video of his performance during the traditional Bastille Day concert in 2023. When it comes to the royal repertoire, says Sudinfo, the King is partial to the works of Hans Zimmer, perhaps best known for soundtracks on The Lion King and Pirates of the Caribbean.
When he’s not sat at the piano (or passing on his passion for astronomy to his son, Prince Gabriel), King Philippe is remarkably active. Whether it’s walking the Camino de Santiago with his family (a reported 738 kilometres, says Sudinfo), going for morning runs, skiing in the winter, or kitesurfing in the seaside idyll of Yeu, in France, the King is quite the athlete, according to Point de Vue.
As if that wasn’t enough, the monarch was such a keen student of philosophy that he reportedly learnt ancient Greek in order to better understand the works of Plato. Speaking of his passion to Le Soir, Philippe explained: ‘The Greek philosophers were very intellectually honest; they weren't ideologues. Great philosophers like Plato opposed the manipulators of ideas. They were concerned with doing things well and researching rigorously’ The King has even adopted as a personal maxim the famous words of the Greek poet Pindar: ‘Become who you are.’ From a turbulent upbringing to over a decade as a beloved ruler, King Philippe most certainly has.
