Never Paola from Belgium did not confide in this way: on February 18, 2022, RTBF will broadcast the documentary Paola, garden side, directed by Nicolas Delvaulx. The filming of this documentary lasted three years and took place in the different residences that the former Queen of the Belgians shared with her husband Albert II: the presbytery of Villers-sur-Lesse (their country house), the official residence of the Belvédère or the Châteauneuf de Grasse, their holiday home in the south of France. In addition to the former king, Paola’s children and grandchildren have also agreed to testify in this historical documentary.
Facing the camera, the 84-year-old former sovereign confided with an open heart about her extraordinary career, that of an Italian aristocrat who became Queen of the Belgians in 1993. The destiny of Paola Ruffo di Calabria changed in 1958 when she met Prince Albert at the Belgian Embassy in Rome. The following year, a big wedding was celebrated in Brussels, but the parents of Philippe, Astrid and Laurent experienced storms from the beginning of the 1970s…”Too much waiting and very quickly a very bad pressshe remembers today, in the extracts unveiled by the magazine Point of view of this February 16. I never knew freedom at all.”
Of a shy nature, Paola also undergoes the obligation of having to learn a new language: “Learning Flemish was a pain. Nobody knows the efforts that I made.” In a letter read to her grandchildren at the end of the documentary, Paola also confides her ill-being at the start of her marriage: “While we had our eyes fixed on our young, beautiful couple, I was living in the imagination, blind and deaf to criticism and flattery, without noticing that precisely I was locking myself up in another world…“
I’m glad I finally met Prince Albert
Albert and Paola’s marriage is falling apart. He begins an extra-marital relationship with Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, the mother of Delphine, her daughter born out of wedlock and recognized as Princess of Belgium last year. A case that Paola is also careful not to comment on in the documentary, but if she recalled her support for her husband behind the scenes, with the director. With sincerity always, the ex-queen also comments on a photo of her walking on a beach in Sardinia with a journalist, in 1970. This is the Frenchman Albert de Mun, journalist for Paris Match. “There, it is a little selfish (…). But deep down, I regret nothing. I was not happy. For ten years, I was absolutely not happy at all.”
These marital problems have of course had an impact on the couple’s three children. “We should have been more adults, more aware of what a father and a mother should really (do). And then, in addition, we had every chance of separating if we had not pulled ourselves together“, adds Paola. The spouses hold on and forgive each other. “Finally, (Albert) said to me, ‘I have always loved you.’ That pleased me.”
Nearly 40 years later, the couple seems more united than ever around their many heirs. For Paola from Belgium, “it is worth giving yourself the time, because then something else is born”. She explains : “There is no more haste, there is no more sex, there is tenderness. And aging like that is good, isn’t it?“A point of view fully shared by her husband.”Both of us experience great peace. Yes, I am happy to have finally met Prince Albert (…). Because I find it unique.” On the side of their children too, after a little fulfilled childhood, there is room for family peace: “I am proud and really happy to see my parents unitedcomments the current King Philip. Reconciliation and forgiveness is the most difficult but the greatest.”