Princess Liliane of Belgium was the second wife of King Leopold III of the Belgians (who died in 1983) and stepmother of the present King, Albert II. She married Leopold in 1941 and bore him three children, although she was never allowed to style herself Queen. Public controversy over the marriage was one of the reasons why Leopold was forced to abdicate in 1950.

She was born Mary Liliane Baels in Highbury, north London, in 1916, and was one of the eight children of Hendrik Baels, an attorney and fish trader from Ostend, and his wife Anna-Maria Devisscher, who were living in England during the First World War. In 1926 Hendrik Baels became Belgian Minister of Agriculture and in 1930 the family settled in the seaside resort of Knokke, where most of Belgian high society, including the King, owned villas. King Leopold III appointed Hendrik Baels Governor (royal representative) of the province of West Flanders in 1933.

The slim, dark-haired Liliane Baels was one of the prettiest women in Belgium in the late 1930s and 1940s. Authors and journalists variously described her in superlatives such as "exotically beautiful," "as beautiful as a Greek night," "as elegant as a beautiful cigar-girl from Andalusia," "with eyes of fire" and with "an inconceivable sex appeal." A regular visitor to the Knokke golf course, the young woman attracted the attention of Leopold and they became frequent golf partners.

King Leopold had lost his first wife, Astrid, the niece of King Gustav of Sweden, in a car accident in 1935, and was raising their three children: Joséphine-Charlotte (who became Grand Duchess of Luxemburg), Baudouin (who in 1951 became King of the Belgians) and Albert (the present King).

Leopold is known to have had many mistresses, but there are no indications that Liliane had an intimate relationship with him before the Second World War. At that time she was engaged to the Hungarian Count Peter Draskovich. According to Hungarian law, however, a Count Palatine like Draskovich was not allowed to marry a commoner. The Count hoped that the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy, would change the law on his behalf. The Belgian government, as well as King Leopold, asked Horthy to do so, but their efforts were in vain and Draskovich broke off his engagement with Liliane early in 1940.

When German troops invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940, the Baels family settled in Biarritz, in the South of France. On 28 May, King Leopold and his army surrendered to the Germans. Leopold refused to flee Belgium, afraid that by leaving his country he would give Hitler a pretext for dividing Belgium into two separate states: one for the Dutch-speaking Flemings in the North and one for the French-speaking Walloons in the South. Hitler considered Leopold to be Nazi-friendly and allowed him to return to Laken Palace, the royal residence near Brussels.

Leopold's freedom was only marginally restricted, although the King's entourage told the Belgian people that he was living in captivity at Laken as a prisoner of war. Recent historical research, including work on the private diaries of Count Robert Capelle, Leopold's private secretary, has revealed that the King's German guard, Colonel Werner Kiewitz, regularly accompanied him on "pleasure trips" to Knokke and Paris. The Gestapo even provided Leopold with call-girls when he went to see Hitler in Berchtesgaden in November 1940. However, the King failed to obtain from Hitler a guarantee that Belgium would not be split, and fell into a deep depression.

In January 1941, Leopold's mother, Elizabeth, widow of King Albert I, sent her chauffeur to Biarritz to fetch Liliane. Queen Elizabeth judged that the 24-year-old woman constituted the perfect medicine for her son's despondence. It was her task, as Capelle says in his diary, to "distract" the King. Soon, the Queen Mother discovered "that the remedy was very mild and that the patient was not disposed to finish the treatment." Liliane demanded, as Capelle wrote, Leopold's "exclusive" attention. She also wanted to be his wife.

The King realised that his advisors would object, but he felt obliged to give in. They married in secret on 11 September 1941. The marriage was made public three months later when Liliane became pregnant. Leopold justified his behaviour, to Capelle, with the argument: "When a woman gets under our skin, then nothing is able to curb this passion."

The political effect of the marriage was devastating. The royal advisors realised better than Leopold that the Belgian people would feel betrayed. They had promoted the image of the King as the poor widower and prisoner of war, to mitigate the hardship of the Belgian people in the deprivations of the war years. Being neither widower nor prisoner, he had failed them twice.

Leopold was mocked by the people as "the son-in-law of Mr. Baels." But their anger was directed chiefly at Liliane, who was referred to as "Lady Codfish," and "the fishmonger's daughter." Because of public indignation to the marriage, Leopold did not dare bestow the title of Queen upon his new wife. She was only granted the title of Princesse de Réthy, after a domain owned by the royal family. Her children, though entitled to call themselves princes of Belgium, were also deprived of any rights to the throne.

Liliane bore Leopold three children: Alexander (born in 1942), Marie-Christine (1951) and Marie-Esmeralda (1956). Only Alexander was born when his father was still King. Shortly before the liberation of Belgium by the Allies in September 1944, the Germans deported Leopold, Liliane and the King's four children to Germany. Leopold and his family were liberated after the German surrender in May 1945. The Belgian government was prepared to allow Leopold to return to Brussels at once, on condition that he left Liliane behind temporarily and flew back alone.

This he refused to do so, partly because his wife did not accept the arrangement. There are indications that leading Walloon politicians, like the socialist Paul-Henri Spaak, the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs, wanted to reduce the princely title of Liliane to that of "a countess at best," while Prince Alexander would have to be "baronified."

According to some historians, Leopold's delay in returning to Belgium cost him his throne. Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador in Brussels, wrote at the time that if Leopold "had returned to Belgium on the morrow of his liberation when the whole country was in a festive mood, he might well have been acclaimed by the crowds." As it happened, the delay allowed opponents of the King to open a public debate about his wartime behaviour. When, in late June, Leopold announced that he was going to return to Brussels without Liliane, he was no longer allowed to. Over a period of less than two months, Leopold rather than Liliane, had become the problem for the Belgian politicians.

Leopold and his family settled in Switzerland, while in Belgium the King's brother, Prince Charles, was appointed Regent. The so-called "Royal Issue" lasted five years and brought Belgium to the brink of civil war. In 1950, the Belgian politicians decided to let the people settle the issue in a referendum.

In the nation as a whole, 57.7 per cent voted for his return, but the result once more showed that Belgium was a country of two entirely different peoples: while in Flanders 72 per cent of the electorate wanted Leopold back, in Wallonia only 42.1 per cent did. Wallonia refused to accept the verdict of the majority. Leopold returned to Brussels on 22 July 1950 accompanied by his two eldest sons, but not by Liliane. At once, riots broke out in the south were preparations were made to establish an independent Republic of Wallonia. When rioters were killed by the police and anti-Leopoldists threatened to march on Brussels, the government, though now dominated by Flemish Christian-Democrats, no longer wanted to fight for Leopold's throne. He was forced to abdicate in favour of his 20-year-old son Baudouin on 1 August 1950.

After the abdication, Liliane returned to Belgium. During the 1950s, the former King and his family lived at Laken Palace, together with Baudouin. Both Leopold and Liliane had a strong influence on the young, unmarried Baudouin. Since the publication in 1998 of extracts of the diaries of Achilles Van Acker, a former Belgian Prime Minister in the 1940s and 1950s, speculation has been rife about the precise nature of the relationship between Liliane and Baudouin. Van Acker wrote in 1952 that the 22-year-old Baudouin and his 36-year-old stepmother went on holiday without Leopold, sharing the same sleeping coach in the train. The politician also had the telephone at Laken tapped and heard them whisper to each other: "I belong to you" and "I will never leave you."

In order to diminish Leopold's and Liliane's political influence on the King, various governments in the 1950s tried to persuade Leopold to move out of Laken with his wife and the children of his second marriage. To this end, Argenteuil House near Waterloo was bought by the Belgian state. Liliane long resisted the pressure to leave Laken, but finally gave in after Baudouin married the Spanish Princess Fabiola in 1960. Apparently, the pious Fabiola and the worldly Liliane did not get on well.

Leopold and Liliane moved out of Laken during Baudouin's honeymoon, taking with them many pieces of furniture and paintings. This caused a family feud which lasted for years. According to Gaspar Vuylsteke, the aide-de-camp to the former King, Leopold was not even allowed to meet his grandchildren and, in order to have pictures of them, had "to cut them out of magazines."

After the move to Argenteuil House, Liliane en Leopold relinquished public life. There were rumours of marital problems. In 1994 and 2001 Princess Marie-Christine gave interviews on Belgian television about her family, depicting her youth as a living hell under a very dominant mother.

After Leopold died in 1983, Liliane cherished his memory and continued to defend his reputation. In 2001, she published the memoirs that Leopold had written in retirement as Pour L'Histoire. Though the book became a huge best-seller, historians found it to contain numerous half-truths, inaccuracies, even "lies." The work also shows the former King as unable to forget and to forgive, because, as he put it, "there are insults which one never forgets."

Mary Liliane Baels: born London 28 November 1916; married 1941King Leopold III of the Belgians (died 1983; one son, two daughters); created 1941 Princesse de Réthy; died Argenteuil, Belgium 7 June 2002.