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The royal question (; ) was a major political crisis in Belgium that lasted from 1945 to 1951, coming to a head between March and August 1950. The question at stake surrounded whether King Leopold III could return to the country and resume his constitutional role amid allegations that his actions during World War II had been contrary to the provisions of the Belgian Constitution. The crisis brought Belgium to the brink of a civil war. It was eventually resolved by the abdication of Leopold in favour of his son King Baudouin in 1951.
The crisis emerged from the division between Leopold and his Government, led by Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot, during the German invasion of 1940. Leopold, who was suspected of authoritarian sympathies, had taken command of the Belgian Army at the outbreak of war. Considering his constitutional position as commander-in-chief to take precedence over his civil role as head of state, he refused to leave his army and join the Belgian government in exile in France. Leopold's refusal to obey the Government marked a constitutional crisis and, after negotiating the surrender to the Germans on 28 May 1940, was widely condemned. Shortly before the Allies liberated the country in 1944, he was deported to Germany by the Nazis.
With Belgium liberated but the King still in captivity, Leopold was declared officially "unable to rule" in accordance with the constitution and his brother, Prince Charles, Count of Flanders, was elected regent. The country was divided along political lines over whether Leopold could ever return to his functions, and with a dominantly left-wing government in Belgium, Leopold went into exile in Switzerland. In 1950, a national referendum was organised by a new centre-right government to decide on whether Leopold could return. Although the result was a victory for the Leopoldists, it produced a strong regional split between Flanders, which was broadly in favour of the King's return, and Brussels and Wallonia which generally opposed it. Leopold's return to Belgium in July 1950 was greeted with widespread protests in Wallonia and a general strike. The unrest culminated in the killing of four workers by police on 30 July. With the situation fast deteriorating, on 1 August 1950 Leopold announced his intention to abdicate. After a transition period, he formally abdicated in favour of Baudouin in July 1951.
The first King, Leopold I, accepted the terms of the Constitution but attempted to use its ambiguities to subtly increase his own powers. This was continued by his successors, although with little real success.
On 25 May 1940, Leopold met senior representatives of his Government for a final time at the Kasteel van Wijnendale in West Flanders. The meeting is frequently cited as the start of the royal question and the moment of the decisive break between King and Government. Four ministers were present: Hubert Pierlot, Paul-Henri Spaak, Henri Denis and Arthur Vanderpoorten. By the time of the meeting, against the backdrop of the bloody Battle of the Lys, the Belgian government was preparing to continue the fight against Germany from exile in France. They urged the King to join them, following the examples of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Charlotte, Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. The King rejected their arguments and hardened his own position. He refused to leave Belgian territory and his army in Flanders at any cost. The ministers suspected that Leopold's aides were already negotiating with the Germans. The meeting broke up with no agreement and the Belgian Government left for France.
King Leopold negotiated a cease-fire with the Germans on 27 May 1940, and the Belgian armed forces officially surrendered the following day. Leopold became a prisoner of war and was placed under house arrest at the Royal Palace of Laeken, near Brussels. Furious that the King had both ignored the Government and negotiated a surrender without consulting them, Pierlot gave an angry speech on Radio Paris, condemning the King and announcing the Government's intention to continue fighting alongside the Allies. French politicians, notably Paul Reynaud, blamed Leopold for the growing disaster of the Battle of France and angrily condemned him as a "criminal king" ( roi-félon).
With France's defeat and the installation of the pro-German Vichy regime, it was widely believed that Germany was about to win the war. King Leopold was hailed as a "martyr" or a symbol of national resilience, in contrast to a Government that appeared to place its ideology above the interests of the Belgian people. On 31 May 1940, the senior representative of the Catholic Church in Belgium, Jozef-Ernest Cardinal van Roey, circulated a pastoral letter calling for all Belgians to unite around the King. Other figures in the King's entourage, particularly the authoritarian socialist Henri de Man, believed that democracy had failed and that the end of the war would see the King as the ruler of an authoritarian Belgian state.
Imprisoned, the King continued to follow his own political programme. He believed that after the German victory, a "New Order" would be established in Europe and that, as the senior Belgian figure in occupied Europe, he could negotiate with the German authorities. King Leopold corresponded with Adolf Hitler and tried to organise a meeting with him. Hitler remained uninterested and distrustful of the King, but on 19 November 1940, King Leopold succeeded in gaining an unproductive audience with him at Berchtesgaden.
Popular support for Leopold in Belgium declined sharply in December 1941 when news of Leopold's remarriage to Lilian Baels was made public. The marriage was deeply unpopular with the Belgian public. The image of the "prisoner-king" ( roi prisonnier), sharing the suffering of the Belgian prisoners of war, was undermined and his popularity fell sharply, especially in Wallonia, the home of the majority of the Belgian prisoners still detained. Popular opinion also turned on the king for his perceived unwillingness to speak out against German occupation policies.
Amid German defeats against the Russians on the Eastern Front after 1942, the King prepared for the end of the war. He ordered the preparation of a document, known as the Political Testament ( Testament Politique), which would justify his behaviour under the occupation and detail his interventions on behalf of Belgian prisoners of war and deported workers. Leopold, however, continued to condemn the action of the Belgian government in exile (based in London after October 1940). On 7 June 1944, following D-Day, he was deported to Germany. He was finally liberated by American forces on 7 May 1945.
Since the King was still in German custody, there was no opposition to the creation of a regency in his absence. On 20 September 1944, a meeting of both chambers of Parliament was called. Article 82 of the Constitution was invoked, declaring the King "unable to reign" ( dans l'impossibilité de régner). Leopold's reclusive brother, Prince Charles, Count of Flanders, was elected regent and took the oath the following day. Further action on the royal question was pushed aside by more pressing economic and political issues that occupied most of the Government's time. With Belgium under partial Allied military administration until the restoration of the government services, British hostility to Leopold's return also complicated the issue.
Under the early regency, both the Pierlot and subsequent Achille Van Acker governments attempted to avoid confronting the issue of Leopold's return despite calls from communists, some socialists and trade unionists for the King's abdication in April and May 1945. Soon after the King's liberation, Van Acker and a government delegation headed to Strobl, Austria to negotiate with Leopold. At a series of meetings between 9 and 11 May 1945, Van Acker insisted that the King publicly announce his support for the Allied cause and his commitment to parliamentary democracy. No agreement was reached. In the meantime, Leopold took up residence in Pregny (near Geneva) in Switzerland under the pretext that Palpitations made further negotiations or thoughts of a return to political life impossible.
In Belgium, political debate about the royal question continued and grew after the war, and remained a polemical topic in the popular press, notably in the Francophone newspaper Le Soir. In the general election of 1949, the PSC–CVP campaigned on a pro-Leopold royalist platform. The results reshaped the political landscape; the communists were routed and the PSB–BSP lost seats to both the Liberals and Catholics. The Catholics gained a new majority in the Senate and a plurality in the Chamber of Representatives, their best results since the war. Gaston Eyskens took over as prime minister at the head of a Liberal-Catholic coalition. Both parties in the government (and Leopold himself) supported a referendum on the King's return, which became the focus of political attention.
Result of the referendum was that Leopold's return won a 58 per cent majority in the national vote, with majorities in seven of the nine provinces. However, the vote was heavily divided by region. In Flanders, 72 per cent voted in favour of Leopold's return, but in the arrondissement of Brussels, the Leopoldists won only a minority of 48 per cent. In Wallonia, a mere 42 per cent voted for the restitution of the King. The final results, in percentages by province, were (with green standing for the Leopoldist side and red for the anti-Leopoldist one):
The result confirmed the worries of some, including Spaak, that the vote would not be sufficiently decisive in either direction and could divide the country along regional and linguistic lines. On 13 March, Eyskens travelled to Pregny to encourage Leopold to abdicate. Paul Van Zeeland and Spaak attempted to broker a new agreement by which Leopold would abdicate in favour of his son. On 15 April 1950, Leopold announced that he was willing to temporarily delegate his authority. Many within the PSC–CVP realised that, despite the referendum's result, their party's lack of a parliamentary majority would undermine their ability to build a national reconciliation around the King as long as their Liberal coalition partners and socialist opponents were unwilling to accept the King's return.
One of the first acts of the Duvieusart government was to introduce a bill bringing the "impossibility to reign" to an end. On 22 July 1950, Leopold returned to Belgium for the first time since June 1944 and resumed his functions.
The general strike of 1950 began in the coal mining centres of Hainaut and quickly spread. Workers were soon on strike across Wallonia, Brussels, and, to a lesser extent, Flanders. The port of Antwerp was one of the key sites affected and the country was virtually paralysed. On 30 July, four workers were shot dead by the Gendarmerie at Grâce-Berleur, near Liège and the violence intensified. Staunch Leopoldists in the Government called for a stronger stance but found themselves in a minority, even in the PSC–CVP. Frustrated at the lack of progress, the Government threatened to resign en masse.
As the situation escalated, the National Confederation of Political Prisoners and their Dependents ( Confédération nationale des prisonniers politiques et des ayants droit, Nationale Confederatie van Politieke Gevangenen en Rechthebbenden, or CNPPA–NCPGR), the organisation representing political prisoners detained during the German occupation, offered to act as intermediaries between the different parties because of their respected status. The CNPPA–NCPGR succeeded in persuading both the King and the Government to reopen negotiations which resumed on 31 July. In the afternoon of 1 August, Leopold publicly announced his intention to abdicate in favour of his eldest son, Baudouin, to avoid further bloodshed. Baudouin, at the age of 19, became regent, with the title of "prince royal" on 11 August 1950.
Modern historians describe the royal question as an important moment in Belgian recovery after World War II. The opposition between Leopoldists and anti-Leopoldists led to the re-establishment of socialist and Catholic political parties from before the war. The question was also an important moment in the Belgian linguistic conflict. It also put an end to the federalisation of Belgian institutions which might exacerbate the regional tensions exposed by the royal question. In addition, the perceived failure of the PSC–CVP to realise Flemish demands for the return of Leopold helped to strengthen support for the Flemish Movement Volksunie party after 1954. In Wallonia, the legacy of trade union and socialist political mobilisation during the general strike paved the way for a left-wing revival of the Walloon Movement, eventually witnessed in the Belgian general strike of 1960–1961.
The Lahaut assassination was not solved, and it remained contentious as the only political murder in Belgian history until the death of the socialist politician André Cools in 1991. Leopoldists were suspected, but no individual was prosecuted in the aftermath. An inquiry by historians Rudy Van Doorslaer and Etienne Verhoeyen named an alleged culprit. A final report, commissioned by the Belgian government, was submitted in 2015.
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