Editing Monarchy of Belgium (section)

==Hereditary and constitutional==
As a [[hereditary]] constitutional monarchy system, the role and operation of Belgium's monarchy are governed by the [[Constitution of Belgium|Constitution]]. The royal office of King is designated solely for a descendant of the first King of the Belgians, Leopold I.

Since he is bound by the Constitution (above all other ideological and religious considerations, political opinions and debates and economic interests) the King is intended to act as an arbiter and guardian of Belgian national unity and independence.<ref>{{cite web| title=La Constitution Belge| url=http://www.dekamer.be/kvvcr/pdf_sections/publications/constitution/GrondwetFR.pdf|trans-title=The Belgian Constitution| date=May 2014| publisher=[[Belgian Federal Parliament]]| access-date=2016-03-22}}</ref> Belgium's monarchs are inaugurated in a purely civil [[Swearing-in of the Kings of the Belgians|swearing-in ceremony]].

=== Leopold I, Leopold II and Albert I ===
[[Leopold I of Belgium|King Leopold I]] was head of Foreign Affairs "as an ''[[ancien régime]]'' monarch", the foreign ministers having the authority to act only as ministers of the king.<ref name=Vankalen>{{cite book| language=fr| quote=''...dirigeant personnellement les Affaires étrangères, comme un souverain d'Ancien Régime, en discutant toutes les questions importantes avec ses ministres, ceux-ci n'ayant d'autorité que pour autant qu'ils étaient ministres du roi...''| first=Frans| last=Van Kalken| title=La Belgique contemporaine (1780–1949)| location=Paris| publisher=Armand Colin| year=1950| page=43| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ai_XjgEACAAJ&q=Van+Kalken,+La+Belgique+contemporaine|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Leopold I quickly became one of the most important shareholders of the ''[[Société Générale de Belgique]]''.<ref name=Lebrun>{{cite book| first=Pierre| last=Lebrun| title=Essai sur la révolution industrielle en Belgique: 1770–1847| publisher=Palais des Académies| location=Bruxelles| edition=Second| year=1981| language=fr| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FcQ1AQAAIAAJ&q=Essai+sur+la+r%C3%A9volution+industrielle+en+Belgique|url-access=subscription }}</ref>
[[File: Equestrian Statue of Leopold II by Thomas Vinçotte - Cinquantenaire Museum - Brussels, Belgium - DSC08901.jpg|thumb|250px|Equestrian statue of [[Leopold II of Belgium|King Leopold II]] in Brussels, Belgium]]
Leopold's son, [[Leopold II of Belgium|King Leopold II]], is chiefly remembered for the founding and capitalization of the [[Congo Free State]]  as a personal fiefdom. There was scandal when the [[atrocities in the Congo Free State]] were made public, causing the Free State to be taken over by the Belgian Government. Many Congolese were killed as a result of Leopold's policies in the Congo before the reforms of direct Belgian rule.<ref name=Forbath>{{cite book| title=The River Congo: The Discovery, Exploration and Exploitation of the World's Most Dramatic Rivers| publisher=Harper & Row| year=1977| isbn=978-0061224904| last=Forbath| first=Peter| page=278| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UtgwAQAAIAAJ&q=The+River+Congo:+The+Discovery,+Exploration+and+Exploitation+of+the+World's+Most+Dramatic+Rivers|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{cite book| author-link=Fredric Wertham| last=Wertham| first=Frederic| title=A Sign For Cain: An Exploration of Human Violence| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A0VuPQAACAAJ&q=A+Sign+For+Cain:+An+Exploration+of+Human+Violence| year=1969| publisher=Paperback Library|url-access=subscription }}{{page needed|date=July 2014}}</ref><ref name=Hochschild>{{cite book| author-link=Adam Hochschild| last=Hochschild| first=Adam| title=King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa| year=1998| publisher=Houghton Mifflin| isbn=978-0618001903| url=https://archive.org/details/kingleopoldsghos00hoch_1| url-access=registration| quote=King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.}}</ref> The Free State scandal is discussed at the [[Royal Museum for Central Africa|Museum of the Congo]] at [[Tervuren]] in Belgium.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/an-unsettling-visit-to-kongo|title=A Belgian Visit to "Kongo"|magazine=The New Yorker|access-date=2018-10-20|language=en-US}}</ref>

On several occasions Leopold II publicly expressed disagreement with the ruling government (e.g. on 15 August 1887, and in 1905, against Prime Minister [[Auguste Beernaert]])<ref>Raymond Fusilier, ''Les monarchies parlementaires en Europe'' Editions ouvrières, Paris, 1960, p. 399.</ref> and was accused by [[Yvon Gouet]] of noncompliance with the country's parliamentary system.<ref>Yvon Gouet, ''De l'unité du cabinet parlementaire'', Dalloz, 1930, p. 232, quoted by Raymond Fusilier, p. 400.</ref>

Leopold II died without surviving legitimate sons. The line now descends from his nephew and successor, [[Albert I of Belgium]], who ruled while 90% of Belgium was overrun by the forces of [[Wilhelm II, German Emperor|Kaiser Wilhelm II]] and is notable for his forays into [[Colonization of the Congo basin#King Leopold II of Belgium|colonial rule]] of the [[Belgian Congo]] and later, [[German East Africa#Break-up of the colony|abeyant Wilhelm]], the [[League of Nations]] mandate in [[Ruanda-Urundi]]. In 1934, [[Albert I of Belgium#Death|Albert died under mysterious circumstances]] as he [[rock-climbing|climbed solo]] on the Roche du Vieux Bon Dieu at [[Marche-les-Dames]].

=== Leopold III and Baudouin ===
Louis Wodon (the {{lang|fr|[[chief of staff|chef de cabinet]]}} of Leopold III from 1934 to 1940), thought the King's oath to the Constitution implied a royal position "over and above the Constitution". He compared the King to a father, the head of a family: "Regarding the moral mission of the king, it is permissible to point to a certain analogy between his role and that of a father, or more generally, of parents in a family. The family is, of course, a legal institution as is the state. But what would a family be where everything was limited among those who compose it to simply legal relationships? In a family when one considers only legal relationships one comes very close to a breakdown in the moral ties founded on reciprocal affection without which a family would be like any other fragile association"<ref>Arango, p. 31.</ref> According to Arango, [[Leopold III of Belgium]] shared these views about the Belgian monarchy.

In 1991, towards the end of the reign of [[Baudouin of Belgium|Baudouin]], Senator Yves de Wasseige, a former member of the [[Belgian Constitutional Court]], cited four points at which the Belgian Constitution lacks democracy:<ref>{{lang|fr|Yves de Wasseige, ''Le roi, la loi la liberté: inconciliables en démocratie?''|italic=unset}} in {{lang|fr|''Les faces cachées de la monarchie belge'', TOUDI (n° 5/Contradictions (n° 65/66)|italic=unset}} 1991, {{ISBN|2-87090-010-4}}</ref>
# the King chooses the ministers,
# the King is able to influence the ministers when he speaks with them about bills, projects and nominations,
# the King promulgates bills, and,
# the King must agree to any change of the Constitution

=== Constitutional, political, and historical consequences ===
The Belgian monarchy was from the beginning a constitutional monarchy, patterned after that of the United Kingdom.<ref name=arango61>{{cite book| first=Ramon| last=Arango| title=Leopold III and the Belgian Royal Question| publisher=The Johns Hopkins Press| location=Baltimore| year=1961| page=9| isbn=9780801800405|url-access=subscription | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yLzkugAACAAJ&q=Leopold+III+and+the+Belgian+Royal+Question}}</ref> Raymond Fusilier wrote the Belgian regime of 1830 was also inspired by the French Constitution of the [[Kingdom of France (1791–1792)]], the [[United States Declaration of Independence]] of 1776, and the old political traditions of both Walloon and Flemish provinces.<ref>''Les monarchies parlementaires en Europe'', Editions ouvrières, Paris, 1960, p. 350</ref> "It should be observed that all monarchies have suffered periods of change as a result of which the power of the sovereign was reduced, but for the most part those periods occurred before the development of the system of constitutional monarchy and were steps leading to its establishment."<ref name=arango61/> The characteristic evidence of this is in Great Britain where there was an evolution from the time when kings ruled through the agency of ministers to that time when ministers began to govern through the instrumentality of the [[British crown|Crown]].

Unlike the British constitutional system, in Belgium "the monarchy underwent a belated evolution" which came "after the establishment of the constitutional monarchical system"<ref>Arango, p. 12.</ref> because, in 1830–1831, an independent state, parliamentary system and monarchy were established simultaneously. Hans Daalder, professor of political science at the [[Rijksuniversiteit Leiden]] wrote: "Did such simultaneous developments not result in a possible failure to lay down the limits of the royal prerogatives with some precision—which implied that the view of the King as the Keeper of the Nation, with rights and duties of its own, retained legitimacy?"<ref>Hans Daalder, The monarchy in a parliamentary system, in ''Res Publica, Tijdschrift voor Politologie, Revue de Science Politique'', Belgian Journal of Political Science, number 1, 1991, pp. 70–81, p. 74.</ref>

For Raymond Fusilier, the Belgian monarchy had to be placed—at least in the beginning—between the regimes where the king rules and those in which the king does not rule but only [[reign]]s. The Belgian monarchy is closer to the principle "the King does not rule",<ref>Raymond Fusilier, ''Les monarchies parlementaires – étude sur les systèmes de gouvernement en Suède, Norvège, Luxembourg, Belgique, Pays-bas, Danemark'', Editions ouvrières, Paris, 1960, pp. 419–420.</ref> but the Belgian kings were not only "at the head of the dignified part of the Constitution".<ref>[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4351/4351-h/4351-h.htm Bagehot, The English Constitution]</ref> The Belgian monarchy is not merely symbolic, because it participates in directing affairs of state insofar as the King's will coincides with that of the ministers, who alone bear responsibility for the policy of government.<ref>R.Fusilier, pp. 419–420. French ''Elle n'est pas purement symbolique, car elle participe à la direction des affaires de l'Etat dans la mesure où sa volonté coïncide avec la volonté des ministres, lesquels seuls assument la responsabilité de la politique du gouvenement.''</ref> For [[Francis Delpérée]], to reign does not only mean to preside over ceremonies but also to take a part in the running of the State.<ref>French ''Le Roi règne. Pendant plus d'un siècle et demi (...) on ne s'est guère interrogé sur cette maxime. Ou bien on a cherché à lui donner un sens réducteur. Le Roi préside les [[Te Deum]] et les cérémonies protocolaires (...) Régner ne signifie pas suivre d'un oeil distrait les occupations du gouvernement (...) C'est contribuer (...) au fonctionnement harmonieux de l'Etat'', in ''[[La Libre Belgique]]'' (April 1990) quoted by ''Les faces cachées de la monarchie belge'', Contradictions, number 65–66, 1991, p. 27. {{ISBN|2-87090-010-4}}</ref> The Belgian historian [[Jean Stengers]] wrote that "some foreigners believe the monarchy is indispensable to national unity. That is very naive. He is only a piece on the chessboard, but a piece which matters".<ref>French ''Certains étrangers croient – ils le disent souvent – que le maintien de l'unité belge tient à la personne du Roi. Cela est d'une grande naïveté. Il n'est qu'une pièce sur l'échiquier. Mais, sur l'échiquier, le Roi est une pièce qui compte.'', Jean Stengers, ''L'action du roi en Belgique depuis 1831'', Duculot, Gembloux, 1992, p. 312. {{ISBN|2-8011-1026-4}}</ref>