The King of the Belgians Leopold II and his famous mistress at the heart of a Belgian detective comic
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Royal readings – The second King of the Belgians, Leopold II, is at the heart of the comic strip “Ostende 1905” with a screenplay by Belgian journalist Patrick Weber, a specialist in crowned heads.
Recognizable by his long rectangular white beard, Leopold II plan on the cover of “Ostende 1905”. If this comic strip released by “Anspach” editions in November 2022 tells of a police investigation carried out by Commissioner Ansor and his men in this Belgian resort bathed by the North Sea, the second King of the Belgians is at the heart of the story. On the one hand because he comes to work there with his mistress Blanche Delacroix, then pregnant with their first child.
On the other hand because he received the Shah of Persia there. And the sovereign does not appreciate that the latter’s emissary was assassinated shortly before he himself arrived in the city. And even less than his dear Blanche is the subject of caricatures and pamphlets the qualifier of “mother madam” or “whore” of the king. He fully intends that the local police solve these two problems and as quickly as possible.
A scenario and an explanatory notebook by Patrick Weber
In “Coq-sur-Mer 1933”, another volume of this collection of comic strips devoted to the history of Belgium and evoking the presence in this place of Albert Einstein, fleeing the Nazi threat, the queen consort Elisabeth -the wife of King Albert I – appears in only three boxes. But in “Ostende 1905”, the deal is very different. Leopold II invites himself into many pages under the pencil of Olivier Wozniak and the pen of Patrick Weber. The scenario is indeed signed by this Belgian journalist, specialist in crowned heads, who took care, at the end of the volume, to reframe the fictional elements of the story in a notebook of texts. He explains in particular what the development of Ostend during the Belle Epoque owes to Leopold II who liked to come there on vacation and who was this Blanche Delacroix who managed to “put the grappling hook” on the monarch in the last years of his life. . To the point of being titled baroness and being married just three days before her royal lover died. He was then 74 years old, she 26 and had been his mistress for ten years.