Here we have Queen Astrid with two of her children, Josephine Charlotte and Baudouin. Queen Astrid was actually Swedish, and after being proposed as a good match for many future Kings of Europe, including our Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII. However in 1926 it was announced that she was to marry Prince Leopold of Belgium. The wedding took place on the fourth of November, 1926, in Stockholm and then in Brussels.
Princess Josephine-Charlotte Stephanie Ingeborg Elisabeth Marie-José Marguerite Astrid was born on the eleventh of October 1927 at the Royal Palace of Brussels. Josephine was an unusual name in Belgium, but it was partially in respect of one of her great-aunts, Princess Josephine-Caroline of Belgium, and partially in honour of a book she much enjoyed reading during her pregnancy - but more about that tomorrow....
The family moved to Stuyvenberg, in Laeken, part of Brussels, where this picture was taken, in 1930. Her younger brother, Baudouin Albert Charles Leopold Axel Marie Gustave is also seen in this picture, and he was born at Stuyvenberg on the 7th of September 1930.
On the seventeenth of February 1934 King Albert I, the King of Belgium, was killed in a mountaineering accident, whilst climbing on his own. He was fifty-eight years old. On the twenty-third of February, just a few days later, his son and Princess Astrid became King and Queen.
On the sixth of June 1934, a new son was born, at Stuyvenberg, who was christened Albert Felix Humbert Theodore Christian Eugene Marie. When he was almost a year and three months old his mother and father were involved in a car accident, and she was killed, along with her as yet unborn fourth child. The King survived, apparently he had looked over at his wife, who was looking at a map. However reports differ of what happened then, as some say he ran into a tree and others a lake.
On the 11th of September 1941, whilst he was a prisoner of war at Laeken Castle, the King remarried, to a lady who had been born in England, though she was of Belgian descent. Her name was Mary Lilian Henriette Lucie Josephine Ghislaine Baels, and she had actually met him in 1933; it seems like she was rather smitten from then on, and their paths kept crossing. However she did not want to be Queen, or her children to be and eventually a compromise was reached, that she would be titled as the Princess of Belgium. and that any children would be called Prince or Princess but never become King or Queen. They would go on to have three children, Prince Alexandre, Princess Marie-Christine, and Princess Marie-Esmerelda, but she also loved her step children as if they were her own, though reportedly they took a while to warm to her.
Josephine Charlotte and her brothers were also imprisoned, and it seems her new step-mother and her first child were too. They were eventually released on the 7th of May 1945 and moved to Switzerland. The Belgians considered the King to have surrendered too soon, and he was deeply unpopular. The first one of them to return to the country, briefly, was Josephine Charlotte, in April 1949, and she would make regular visits, with the family moving there permanently once the monarchy was restored and her brother Baudouin was King.
On the 9th of April 1953, five years after they had first met, she married Jean Benoît Guillaume Robert Antoine Louis Marie Adolphe Marc d'Aviano, who would go on to become the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. They would go on to have five children. She christened her first, born on the 17th of February, 1954, Princess Marie-Astrid of Luxembourg.
She enjoyed being able to be involved with charities, but she did not entirely enjoy royal life, and she was always seen as being too reserved by the general public. But she found a kindred spirit in her husband, whose aunt had been forced to abdicate during the First World War because she was seen as being too pro- German, and who, with his family, had spent much of the Second World War on the run.
She died, of lung cancer, on the tenth of January, 2005, aged seventy-seven.
I am not going to lie, this card got the nod entirely because of the Bugatti pedal car. However this one is a strikingly different colour, usually they are French Racing Blue, or yellow and black, which was the favourite colour combination of Ettore Bugatti.
The pedal cars started out as a little treat, a one off, modelled on the Type 32 Grand prix racing car, and it was built for Ettore Bugatti`s son Roland as a birthday present in 1927. It was half size to an actual car, and powered by a twelve volt electric motor. Somehow pictures of it got out, and the press went wild, and so did lots of wealthy families, who wanted to buy one for their children. Ettore Bugatti thought about this, and realised it could be a money spinner, so he published that they would soon be for sale at between three and five thousand francs, just to gauge the interest. He was besieged by purchase requests, and so he went ahead with making them, and he also started to offer them in the sales catalogues, called "Baby" and advertised for children aged six to eight - the idea definitely being that if daddy drove one, so could his son.
This card is part of a lengthy issue, four series, each of twenty four cards, but, luckily for us, the ink used on the back differ with the series, the first being in brown, the second in blue, the third in purple, and the fourth in green.
The cards are also found in two language variants - one type, like ours, which is only in Belgian, and another which is split in half on the reverse, the text on one side being in Belgian (headed "Reine Astrid") and the text on the other being in Dutch (headed "Koningin Astrid").
All ninety six cards fit into one album, and that was issued in 1937, which is probably the date of the fourth and final set.
I have been told by one collector that the these cards came hot on the heels of a Liebig set, "Het Leven Van Koningin Astrid" / the life of Queen Astrid, which was issued in 1936 and is also available in Belgian or Dutch.
This is a list of the cards in this first set :
Serie : Reine Astrid [first series]
- Le Roi et la Reine lors leur mariage en Suede, 4 novembre 1926
- La Reine Astrid arrivant a Anvers le 8 novembre 1926
- La Reine Astrid avec la Princesse Jospehine-Charlotte assistant a la revue des troupes, le 27 avril 1932
- La Reine Astrid avec la Princesse Josephine-Charlotte et le Prince Baudoin a Stuyvenberg en 1932 - [close up head and shoulders]
- La Reine Astrid place le Prince Baudouin dans la petite Bugatti ou la Princesse-Josephine-Charlotte a deja pris place. - Au chateau de Stuyvenberg, 1932
- La Reine Astrid avec la Princesse Josephine-Charlotte et le Prince Baudoin a Stuyvenberg en 1932- [with Bugatti pedal car]
- La reine Astrid assistant a une representation de beinfaisance au Theatre Moliere en 1933
- La Reine Astrid avec la Princesse Josephine-Charlotte et le Prince Baudouin assistant a un defile d`enfants du balcon d`une maison de la rue Haute - oct 1933.
- Le Roi et la Reine avec les Enfants Royaux au bapteme du Prince de Liege, 1934
- Le Roi et la Reine assistant a l`inauguration du premier troncon du Canal Albert en 1934
- La Reine Astrid en visite chez une centenaire hospitalisee chez les Petites Soeurs des Pauvres, en septembre 1934
- Stuyvenberg - Au printemps 1935. La Reine Astrid tient le Prince de Liege dans ses bras -
- La Reine Astrid avec la Princesse Josephine-Charlotte. - Printemps 1935
- Arrivee de la Reine Astrid et de la Princesse Josephine-Charlotte au premier Te Deum pour S. M. Leopold III. - 1934
- La Reine Astrid avec la Princesse Josephine-Charlotte et le Prince de Liege au chateau de Stuyvenberg. - Printemps 1935
- Inauguration de l`Exposition de Brussels, le 27 avril 1935
- Le Roi et la Reine sont recus au Commissariat General lors de l`inauguration des Sections belges a l`exposition de Bruxelles le 4 mai 1935
- La Reine Astrid assistant a un defile des Croises a l`Eglise de N.D. de laChapelle, a Bruxelles le 20 juin 1935
- La Reine Astrid visitant l`Ecole de St-Vincent de Paul, a Bruxelles, le 20 juin 1935
- La Reine Astrid arrivant au bras du Duc d`York au bal du Pavillon Britannique a l`Exposition de Bruxelles le 1er juillet 1935
- Le Roi et la Reine a l`inauguration du nouvel hopital St-Pierre, a Bruxelles, le 4 juillet 1935
- Joyeuse Entree du Roi et la Reine a Liege le 7 juillet 1935
- Le Roi et la Reine assistant au Congres international de Pharmacie a l`Universite de Bruxelles, 30 juillet 1935
- Le Roi et la Reine assistant a la ceremonie du Centenaire de l`Institut Agronome de Gemblous, 30 juillet 1935