Leopold's Five-Day Marriage Was Invalid

Belgian king Leopold II, infamous for the atrocities committed under his rule in the Congo Free State, took a 16-year-old French prostitute named Caroline Lacroix as his mistress in 1899, when he was 65. They remained together for ten years, had two sons, and received widespread condemnation in Belgium. They married secretly in a religious ceremony five days before Leopold died in 1909. Because they never held a civil ceremony, Belgian law did not recognize the marriage.

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