Born Baudouin Albert Charles Leopold Axel Marie Gustave de Belgique, he took the Belgian throne in 1951, at the age of twenty, and ruled until his death in 1993. Under his reign, the country then known as the Belgian Congo attained independence. His mother, Astrid of Sweden, was killed in a car accident when he was only five years old. His father subsequently married a commoner named Mary Lilian Baels.
