On This Day: Queen Astrid Killed In Car Accident

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the death of the popular Queen Astrid of the Belgians. She was killed on August 29 in Küssnacht am Rigi, Switzerland following a car accident.

Astrid and her husband, King Leopold III, were holidaying at their villa, Haslihorn, on the shore of Lake Lucerne with their two eldest children, Joséphine-Charlotte and Baudouin. Bad weather saw the couple send the children home to Brussels on August 28, intending to follow them shortly after. But the sun came out on the morning of August 29, and the King and Queen decided to get in one last mountain hike before leaving Switzerland.

Astrid, Queen of the Belgians

King Leopold was driving a Packard One-Twenty convertible, his 29-year-old wife in the passenger seat next to him (their chauffeur was in the back). All was well as they drove along the mountain-side highway, the lake below them, until the car’s right wheels hit a drainage gap on the side of the highway and left the road. Unable to regain full control of the vehicle, Leopold was powerless as the passenger side of the car slammed into a pear tree, violently flinging his beloved wife out the front windshield. The car hit another tree before rolling into the shallow lake.

The Queen, who was born a Princess of Sweden in 1905, sustained severe life-threatening injuries, and died in King Leopold’s arms, according to witnesses. An autopsy listed a fractured skull (from when Astrid hit the tree) as the cause of death. When news of her death reached her adopted homeland, the Belgian people were shocked and devastated.

“It was hardly nine years ago that she came to us, like a fairy princess in an atmosphere of grace, love, youth and happiness…Is there really some mysterious law that insures that everything that is the greatest, the purest, the most beautiful should last only for a short time?” Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland said in a radio address the night of Astrid’s death, indicating the love and respect the country had for it’s young Queen.

The body of Queen Astrid lies in repose, bandages covering her injuries

A train brought Queen Astrid’s body home, and a funeral service was held on September 3 in Brussels. Thousands lined the streets of the capital to pay their respects, many crying, watching as a bereft King Leopold – his arm strapped to his body to protect a fractured rib – walked behind his wife’s coffin. Astrid – nicknamed the ‘Snow Princess’ by the Belgians because of her Scandinavian heritage – was interred into the Royal Crypt at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken.

Queen Astrid’s descendants can today be found in Belgium and Luxembourg – both her sons, Baudouin and Albert, reigned as King in Belgium, while her daughter Joséphine-Charlotte married Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg.

Filed under Belgium, Historical Royals, Sweden
Tagged Anniversary, Astrid of Sweden, Death.

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