[FONT=verdana, arial]Patrick d'Udekem d'Acoz was born in 1936 in Proven (East-Flanders). He studied to be an agronomist, specialized in forestry.
He was for many years the mayor of Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, the small town where Mathilde and her family have always lived.
he has also been the local councellor of the city Bastogne, and he was a judge at the court of commerce in Neufchâteau.
In 1971 he married the Polish countess Anne Komorowska, who was born in Bialograd, Poland in 1946.
Countess Anne was a nurse who has worked in a hospital in Brussels, untill the time she had children.
At the time of Mathilde's marriage, the king made Patrick d'Udekem d'Acoz and his children counts and countesses. They were already noble, but didn't have a title. You could say that they received a 'higher ranking'.
Mathilde was Patrick's eldest child, followed by Marie-Alix (who died in a car crash in 1997), Elisabeth (jewellery designer, married to marquis Alfonso Pallavicini, living in Paris), Hélène (lawyer, unmarried) and Charles Henri (student at the Sorbonne in Paris, unmarried).
Mathilde's father over the years never sought press attention but the feud with his brothers, that started with a raw over their mother's heritage, certainly didn't go unnoticed. When Mathilde's father was in a coma in hospital, the two brothers, Henri and Raoul, said they were sorry the 3 of them had wasted precious years in a fight. [/FONT]
I feel for Mathilde and both of her families.
