Leopold's major fault was perhaps that he wanted too much to be a King. As constitutional monarch of the Belgians, he had adamantly, and often bravely, refused to take a back seat while his ministers ran the country. His willfulness had led him into many dark hours, the darkest of which was his surrender of the Belgian army to Hitler in 1940. In recent years, Leopold's stubborn refusal to give up the throne of which more than half his people felt he was no longer worthy deeply rent Belgium.
Last week, after 17...
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