Queen Mathilde from 1 to 50 years old

Mathilde Marie Christine Ghislaine d'Udekem d'Acoz (January 20, 1973) is Queen of Belgium as the wife of King Philippe. She is the first native-born Belgian queen. She has founded and assisted charities to decrease poverty in the country. Mathilde was born in Brussels, Belgium as the first child of Count Patrick d'Udekem d'Acoz, a politician, and his wife Countess Anna Maria Komorowska, a nurse in a Brussels hospital. She has three sisters: Marie-Alix (who died in a car accident in 1997), Elisabeth and Hélène, and one brother, Charles-Henri. She grew up in the Château de Losange in Villers-la-Bonne-Eau, and attended the Institut Libre Marie Haps in Brussels from 1991 to 1994, where she studied speech therapy and graduated magna cum laude. She worked as a speech therapist in her own practice in Brussels from 1995 to 1999. She earned a master's degree in psychology at the Université catholique de Louvain in 2002 with honours, and became the first member of the Belgian royal family with a Belgian university degree. In September 1999, Belgian Royal Court announced the engagement of Prince Philippe, Duke of Brabant to Jonkvrouw Mathilde d'Udekem d'Acoz. She was presented to the press and public at the Castle of Laeken on September 13, 1999. Mathilde and Philippe married on December 4, 1999 in Brussels, and she was made Duchess of Brabant and a Princess of Belgium on November 8, 1999. The couple have four children: Princesses Elisabeth and Eléonore and Princes Gabriel and Emmanuel. Princess Elisabeth, the couple's eldest child, is the first in line to the throne and ahead of her younger brothers and sister, who are second, third, and fourth in line to succeed, owing to a change in Belgian succession laws in 1991, allowing for the eldest child to succeed, regardless of sex. Crown in 2013, Queen Mathilde is concerned with a range of social issues including education, child poverty, intergenerational poverty, the position of women in society and literacy. Since 2009, she has been the honorary president of Unicef Belgium. She serves as the World Health Organization's Special Representative for Immunization. She also the honorary president of the Breast International Group, a non-profit organisation for academic breast cancer research groups from around the world. She set up the Princess Mathilde Fund (now the Queen Mathilde Fund) in 2001, which promotes the care of vulnerable people and awards an annual prize for good works in a particular sector. The sector changes each year: examples include early years education, women's health, and protecting young people from violence. She is a godmother to Princess Alexia of the Netherlands and Princess Isabella of Denmark.