Fabiola of Belgium

Fabiola de Mora y Aragon (1928 to 2014) was a Spanish noblewoman who became Queen of the Belgians by marrying King Baudouin on 15 December 1960 and remained queen consort until his death in 1993. Born in Madrid into the family of the Marquis of Casa Riera, she worked as a hospital nurse and published a book of fairy tales before her engagement. The couple had no children after five pregnancies ended in miscarriage, so the crown passed to Baudouin's younger brother, Albert II. She held no governing office of her own, but she took a public role in charity: she was honorary president of the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, president of the King Baudouin Foundation from 1993, founder of a social secretariat that answered requests for help, and patron of mental health and dyslexia programmes. She received the Ceres Medal of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in 2001 for work on behalf of rural women. This entry is placed among the monarchs because her public life was spent inside the Belgian monarchy, although she was a consort and never a sovereign.