Royal Central - Prince Ricardo De La Cerda
Princess Elisabeth will spend part of her summer at a military camp, the Belgian Royal Palace announced earlier this week.
The future queen, currently studying at Oxford in the United Kingdom, will take part in a military training camp after learning to use a new version of the Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle at a training weekend in March.
The Belgian Royal Palace announced the news on social media, writing that Princess Elisabeth and her cohorts, who had not yet had training with the rifle, could do so during the March weekend and then attend further training in July.
Princess Elisabeth took part in the training weekend in Leopoldsburg shortly before she joined her mother, Queen Mathilde, on a working trip to Egypt, where they traced the journey of former Queen Elisabeth and her passion for Egyptology.
Princess Elisabeth attended the Royal Military Academy from 2020 to 2021, studying social and military sciences. She participated in the Belgian National Day celebrations in 2021 as part of her military group rather than as a member of the Belgian Royal Family.
She completed her training in the summer of 2021 and vowed to keep in touch with her military roots—as she’ll one day be the head of Belgium’s Armed Forces—and the friends she’d made in training.
In an interview with Belgian broadcaster VRT at the time of her training, Colonel Van Avermaet said, “Princess Elisabeth has defended herself well in every domain, in the military, academic, sporting and character field.”
He added: “Elisabeth is a student that we were happy to have with us. She was well integrated into the group and did not stand out: that is a compliment.”
Princess Elisabeth has studied history and politics at Lincoln College at Oxford since October 2021.