The battle for recognition continues despite the death of Christian Aaron Päffgen (‘Ari’ Boulogne), which occurred in 2023 in Paris. Ari was the son of Christa Päffgen, better known as Nico, top model and singer of The Velvet Underground who passed away in Ibiza and, according to the enormous resemblance, of Alain Delon. “You are not my son. I only slept with your mother once,” the famous French actor, who died in August 2024, once told Ari.
Alain Delon was this categorical more than once – as were his lawyers in court – in dashing his hopes of being recognized. A trauma that accompanied him throughout his tormented life, which was marked by the abuse of drugs (to which he was introduced in Ibiza first by his mother, Nico, and then also by his paternal grandmother, Edith Boulogne, who adopted him even though she did not speak to Alain) and through periods of deep depression. He died at the age of 60, almost destitute and hemiplegic. His body was found in an advanced state of decomposition.
A fleeting relationship
Alain Delon and Nico (who died in Ibiza in 1988) had a fleeting relationship in the 1960s and Ari was reportedly born from it. Although Delon flatly denied any accusation of paternity, Ari grew up with his paternal grandmother, who had adopted him with her second husband, Paul Boulogne, from whom the child then took his surname.
Orphan of a mother and then also of a grandmother, the young man had submitted a application for recognition of paternity in 2019. On August 27, 2020, the Orléans court declared itself incompetent, invoking the fact that Delon did not reside in France but in Switzerland, in Geneva. In September 2021, Boulogne’s application was rejected by the Orléans court.
A few months ago, the war for recognition started a new chapter: Ari’s daughter Blanche, has appealed to the Geneva Tribunal to ask it to establish whether his father was the film icon’s son. And this matter, if resolved in favor of Delon’s late, unacknowledged son, could revive the battle over the will that has been waged by the acknowledged children after the actor’s death and which managed to reach a truce just five months ago, after the actor’s three sons came to clash in court.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.