Reading up of the end of the Hapsburg monarchy in central Europe inevitably brings one to this hugely over romanticized incident. All sorts of nutty conspiracy theories have been suggested and heatedly defended (it was the Kennedy assassination of its day) but they all come to grief on one simple fact; NONE of them are worse than the public story that Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria murdered his teenaged mistress then shot himself. Now that's a story to hush up! Political assassination; murder by a jealous lackey or by Mary's male relatives makes a MUCH better story from the pov of Rudolph's reputation.

Unfortunately murder/suicide IS the truth. Rudolph is known to have invited another mistress, an actress named Mitzi Caspar to 'die with him'. She laughed it off refusing to take it seriously though later she did report it to the Viennese chief of police who took an interest in the doings of the royal house. He is also said to have made the same suggestion to his wife, Crown Princess Stephanie, who was terrified and went straight to the Emperor - who also refused to believe Rudolph was serious.

There is however one aspect of the 'tragedy' that seems not to have been adequately explored. Rudolph was suffering from venereal disease - probably gonorrhea rather than syphilis but he is unlikely to have known that - and intercourse with a virgin was believed in those days to cure venereal disease. Hence little Mary Vetsera and hence the suicide pact when the 'cure' failed. It is an ugly fact that it took Rudolph between six to eight hours to work up the nerve to shoot himself after murdering that deluded teenaged girl. Emperor Franz Joseph pretty much said it when he cried that his son had died like a coward.

However the most distasteful aspect of the whole story is the attempts by contemporaries to place the blame on the women involved; little Maria Vetsera is cast as a stalker or a Mata Hari and of course it's all Princess Stephanie's fault for not being a better wife! Granted it takes two to ruin a marriage but Rudolph's flagrant infidelity and the resultant venereal disease with which he infected his wife goes a long way towards explaining any coolness on her part. And to be fair she made various attempts 'save' Rudolph by taking him away from Vienna for a while.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2014 10:38AM by Roxana Cooper.