Re: Crown Prince Rudolph--controversies, affairs & his death

[Svetabel]

Frankly...I never have seen Mary Vetsera as a beauty. Maria Larish was beautiful, but Mary seems just pretty. Some pics of Stephanie of Belgium showed a woman most interesting than this "fashionable Mary". I do not believe that Rudolf fell in love with Mary and loved her passionately...From my point of wiew, he felt a certain attraction for Mary because she was really fascinated with him.

Frankly...I never have seen Mary Vetsera as a beauty. Maria Larish was beautiful, but Mary seems just pretty. Some pics of Stephanie of Belgium showed a woman most interesting than this "fashionable Mary". I do not believe that Rudolf fell in love with Mary and loved her passionately...From my point of wiew, he felt a certain attraction for Mary because she was really fascinated with him.

Some women are extremely sexual , they  are not beautiful but  men love them . Of course probably Rudolf indeed liked Mary as she was too young, and fascinated with him.

[Agneschen]

The stories that have been written about Rudolf & Mary Vetsera's Liebestod are rigmaroles & total nonsense in my opinion.
Rudolf had many love affairs with many women. He never was in love with Mary. He spent his last night before leaving to Mayerling with another of his mistresses Mizzi Caspar. He had previously asked Mizzi to die with him but she had laughed at him in the face. Mary was an easy prey. She was very young, credulous & fascinated by Rudolf. Her infatuation can be compared to the crushes teenagers nowadays have for actors or singers. Fancying herself violently in love, she was willing to comply to the Kronprinz's every wish & the thought of dying together probably appealed to her as "romantic". Rudolf was a coward at heart. He was afraid of death & badly needed someone to accompany him. After killing Mary he had reached the point of no return & had to die as well. Having murdered, he could simply go on living no longer. He had no alternative.
Just my 2 cents though for I know there are various theories about the Mayerling drama.

[Agneschen]

Frankly...I never have seen Mary Vetsera as a beauty. Maria Larish was beautiful, but Mary seems just pretty.

I agree. Rudolf himself did not think Mary a great beauty. He said she had a lovely face but a badly shaped body.

[Booklady]

Why did he make a point of having someone die with him?  Why not just go off to Mayerling and do it alone?  Does anyone have at hand the "suicide notes" they left.  It's been so long since I've read them I forgot if there might be any hidden clues in them.  The episode at Mayerling is still fascinating.

[Agneschen]

How could Rudolf go on living after having killed ? Could the Kronprinz of Austria-Hungary be tried for murder & sent to jail ? Can you imagine the scandal ? After killing Mary, the only alternative that was left was committing suicide.
I think he was afraid he would not have the pluck to do it if he was alone.

[Agneschen]

 Does anyone have at hand the "suicide notes" they left.  It's been so long since I've read them I forgot if there might be any hidden clues in them.  

Accorting to the Elisabeth bio by Corti (based on what Ida Ferenczy told him), in his last note Rudolf wrote to his mother : "I no longer have the right to live, I have murdered !".

[Booklady]

I believe some books have claimed that the current suicide notes in existence are not the original ones, or that some may have been destroyed.  Has anyone seen copies of them or know where they exist today?

Then there's always the conspiracy-theory aspect--are they real or forged?  Was suicide his only way out of a miserable situation?

[Marie Valerie]

In the Stephanie Book "Ich sollte Kaiserin werden" is a copy of Rudolf's Suicide letter.

Elisabeth has burned her one, that's all I know.



I think Rudolf choosed the easiert way - for him!
He was seriously ill and don't wanted to die a painful death, but it's a shame that he took Mary with him. Poor girl, she loved him and Rudolf just used her for his selfish end.

 

[Emilia]

Anyone know what Wilhelm thought of Rudolf?  

At first Wilhelm liked Rudolf a lot, as he treated him always so nice when being in Vienna. But as time passed, and Willi sensed that Rudolf´s friendlyness was only superfical, he began to dislike him. And Wilhelm of course couldn´t stand Rudolf´s liberal ideas, his friendship with many Jews (Wilhelm even called him a "Judenknecht") etc. :-/

[crazy_wing]

I think most of the pictures about of the two were taken when Wilhelm visited Vienna for the exposition to show the friendship between the two Empires.  Like Emilia above said, Rudolf and Wilhelm were very different.  Rudolf did not like Wilhelm either.  Wilhelm was too loud and militaristic for Rudolf.   FJ was not fond of Wilhelm either.  He compared Wilhelm and Rudolf's behavior during the period.  He was proud of his own son's behavior but found Wilhelm like a monkey.  

As years passed, Rudolf was probably jealous of Wilhelm too.  When the pictures were taken, Rudolf was 1st in line to the Austrian throne and Wilhelm was just 2nd in line to the Prussian throne.  But then by 1888, Wilhelm was already a Emperor and Rudolf was still a crown prince with nothing to do.  

[Lemur]

I was reading in "Fall of Eagles" just now that his mistress's body was hidden and he was said to have had died in a hunting accident. When her uncles appeared to demand her body, they said if they were denied they'd create a public scandal. They were forced to take her body home dressed and walked as if she were alive. This reminded me of "Weekend At Bernies". I can't believe they actually had to do that. Truth is stranger than fiction, this is why I love history!

[Prince_Christopher]

I was chilled when I read Lemur's post on the death of Vetsera, so I got out my copy of The Fall of Eagles, by C.L. Sulzberger, and for those interested, here is the direct quote concerning the macabre scene:

"Rudolf's body was taken to Vienna while Marie's was hidden in Mayerling until the following night.  The girl's two uncles led by Viktor Baltazzi of a respected Constantinople lineage,...threatened a public scandal if they could not reclaim their niece for the family.  Finally the palace acceded. They dressed her stiff corpse, walked it between them to a carriage as if she were merely ill, drove to the capital after forcing it, rigor mortis and all, into a semblance of sitting posture, and had her secretly buried in a Cistercian abbey." p.164.

[Yseult]

Wow...

A very good question, Marie_Valerie. My personal answer is the following: Rudolf was not strong enough to writte a last letter nor to his father, neither to his sister Gisela. Rudolf felt so guilty about his father, because he was sure that he was not the crownprince long awaited and deeply wished by such an emperor. It has been more easy to leave behind a letter to the mother I always adored and wanted to want him. I suppose that Rudolf felt a mixture of jealousy and tenderness to Valeria, the "only one daughter" of their mother. He knew so well that Valeria would povides comfort to both the father and the mother.

But Gisela...Gisela was the loved and beloved sister. Rudolf and Gisela were brought up by their paternal grand-mother archduchess Sophia, and the two children were really attached. If I´m not wrong, when Gisela, sixteen years old, married prince Leopold of Bavaria and moved from Viena to Munich, crownprince Rudolf felt so much pain and grieve. I think that Rudolf didn´t dare to writte a letter to his protective and supportive elder sister.

[Agneschen]

This is an interesting point Yseult. I have always wondered why Rudolf left no letter to his beloved elder sister. He & Gisela were indeed very close and devoted to each other. When Gisela married and left for Munich, Rudolf is said to have cried floods of tears.

[Yseult]

You´re right, Agneschen!

The more hard thing to do it´s to recognize to our really loved ones that our life is a complete failure, a large number of mistakes that hurted us so much and left us so tired to carry on our personal cross on our shoulders. I suppose that Gisela was a woman so naive...she married very young, and Leopold was the only man she ever loved or she ever needed to belong to...she never was touched by gossip or scandals...she was a good girl, a good wife, a good mother, this kind of woman that always remind me "Melanie Wilkes" in "Gone with the wind"   The more dreadful thing to Rhett Butler was to confess his "sins" to Melanie...isn´t it? Well, I´m speculating, but I suppose that Rudolf had not the strenght to send a letter to his Gisela/Melanie explaining her that he was a man who found solace in drink, drugs and female companion, a husband who infected his wife with venereal disease...At, at the end, he was able to kill Mary and killed himself after, but not able to writte a farewell´s letter to the sweet Gisela.

(And sorry for my bad english...I hope you can understand what I mean)