WEBVTT - The Crown Prince and His Lover Dead 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:03.800 Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio 0:00:04.040 --> 0:00:08.320 and Grim and Mild from Eronminkie. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:15.600 At six ten in the morning on January thirtieth, eighteen 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:20.079 eighty nine, Crown Prince Rudolph of the Austro Hungarian Empire 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.720 came out of his bedroom, closed the door behind him, 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:25.959 and told his valet to prepare for the day of 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:29.320 hunting a head. The lodge where they were staying at 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.400 Marylyn in the Vienna Woods was still dark in the 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:37.240 early morning, though Rudolph was already dressed in his hunting clothes. 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:39.800 He said that he wanted to get a bit more sleep, 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:43.279 have breakfast ready at eight thirty, and wake me at 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:48.400 seven thirty, he said. The valet, named Loshek, noticed that 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:52.479 Rudolph was whistling as he went back to his room. 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:56.240 As Loshak was setting the table, he heard two gunshots 0:00:56.280 --> 0:01:01.120 in rapid succession, but thought nothing of it. At seven 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:04.120 thirty he came to the Crown Prince's bed chamber to 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:10.280 find it locked. Looshak knocked loudly and then again, strange, 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:14.640 but not too strange. Rudolf frequently used morphine and drank 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.560 enough Kognak and Champagne to pass out cold, but Looshak 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:22.440 had just seen him an hour ago. Lushak tried running 0:01:22.520 --> 0:01:25.800 upstairs and down a back staircase to a second entrance 0:01:25.840 --> 0:01:29.200 to the Crown princess chamber, but he found that that door, 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:33.920 too was also locked from the inside. His heart pounding 0:01:33.959 --> 0:01:37.759 in his chest, Looshek went to find Count Hoyas, Rudolf's 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.360 hunting body, who was also staying at the lodge. He's 0:01:41.400 --> 0:01:45.920 probably just tired, Ayas called, let him sleep, but Looshak 0:01:45.920 --> 0:01:48.680 insisted that Hayas come to the lock door and help. 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.240 The Count rattled the door knob. Is there a coal 0:01:53.360 --> 0:01:56.160 stove in there? He asked? Could the Crown Prince have 0:01:56.200 --> 0:02:00.320 passed out from the fumes? Looshak shook his head. The 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:03.520 rooms were heated by wood. And there's one more thing 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.680 I should probably tell you, the valet said, looking at 0:02:06.680 --> 0:02:11.240 the floor. Rudolf wasn't alone in his chamber. He had 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.560 snuck his seventeen year old mistress Mary but Sarah to 0:02:14.600 --> 0:02:20.040 the lodge with him. Oh Countoya said, okay, well, let's 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:24.359 think about this then. The Crown Prince's brother in law, Coburg, 0:02:24.480 --> 0:02:26.720 was set to arrive at the lodge that morning round 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:29.520 eight thirty to join the hunting. What if they just 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:35.400 waited for him? And so they waited. When Koburg finally arrived, 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.200 the trio decided that the best course of action would 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.080 be to break down the door with an axe. Looshek 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.720 first tried axing the lock, but he couldn't break it, 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.120 so he decided just to break through a wooden panel, 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:49.640 which allowed him to reach a hand through the door 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:54.639 and undo the lock from the inside. The three men 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:59.079 stood outside the closed door. They decided that Loshek would 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:01.880 go in alone to zam in the seat, just in 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:05.920 case the prince and his lover were in a compromising position, 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.480 while the other two men hung back the valet. Gingerly 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:14.880 pressed the wooden door open. The bile froze in his 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:19.239 throat and stammering, Loshek turned back to Coburg and hoyos, 0:03:20.360 --> 0:03:25.600 the Crown Prince is dead. He managed to say. The 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.720 story of the Maryling instant as it's come to be 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:32.720 known as, fascinated historians and lovers of the macabre for 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:36.680 a century, but the event itself has become twisted to 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:40.960 fit pat narratives of love or revenge. It wasn't a 0:03:41.080 --> 0:03:45.160 Romeo and juliet story, or at least it wasn't entirely 0:03:45.280 --> 0:03:49.600 a Romeo and Juliette's story. The Mistress Mary that Sarah 0:03:50.000 --> 0:03:54.040 was madly and wildly in love, and in her desperation, 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:58.640 Prince Rudolph saw an opportunity. He would bring her down 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.360 with him if it meant he'd didn't have to go alone. 0:04:02.800 --> 0:04:13.880 I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is noble blood. Rudolph, the 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.479 crown Prince of the Austro Hungarian Empire, was born in 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:21.839 eighteen fifty eight to a father who almost immediately despised 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:24.480 him and a mother who had no time or energy 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:28.760 for him. The Emperor friends Joseph was an old school 0:04:28.800 --> 0:04:33.839 Habsburg Conservative, a militaristic leader who valued discipline and formality 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:38.960 above most other things. The Empress Elizabeth, commonly known as Cissy, 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.360 was known for being beautiful, but her fixation on maintaining 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:47.760 her youth and beauty and figure could accurately be described 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:52.320 as obsession. Neither the Emperor nor the Empress had the 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:58.400 time nor inclination for parenthood. Austria Hungary wasn't like England, 0:04:58.440 --> 0:05:02.239 where Queen Victoria level. Than creating a picture of warm 0:05:02.320 --> 0:05:08.360 and happy domesticity, no things were formal and rigid. Rudolph's 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:11.520 contact with his parents was akin to a modern day 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:15.839 relationship with a polite coworker. When Rudolph was five, he 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:19.360 came down with a case of typhoid. His mother refused 0:05:19.400 --> 0:05:22.599 to cut short her vacation to Bavaria to return home 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.560 to him. She was the type of mother who did 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:29.120 eventually respond to his letters, but usually after waiting a 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:34.279 few days. At age six, Rudolph's education began under a 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.719 major General who was informed that his job was to 0:05:37.720 --> 0:05:41.479 toughen up the nervous young prince. To that end, the 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.159 major General forced the Crown Prince to do military drills 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.320 outside at six in the morning every morning, rain or snow. 0:05:50.279 --> 0:05:53.000 Sometimes in the middle of the night, the major General 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.599 would creep into the little boy's bedroom and fire a 0:05:56.680 --> 0:06:01.600 gun several times, you know, to toughen him up. Once, 0:06:01.760 --> 0:06:04.440 the Crown Prince was brought to the zoo, where he 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:08.520 was locked in a cage. While the boy screamed and 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.360 cried in terror, the major General shouted at him through 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:17.839 the bars that a wild boar was coming to eat him. Unsurprisingly, 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:22.400 the tax did not help toughen Rudolph up. He became 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:26.120 prone to bed wedding and night terrors that culminated in 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:30.640 a nervous breakdown at seven years old. The official story 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:35.839 from the palace was that Rudolph had diphtheria. As his 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:39.919 education progressed, Rudolph was presented with a series of fifty 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:45.000 tutors for a seemingly infinite number of subjects a dozen languages, 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:50.039 military history, diplomacy, economics. From eight in the morning until 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.880 nine at night, the crown Prince was drilled in the 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:57.279 things that his father decided a prince should know. Emperor 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:01.040 Franz Joseph wrote the prince quote us not become a 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:04.520 free thinker, but he should thoroughly become acquainted with the 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:13.960 conditions and requirements of modern times. Still, Rudolph's teenage rebellion 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:18.760 led to private, furtive writings about atheism, and Rudolph further 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:22.360 rebelled against his father privately by writing about his liberal 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:26.640 ideas for the future of Europe. But his patchwork education 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:30.480 had real consequences. Though he knew a little about a 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.680 lot of subjects, Rudolph was never able to gain the 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:39.680 critical thinking abilities to digest contradicting information. He wanted a 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:43.120 liberal Europe, but he never for a second questioned his 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:47.920 own divine right to be ruler. His education was shallow 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:51.160 and wrote, with no time for Rudolph to learn how 0:07:51.200 --> 0:07:54.800 to think methodically or to tease out the contradictions in 0:07:54.880 --> 0:07:59.160 his philosophies, and so by the time his formal education 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.400 ended a few a week shy of his nineteenth birthday, 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:08.280 Rudolph was a deeply unpleasant man, moody and prideful, prone 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:13.040 to making rash judgments and dramatic proclamations, but without the 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:18.560 patients or humility to try to understand things deeply. Rudolph's 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:22.160 father made him a colonel, but Rudolph approached his military 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:26.640 duties with a complete lack of interest. His fellow officers 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.679 would see him staring out into the distance, either looking 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:34.920 bored or tired, or both. One afternoon, during a regiment report, 0:08:35.480 --> 0:08:38.600 Rudolph stared at the ground for ten minutes straight while 0:08:38.640 --> 0:08:44.360 another officer was discussing important logistical matters. Finally, at one 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:49.440 point Rudolph interrupted him. Every other officer stared at the 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:54.400 Crown Prince, eager with anticipation. He almost never spoken meetings 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:59.679 there's dirt on my shoe, he said. Finally, you there, groom, 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:03.480 come wipe it off. The nearby servant quickly came over 0:09:03.559 --> 0:09:07.200 and knelt with a rag. When Rudolph's shoe was clean, 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:12.280 the meeting continued, and Rudolph returned to staring blankly into space. 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:19.720 His political career as a young man was marred with 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:24.000 frequent social faux pa and a sarcastic attitude that bordered 0:09:24.000 --> 0:09:28.760 on cruel, especially with his mother and younger sister. Here 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.280 he was the only son and crown prince of the 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:35.680 most powerful royal family in the world, but until his 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.240 father died, he had no purpose in life. His only 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.440 sense of purpose or meaning came from his position as 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:47.120 a crown prince, and so Rudolph enforced rigid protocol around 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.360 his position, which only served to isolate him from his 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:55.480 family Further, Rudolph began spending his time getting drunk at 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:59.880 seedy taverns, having affairs with women, and becoming a regular 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:04.040 customer at Vienna's best brothels. He kept a book of 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:07.520 his conquests, color coded by whether or not they had 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:13.800 been virgins. When Rudolph's reputation became something murmured and politely 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:18.440 coughed about. In the emperor's presence. Friends, Joseph insisted that 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:24.760 his son get married. Reluctantly, Rudolph agreed. He rejected two 0:10:24.840 --> 0:10:28.400 women right away for not being attractive enough, but finally 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.960 he agreed on marrying Princess Stephanie of Belgium. He went 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:35.840 on a trip to Brussels to dutifully propose to his 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:39.800 bride to be, but the entire arrangement was almost torn 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:43.280 up when his future mother in law walked in to 0:10:43.360 --> 0:10:48.920 see Rudolph infal Grante with an actress in his bedroom. 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.240 He had brought a girlfriend along to Brussels to keep 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.160 him company for the trip where he was supposed to propose, 0:10:56.320 --> 0:11:00.400 but these diplomatic matches were more important than fidela, at 0:11:00.480 --> 0:11:03.559 least on the part of the groom. Twenty three year 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:08.200 old Rudolph became engaged to fifteen year old Princess Stephanie, 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.360 although the wedding had to be postponed for a year 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.200 when it was discovered that Stephanie hadn't yet begun to menstright. 0:11:16.360 --> 0:11:21.000 The optimistic young princess learned very quickly that her relationship 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:25.839 with her new husband would be cordial at best. They 0:11:25.880 --> 0:11:28.960 managed to produce a daughter, but Rudolph spent most of 0:11:28.960 --> 0:11:31.360 his time out at those ced taverns, you know, the 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:35.120 type of place where men played cards and women danced 0:11:35.160 --> 0:11:38.720 on tables. He didn't even bother trying to keep his 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.480 affairs a secret. Everyone knew he was out at brothels 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.680 that he spent most of his time with his favorite prostitute, 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:51.040 a young woman named Mitzi Casper. Even so, the marriage 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:56.080 didn't entirely collapse until Crown Prince Rudolph infected both himself 0:11:56.320 --> 0:12:01.239 and his wife with gonorrhea. The disease ease was incredibly 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:05.200 painful and would flare up at random intervals, but it 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.960 was even worse for Princess Stephanie. It had shriveled her 0:12:08.960 --> 0:12:14.200 fallopian tubes. Her husband had made her infertile, and rendered 0:12:14.200 --> 0:12:18.040 her incapable of doing the single task required of her 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:23.120 to make a male heir. From that point on, the 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:27.800 relationship between husband and wife was formal and distant, a 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:32.559 contract between countries. Rudolph was less a husband to her 0:12:32.720 --> 0:12:35.600 and more of a jailer, someone who kept her in 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:40.280 a cruel and distant country and constantly humiliated her again 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:45.600 and again with his infidelity. As for Rudolph, the gonorrhea 0:12:45.840 --> 0:12:50.680 led to prescriptions of morphine and opium and cocaine, which 0:12:50.679 --> 0:12:54.200 he added to his regular habits of kogniac and Champagne. 0:12:55.520 --> 0:12:59.920 The depressive crown Prince, now all but ignored for political tasks, 0:13:00.760 --> 0:13:05.280 entirely retreated into a world of instant gratification and pleasure. 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:09.720 He surrounded himself with people who flattered him and made 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:14.400 him feel important. After all, he was the crown Prince 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:18.320 of the Austro Hungarian Empire. He was supposed to always 0:13:18.360 --> 0:13:27.280 feel important. Mary vet Sarah had very little in the 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.760 way of formal education. Her mother, Helene, sent her to 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.320 an institute for daughters of the nobility, where Mary would 0:13:35.400 --> 0:13:38.400 learn the skills to become a good society wife one day, 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:42.400 the dancing and the table manners and the like. In truth, 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:45.280 Mary was just the daughter of a minor baron, and 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:49.800 her upward mobility in terms of social hierarchy was already 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.960 limited by the less than spotless reputation of her mother. 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:58.920 Helene had been the type of woman that established matriarchs 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:03.959 of Viennese society refused to make eye contact with. Back 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:07.520 when Helene was thirty two, she seduced the twenty year 0:14:07.559 --> 0:14:11.760 old Crown Prince Rudolph himself, and since Mary had begun 0:14:11.800 --> 0:14:15.559 appearing in the society scene at age fifteen, she had 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:19.640 started building a similar reputation for herself. There was no 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.840 denying that she was pretty, with dark hair and dark 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:27.240 flashing eyes. Women muttered that her large bosom made her 0:14:27.280 --> 0:14:32.760 figure unbalanced, but men tended to stare at it. People 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:36.600 rarely described Mary that Sarah as an intellectual. There are 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:42.320 other adjectives that crop up, vivacious, attention loving, captivating a flirt. 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.760 She seemed to have very little interest in art or music. 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:50.360 Her primary loves were gossiping about her exploits in a 0:14:50.400 --> 0:14:54.920 way that even her friends found indecorous, and second the 0:14:55.120 --> 0:14:58.800 scandalous French romance novels that she had her maid sneaked to. 0:14:58.880 --> 0:15:04.840 Her tragedy had come to the vet Sera family early. 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:10.040 When Mary was ten years old, her brother Ladislav died 0:15:10.120 --> 0:15:15.240 in an explosion at the Viennese Ring Theater. Ladislav was sixteen, 0:15:15.760 --> 0:15:18.320 and he was one of five cadets at the military 0:15:18.360 --> 0:15:22.120 academy who were given complimentary tickets to an opera for 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:27.080 outstanding performance that night. A malfunction with the stage lights 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:31.200 caused a gas explosion that engulfed the entire theater in flames. 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:35.800 Crowds trampled each other trying to reach the emergency exit doors, 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:41.880 which only swung in, trapping the occupants inside. Ladislav's body 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:46.000 was only identified because his mother Helene, recognized the cuff 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:49.680 links that he had been wearing. But the event didn't 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:54.080 seem to affect young Mary too deeply, far from becoming morbid. 0:15:54.440 --> 0:15:56.960 If anything, as she grew into a young woman, she 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:02.080 became impatient for I am er for excitement, for scandal, 0:16:02.200 --> 0:16:07.119 for love. If life was fleeting, why waste it waiting 0:16:07.160 --> 0:16:12.160 through the insufferably restrictive formalities of Austrian high society when 0:16:12.160 --> 0:16:15.560 it was so much more fun to make interesting things happen. 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:21.000 Preserving her virtue had very little appeal for Mary. When 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:23.960 there were so many men that she saw staring at her, 0:16:24.920 --> 0:16:27.840 Mary didn't concern herself with their age or whether or 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:32.320 not they were married. Her flirtations became games of conquest, 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.680 and Mary, intellectual or not, was very good at games. 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:45.040 But fate came for Mary vet Serah when she saw 0:16:45.120 --> 0:16:48.120 the Crown Prince Rudolph in the royal box at a 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.960 horse race. He was so close that she could watch him, 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:56.000 studying him in profile as the sun led him from behind. 0:16:56.920 --> 0:17:00.560 His light mustache the curl, and his brown hair. The 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:05.879 black cape he wore embroidered with golden squares. He was magnificent, 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:09.280 like the hero of one of her French romance novels. 0:17:10.280 --> 0:17:13.520 When the two were introduced at a ball, she practically 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:17.600 spun home informing her maid that she had finally seen 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:21.440 the Crown Prince and that he was beautiful. The teenage 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:26.359 infatuation came easily for Mary. Like almost every girl her age, 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:30.040 she had souvenir post cards that featured the young Crown Prince, 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:32.760 much in the same way a young Cape Middleton had 0:17:32.800 --> 0:17:37.240 a poster of Prince William. For Mary's mother, Helene, she 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:41.080 was content to indulge in the infatuation, After all, she 0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:44.480 had had her own brief affair with the Prince. Helene 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:47.320 was perfectly happy to wink and close the door on 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:50.679 Mary in one of her many suitors, and so she 0:17:50.760 --> 0:17:53.960 found very little to condemn when Mary began taking her 0:17:54.000 --> 0:17:58.560 carriage out to the prater every day, hoping to accidentally 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:05.520 see Rudolph. But those meetings soon became less accidental. Rudolph 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.840 had a cousin named Countess Marie Larrish, the type of 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:12.280 woman who delighted to indulge in any shred of gossip 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:16.080 if it made things more entertaining for her. She was 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:18.480 also the type of woman who knew exactly how to 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:23.399 exploit an opportunity for profit. Rudolph had been seeing women 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:28.280 mistress's prostitutes prostitute who became mistresses since the beginning of 0:18:28.359 --> 0:18:32.320 his unhappy marriage to Princess Stephanie, and his cousin, the 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:36.640 Countess was usually good at procuring those women for him 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:41.400 for a price. As the affair between the very married 0:18:41.600 --> 0:18:45.120 thirty year old Rudolph and the sixteen year old Mary 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:50.359 that Sarah began, Countess Larish began taking little fees both 0:18:50.440 --> 0:18:53.600 from Mary and Rudolph to act as a go between 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.679 for their meetings, and by little fees the equivalent today 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.960 of a few hundred thousand dollars, the Countess would tell 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.320 Mary that she needed to pay up if she ever 0:19:04.400 --> 0:19:08.439 wanted to see the Crown Prince again. To Rudolph, the 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:12.399 Countess would not so indiscreetly let him know that he 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:15.960 would pay if he wanted certain matters to remain private, 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:19.720 and so for a good part of the year, young 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:22.840 Mary would be swept away from her home by the Countess, 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:27.119 who delivered her to Rudolph whenever he requested, before she 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:31.720 was spent safely deposited back to her mother. Helene and 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:35.320 the Countess were close. The married countess herself had had 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:39.720 two illegitimate children by one of Helene's brothers. But what 0:19:39.920 --> 0:19:42.879 was just meant to be a trifling little fling soon 0:19:42.960 --> 0:19:47.440 became so much more for young Mary. One afternoon, as 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:50.640 the Countess escorted Mary up the back stairs and through 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:55.159 the kitchens to Rudolph's chambers at Hofburg Palace, Mary gingerly 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:59.280 stepped ahead. Oh don't worry, I know the way, she smiled. 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.240 Mary had been sidestepping her escort and had already visited 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:09.399 the palace without the Countess realizing Mary's affair had taken 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:13.680 on a life of its own. Once, without telling anyone 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:17.359 except her maid, Mary snuck to the Hofburg Palace in 0:20:17.359 --> 0:20:20.880 the middle of the night wearing only a lingerie nightgown 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:27.480 and a fur coat. He's going to annul his marriage 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:31.080 to that awful princess Stephanie, and Mary me Mary would 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:34.560 tell her sister, Hannah. Hanna just rolled her eyes and 0:20:34.640 --> 0:20:38.320 called her sister a stupid child. I can't believe she's 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.639 so in love with the Crown Prince. You can't imagine 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:45.200 anything so silly, and she has no idea how ridiculous 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:49.000 it is, Hannah said. Their mother, Helene found it better 0:20:49.119 --> 0:20:53.080 just to dismiss it altogether. Your sister isn't very well, 0:20:53.280 --> 0:20:58.000 she said simply. Mary didn't look well. Her eyes had 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:01.080 begun to take on an evil glint, especially when she 0:21:01.119 --> 0:21:04.639 spoke of Princess Stephanie, and she began to revel in 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.760 her new found power to torment Princess Stephanie and to 0:21:07.960 --> 0:21:13.360 captivate the scornful attention of society. One afternoon, when Rudolph 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:15.600 and the Princess were at the theater to see a 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:20.680 Sarah Bernhardt performance, Mary caused a scandal when she arrived 0:21:20.840 --> 0:21:24.879 wearing an extremely low cut dress and then spent the 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:29.560 entire performance openly staring at the Royal Box instead of 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:34.320 the stage. Her visits to Rudolph were always on his terms, 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:38.240 but that just made them so much more electric charged 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:43.040 in their urgency. I cannot live without having seen or 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:46.439 spoken to him, Mary, said once to her piano tutor, 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:49.680 I know this love is a happy dream from which 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:53.280 I shall have to wake. But Mary didn't want to wake. 0:21:53.960 --> 0:21:58.600 She had caught the object of her affection, the ultimate prize, 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.480 and she refused to let him go, or rather to 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:05.320 let go of her fantasies of how they might be. 0:22:06.640 --> 0:22:09.240 He seemed to really like her when they were together, 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:12.560 and from that she was able to convince herself that 0:22:12.640 --> 0:22:15.960 he loved her too. He even gave her a ring, 0:22:16.640 --> 0:22:19.960 what she secretly called her wedding ring. It was a 0:22:20.000 --> 0:22:23.600 silly thing, made of cheap iron, but it was engraved. 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:27.320 The Crown Prince had engraved it with the letters I 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:33.680 lv B I DT. They stood for a German phrase, 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:40.560 please pardon my pronunciation in liebe verand been indistant, we 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:50.760 are united by love until death. The year Crown Prince 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:54.520 Rudolph turned thirty, his inner circle began to notice a 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:58.520 change in him. Though he had always been moody, his 0:22:58.680 --> 0:23:02.920 moods began to get violent. On a hunt with his father, 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:07.360 Rudolf fired his weapon so off kilter that he almost 0:23:07.440 --> 0:23:10.840 killed the Emperor. Franz Joseph and the rest of the 0:23:10.920 --> 0:23:14.200 family privately believed that maybe Rudolph had been trying to 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:16.679 kill him on purpose, so that he could be the 0:23:16.720 --> 0:23:21.240 emperor himself. From that point on, Franz Joseph avoided being 0:23:21.280 --> 0:23:24.920 alone with his son. The same was true for his wife, 0:23:24.960 --> 0:23:29.520 Princess Stephanie. She noticed her husband's strange moods, the dark 0:23:29.600 --> 0:23:33.399 circles beneath his eyes, the way he would casually toy 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:36.040 with a trigger of a pistol as he spoke to her. 0:23:36.880 --> 0:23:40.800 She was afraid of him. Princess Stephanie went to her 0:23:40.800 --> 0:23:44.520 father in law and begged Emperor Franz Joseph to send 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:47.720 Rudolf on a trip to do something, anything to pull 0:23:47.800 --> 0:23:51.760 him out of his strange malaise. Can't you please do something, 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:55.840 she said, your son isn't well. She was surprised by 0:23:55.880 --> 0:23:59.760 the emotion in her voice. She so rarely ever spoke 0:23:59.800 --> 0:24:04.159 with her husband's family. Franz Joseph told her that she 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:09.080 was overreacting. You're giving way to fancies, my dear, he said, 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:15.320 There's nothing wrong with Rudolph. After Stephanie left the Emperor's chamber, 0:24:15.880 --> 0:24:18.320 a page caught up to her to inform her that 0:24:18.440 --> 0:24:21.919 from now on she should follow protocol and only speak 0:24:21.960 --> 0:24:28.760 to the Emperor after requesting a formal audience through his secretaries. Meanwhile, 0:24:29.000 --> 0:24:34.560 Rudolph had become fascinated with stories about death and suicide. Suicide, 0:24:34.680 --> 0:24:39.199 especially theatrical suicides, were practically entertainment in Vienna at the 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:44.240 turn of the nineteenth century. Newspaper readers delighted themselves with 0:24:44.320 --> 0:24:48.120 stories of chilling and romantic deaths. There was the young 0:24:48.200 --> 0:24:51.240 couple who ate a formal lunch of chicken and champagne 0:24:51.640 --> 0:24:54.280 and then went into a cemetery hand in hand to 0:24:54.359 --> 0:24:57.960 shoot themselves. The woman who put on a wedding dress 0:24:58.000 --> 0:25:01.160 and jumped off a train. The woman who was singing 0:25:01.200 --> 0:25:04.159 in the national anthem as she leapt from her apartment window. 0:25:05.240 --> 0:25:08.040 Tightrope walker who hanged himself out of his own window, 0:25:08.200 --> 0:25:11.480 visible to the street below, and left a note that said, 0:25:12.040 --> 0:25:14.760 the rope was my life and the rope is my death. 0:25:16.000 --> 0:25:19.760 Ridolf was particularly fascinated by the story of the famous 0:25:19.840 --> 0:25:24.440 Hungarian sportsman Is van Kigel, who shot himself and used 0:25:24.480 --> 0:25:28.800 a small hand held mirror to aim correctly. When Rudolf 0:25:28.920 --> 0:25:31.639 read that he couldn't talk about anything else for weeks, 0:25:32.680 --> 0:25:35.640 would you kill yourself with me? If I asked Rudolph 0:25:35.680 --> 0:25:41.040 asked his private secretary. The secretary responded that although he 0:25:41.080 --> 0:25:44.479 would consider it a great honor, no, he wasn't willing 0:25:44.560 --> 0:25:49.160 to kill himself. Rudolph asked another officer on his staff, 0:25:49.359 --> 0:25:54.640 who also politely declined. Both men quietly asked for reassignments. 0:25:56.240 --> 0:25:59.439 Mitzi Caspar, the long time lover of the Crown Prince, 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:04.080 is used to his waxing poetical about suicide. He would 0:26:04.080 --> 0:26:06.760 often show up, drink a bottle of champagne and talk 0:26:06.800 --> 0:26:09.679 about killing himself. At this point, she was used to it, 0:26:10.840 --> 0:26:14.040 but one evening he showed up talking about suicide with 0:26:14.080 --> 0:26:17.000 such a grim and haunted look in his eyes that 0:26:17.080 --> 0:26:20.959 Mitzy couldn't get it out of her head. The next afternoon, 0:26:21.320 --> 0:26:24.480 she went to the police station to report the conversation 0:26:24.560 --> 0:26:28.399 to the Chief of Police. If you repeat anything that 0:26:28.440 --> 0:26:31.600 the Crown Prince said to you to anyone else, the 0:26:31.680 --> 0:26:37.639 police chief threatened, you will be prosecuted. Chastised, Mitsy returned 0:26:37.680 --> 0:26:40.840 to her apartments, waiting for the next time Rudolph would come. 0:26:42.560 --> 0:26:45.879 His final interaction with Mitsy would happen a few weeks later. 0:26:46.920 --> 0:26:51.160 Rudolph showed up drunk and spent two hours drinking more 0:26:51.320 --> 0:26:54.560 and telling Mitsy that suicide was the only heroic answer, 0:26:54.960 --> 0:26:57.639 the only way to make the vague statement that he 0:26:57.720 --> 0:27:03.040 needed to make. He was rambling, verging on scary, but 0:27:03.119 --> 0:27:08.280 after the police chief's threats, Mitzy didn't tell anyone. Before 0:27:08.440 --> 0:27:11.840 Rudolph left that night, he did something he had never 0:27:11.920 --> 0:27:17.520 done before. Rudolph, a devout atheist, made the sign of 0:27:17.520 --> 0:27:25.840 the Cross on Mitzy's forehead. Rudolph spent Christmas with his family, 0:27:26.000 --> 0:27:28.720 where his mother pulled him aside to beg him to 0:27:28.760 --> 0:27:31.840 be a little kinder to his younger sister, who had 0:27:31.880 --> 0:27:35.160 been the object of so much of his sarcasm and cruelty. 0:27:36.119 --> 0:27:39.240 I do love you, you know, Rudolph said, the cold 0:27:39.320 --> 0:27:44.359 and beautiful in brist Elizabeth. To her surprise, Rudolph began 0:27:44.480 --> 0:27:48.040 to sob, though he was a man of thirty. He 0:27:48.240 --> 0:27:51.720 fell to his knees and hugged his mother's skirts, crying 0:27:51.760 --> 0:27:55.720 like a child. You haven't said those words to me 0:27:55.800 --> 0:28:01.000 in a long time, he gasped. The Emperor Empress just 0:28:01.400 --> 0:28:07.480 stood there, motionless and embarrassed by their son's humiliating display. 0:28:08.080 --> 0:28:11.040 Maybe they didn't realize, or maybe they weren't capable of 0:28:11.080 --> 0:28:14.760