690. A Murderous Affair: Death at Mayerling (Part 2)

This episode is brought to you by the Lloyd's 5K House Deposit, and this is something that was last seen in 1996. Yes, so the 1990s looks now like a lost golden age of prosperity and positivity, doesn't it? Think of the advent of the Blair administration in 1997, all the enthusiasm and excitement that surrounded that. At the economic growth of the time, the technological developments, the sort of sense of an endless golden summer where everyone is listening to Blair and Oasis looking forward to buying their first houses. And that of course takes us to mortgages. Now the good news is that in a nod to the 1990s, Lloyd's are offering 5K Deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. So search 5K first-time buyer. 1996 average first-time buyer deposits are based on ONS data. Subject to status your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments and conditions apply. An old servant was waiting for us by a small iron door. He led us through a number of dark stairs and rooms until he asked us to enter a certain door as I crossed the threshold. A black bird, some kind of raven, flew it my head. A voice called from the next room. "Please come in." "Marie, I should me in." We talked a while about Vienna. Then he said to me, "Bad me, but I would like to talk to the Countess privately for a few minutes." And then he went with Marie to another room. I looked around me. On his desk was a revolver and a skull. It picked up the skull, took it between my hands and looked at it from all sides. Suddenly Rodolf came in and took it from me with deep apprehension. But when I said that I wasn't afraid, he smiled. So that is an amazing scene, like something we said it before from a gothic melodrama, Grigland Poe or something like that. But in fact, that is a letter that was written by the 17-year-old Baroness Mary Vetsera to her old governess in the autumn of 1888. In fact, it's like something that is Dracula, isn't it? A letter written to a governess by a 17-year-old girl who has invited herself into the room of an exceedingly sinister man. And she is describing there a secret meeting with the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Crown Prince Rudolf. And this has happened a few days earlier on the 5th of November. And Dominic IF listeners, which I hope they will have done, have heard our first episode, then they will know where this is heading. And it is nowhere good for Baroness Mary, because she is heading to a hunting lodge at Myling in the Vienna Woods. And what happens there is going to be one of the greatest scandals in the entire history, not just of Austro-Hungarian, but of European royalty. It is going to be a murder suicide pact that will shake the Habsburg dynasty to its very foundations. So Dominic, it's an amazing story. Yeah, it is an amazing, amazing tale. And today we'll be telling the story of that secret affair between Rudolf and Mary. We will get deep into what exactly happened at Myling, and we'll talk about the implications for the Habsburg dynasty and for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But just to remind ourselves exactly when and where we are. When Vienna in 1888, the world of Klimt and Freud and Marla and these Titanic cultural figures, also the world of Crown Prince Rudolf, the sinister man and the Gothic melodrama that you described. So chillingly, I have to say, in your introductory reading. Thank you. So Crown Prince Rudolf is 30 years old. He is to remind people he is the son of Emperor Franz Joseph and his very glamorous, kind of melancholy wife, Ceci, very thin, very long hair. And Rudolf who takes after his mother, I think it's reasonable to summarize, he is a very troubled and happy, kind of morbid young man. He's almost certainly suffering from incurable gonorrhea. He's probably off his face on morphine, and he is suffocated by the kind of expectations of his role as Crown Prince. And also I think he is being eaten away by a sense of uselessness and futility as he waits for his father to die and to vacate the throne. And into Rudolf's orbit, as we described last time, has come the teenage Baroness Mary Betzerra. She is precocious, she is a social butterfly, she is a social climber, she is ambitious, but she is also incredibly romantic in a very 17 year old to the teenage girl way. Well, you could see, couldn't you from that extract that she wrote? Is it actually like a Gothic melodrama or is she putting that spin on it? Of course, bit of both probably was the really a blackbird, you know, yeah, I mean, it's it's probable, but and she had gone to that meeting with her older friend Countess Mary Larish, who is Rudolf's cousin, and basically the Countess Larish has acted as the sort of intermediary and put the two of them together. The board, she is the board, yeah, she could you could say she is the procura as it were. So the events that you described, Monday the 5th and November 1888, we ended the last episode with this scene. Countess Larish has offered to take Mary shopping with her mother's permission, they went to the garb and the great shopping street in Vienna, they went to a society photographer to have Mary's picture taken, but then they went to the back entrance of the grand hotel to a carriage, which was waiting for them, driven by Rudolf's coachman Yosef Bradfisch. Yeah, that's a great name. That is worthy of an American. Totally. Yeah. And Dominic, this whole thing about women being taken to the, you know, to hotels, the back rooms of hotels and things and being driven off and carriages, a faiteque of Diana about this isn't there. We've kind of mentioned it in the context of CC. Yeah, definitely there is. I mean, it's very much a kind of Diana in the 1990s vibe to this, I think. The Diana story doesn't quite have that gothic element to it, does it? It's rather the more hello magazine. This is much more hello magazine meets Bram Stoker, as you said, yeah. So from there, she was taken to the Hofburg, the Imperial Palace, to Rudolf's private departments, and then we get the scene with the Raven and the Skull. And so begins their relationship, their affair. Now, this is not unusual for Rudolf. Rudolf has had a lot of affairs. And all the time, he's still seeing his chief, his regular mistress, who is the former quarters and Mitzi Kaspar. Mary herself, actually, this is not her first rodeo. So she, for an aristocratic girl of 17, is probably quite experienced. She'd been on a trip to Egypt a year earlier. And it was generally thought that she'd been carrying on with a British brigadier. Oh, my goodness, not general Gordon. Yes. That would be improbable. Wow, that's a twist. And who is still alive in this fashion of history. Okay, fine. Well, anyway, anyway, she's had loads of admirers, not just crown prince Rudolf. So what makes this particular liaison so special? Well, you described how Mary Vetzera's account owes something to Gothic melodrama. But it pales by comparison with this, which is from Rudolf's military aid, Victor von Frischer. And he tells this absolutely extraordinary story. He said later, you know, when we were young men, we were stationed in Prague, when we were younger, and we weren't, went, me and crown prince Rudolf to the ghetto cemetery. You know, the old town cemetery in Prague, very evocative, moving with the grave of the rabbi who created the golem. The golem, exactly. The kind of prototype for Frankenstein. So this really kind of haunting spooky kind of landscape. And they went there, and the cantor was singing prayers during a funeral. And Rudolf was very taken by this, according to his aid, and particularly by the cantor's raven hair daughter. And she became obsessed with crown prince Rudolf too. So obsessed that her father had a center to her provincial town to get her away from him. But she came out to Prague. She stood every night under his castle window through the winter. Rudolf eventually found out that she was standing underneath his window. But when he sent people to look for her, they reported that she had just caught pneumonia and died. And Rudolf went secretly to her grave, left roses by her tombstone. Do you think there's a possibility that that raven was the reincarnation of this girl who died of, and I imagine it wasn't you may not imagine it was a consumption. Well, I think Victor Von Fritch has a very lively imagination because Victor Von Fritch Rudolf's aid said, Crown Prince clearly believed that this Mary Vets era was the reincarnation of this Jewish girl from Prague. Oh God, there is reincarnation. And this is why he was sleeping. obsessed with her. This is his interpretation. Weather listeners believe this, I leave to them. I mean, I don't think she probably, I don't think she was the reincarnation of this girl, but who knows? But I suppose the question is whether Rudolf might have thought that. He might have done. He might have done because he has that kind of sensibility, doesn't he? He absolutely does. And the way their relationship has carried out is all like they're sort of cosplaying in a Gothic melodrama. So they will always meet kind of a dusk in the shadows, or they'd meet in his very gloomy kind of palace apartment with a skull on the table. God. I mean, they would so be into black eye shadows now, if they live now, wouldn't they? They completely would. They're total goths, aren't they? Or emo or whatever. Yeah. So they would be, they're going on these sort of ride carriage rides in the dusk through the abandoned deserted parter park and all of this. After a few days Rudolf gave her an iron wedding ring. It was described with the letters I-L-V-B-I-D-T. In Lieber, the right to piss inde tord through love united under death. And she wore it on a kind of chain under her bodice. And she is clearly absolutely infatuated with him in a very recognizable kind of teenage way. So she wrote to her old governess, if I could give my life to make him happy, I would gladly do it because I do not value my own life. And in one of these sets, as she says to her governess, we've discussed what would happen if people found out about us. We have made a pact covering such an eventuality. After a few happy hours are replaced, nobody knows. We will enter death forever. Now, at one level, this is not unusual. This is the kind of slightly madly overwrought thing that teenage girls who are going out with married older men, right? He hates his wife. He will abandon me and we will go into the shadows. All of this. And especially in fantasy, I can make Vienna. Exactly. That kind of mood of lush morbidity. Yeah, completely. On the other hand, there are hints that Rudolph you know, sees this as something more than just a sort of love-law joke or something. So on all Souls Day on the 2nd of November, he met his mother's lady in waiting, Countess Festitich in a palace corridor. And he said, "Are you off to the cemetery, Countess?" And she said, "Yes, your Imperial Highness, to pray for my dead. When I'm gone, will you pray for me? Will you include me among your dead?" And she said, "Your Imperial Highness is smiling. It is a joke. A smile doesn't always mean a joke. Your Imperial Highness, I'm much older than you. I pray, God, I shall never have a chance to do what you ask." I mean, he's clearly a man who's just walking around the palace, talking to people unnecessarily about death and about his own death. Yeah. Anyway, the week's pass. In early December, I mean, don't forget they haven't been going out very long. They've been going out for four weeks. In early December, Countess Larrish has to go back to her husband's estate in Bohemia, and they need a new way of hooking up Rudolf and Mary. And the way they find is through the unlikely romantic lubricant that is Richard Wagner. He's very romantic. I mean, literally, you know, the song is death. I suppose, yeah. But I mean, if you said to somebody, why don't we use dog Wagner as an excuse to go on dates? I mean, that's a very particular vibe, is it not? When I entirely prefer. I mean, the thing is, if she doesn't like Wagner, then perhaps she'd be better off going out with the Kaiser. Yes, exactly. Who had laughed and chatted all the way through for Wagner in the previous episode. Yeah. And also, the Kaiser's not a man who's ever in the top himself, right? The Kaiser is a better investment. I think so. Yes, I think so. He's also not riddled with gonorrhea. Well, quite. So anyway, the core top is doing this big new production of the ring cycle, starting with that's Ryan called. And the vets there is have a box at the opera. But Mary says to her mother, "Hey, Wagner, this would have been a red flag for you, Tom, if you and Mary had matched on hinge." You'd have been like, "What? No interesting Wagner, unbelievable. I'm out." So she tells her mother, "I'm not going to Wagner." She keeps coming out, the excuse is not to go. And then when her mother and sister went off to the opera, she would slip out of the house, bratfish, the coachman would be waiting at the corner. I believe he'd call bratfish. And he would drive her to Schoenbroen Palace, the Austrian Versailles. And she enroute off her kind of walk in the darkness of the park. And then she'd always be back in time for her mother and sisters return at 10 o'clock. So it's brilliant, isn't it? The Wagner's operas are so long. Amazing. But there's still no sort of physical side to this relationship, it seems. Frederick Morton, his book and Overspendus, says the reason is that Rudolf is postponing this because Rudolf believed that climax meant end, meaning death. It's sad, isn't he, that Freud never got the chance to psychoanalyze him? I know. He just feels an ideal patient. Completely with his mother, his distant father, all of this. The yearning for death. I mean, it's yeah. Anyway, we get to Christmas. So the Imperial family for once are actually reunited at the palace. Ceci's birthday is on Christmas Eve. So Rudolf's mother's birthday. And that in Austria is when the the Christkind brings your presence, the Christchild. She's just got back from Corfu, which she loves. You've seen her palace in Corfu, have you not? Yep, the Kileon. And she's come back from Corfu with an anchor tattooed on her shoulder. Yeah. Which is punchy. I always thought this was unusual behavior, but a whole host of members of royal families throughout the late 19th century were doing it. Yeah. So it did obviously become a kind of royal craze. It was exactly. George the fifth and his brother went off to Japan, I think, and got dragons tattooed on their arms or something. Incredible. Anyway, they gathered in Ceci's apartment that night. And Rudolf very thoughtfully had laid the table with presence. He got a book of letters by Hiner, who was her favorite German writer and a packet of 11 original Hiner letters that he'd sent to Reddit in Paris. That is thoughtful Dominic because there's nothing more thoughtful than giving someone a letter written by someone they particularly admire. Can you think of an example of this Tom? Anyone who does that, I think, is beneath the show of cynical cruelty or whatever it is. A chorubic loveable. Is there anything you want to share with the listeners? Yeah, because you've bought me a letter written by Nelson. There you go. Thank you. One of my most treasured possessions. That comparison with Crown Prince Rudolf that has dogged me all my life. Yet more enemy addition to the people who say, "Is he the reincarnation of Crown Prince Rudolf?" Because the parallel is uncanny. Yeah, they are. I would work on a cycle pedeer if my father ordered me to. He's been working on his Austro-Hungarian cycle pedeer, so he's got copies of that wrapped up. I mean, you write history books that I like in cycle pedeers. Correct. Yeah, thank you. I was fishing for that. The presence all around, so Frans Joseph and CC have got presence for Rudolf and Stefan is daughter Elizabeth. I mean, it's often forgotten in this story that he has a daughter. I think it's about five or six. They've got her toy garden furniture made in Corfu. Can I just ask? He's got a lovely present for his mother. Yeah. Do you got anything for his father? No mention. No mention of that. It's not as far this birthday, though, to be fair. That's true. Also, what do you give the man who owns Central Europe? A uniform? Yeah. You give him Venice back. That's something. That's what he'd like. Yeah. So, this sounds lovely, but Rudolf spends the festive season brooding darkly. His hatred of the Kaiser has now reached absolutely fever. Basically, since the Kaiser went back to Berlin, Berlin newspapers have just been mercilessly mocking the Austrian army, and this has driven Rudolf mad and Rudolf has written to his mate Morris seps the kind of newspaper editor, and he says, I can give you information about that when we went hunting in stereo with Kaiser Wilhelm, a prostitute stole Wilhelm's cufflinks. Do you know who this unexpectedly reminds me of? It's Harold Wilson in '74, releasing mad stories to the press. Yes, I can see that it's clearly made up. Yeah. Well, which you think this is made up, but you think a prostitute, I think the Kaiser's precisely the kind of man who might have his cufflinks stolen by a lady the night. No? Yeah, I suppose. He'd been an unpopular customer. He wouldn't be a great tipper. And in revenge, his escorts would steal items of his personal apparel, hoping to blackmail him later. Anyway, Rudolf sends this in the letter and says, I want you to hold onto this. If the Berlin press continues slagging me off, you can print it. And then a couple of days later, he writes against this editor and he says, I feel the storm clouds are gathering over Austria. In international politics, there is a temporary quiet. The dangers threatening us from Serbia. Wow, that's a little preview. What's coming? A postpone for the moment, but this uncanny stillness gives me the impression of calm before the storm. It can't go on like this. That's my consolation. And this editor writes back and says, you're not feeling good. That's a shame. I think your brilliant future is yours. You never tire, unlike so many other people. And it's because our crown prince never tires that we still believe in a great glorious, free and prosperous Austria. So basically, it's sucking up to Rudolf to try to modify him. The very end of the year, Rudolf and Stephanie, his wife, they go to a place called now called Opatija, the time called Abazija, which was on the Adriatic, it's on the Croatian coast. It was the canal, the central pay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. So palm trees, hotels, sort of tea lounges, all of this. Rudolf doesn't like it. He finds it very boring. He comes back early to Vienna. It's not very Gothic, is it? No, it's not very Gothic. It's very dull as far as he's and he also finds his wife, Fredel. He comes back to Vienna, he finds as usual there have been meetings of the army command without him, which he very annoyed by. They didn't invite him because they thought he was on holiday. Then they're into the carnival season. Now because the Austrian courts are still mourning the death of Kai's father, the previous summer, court regulations forbid them from going to balls. So what that means is they have to just give a series of dinners for visiting dignitaries, royalty, aristocracy and so on. Rudolph again finds this very boring, but the one consolation is that he can resume his affair with Mary Vetsera. And the key date here is the 13th January, and we know this from Mary's letter the next day to her old governess. She said, "I must make a confession. I was with him yesterday evening from 7 till 9. We both lost our heads. Now we belong to each other body and soul. On Saturday, I hope to get away from a ball and then I will rush back to him. So we belong to each other body and soul. We lost our heads. We all know what happened between 7 and 9 evening." And that same day, she went to the most expensive jewelry shop in Vienna, and she ordered a gold cigarette case inscribed with the date of their trist the night before the 13th January, and she wants to give it to the crown prince to remember the occasion. And my guess is that it was probably around now that he floated seriously the idea that he had mentioned a few weeks earlier, which he'd mentioned to her governess. The idea that one day they will be discovered that we will go to a happy place that nobody knows and then we will enter death together. And this is not the first time that Rudolf has mentioned this to a woman, because we know that he had mentioned it to his regular mistress, Mitsy Kaspar before Christmas, and she had laughed at him and thought it was a joke. I thought there were inversions I've read of this. She goes to the police and tells them and the police refuse to listen to her because she's just a prostitute. Is that not true? Yeah, I don't know how true that is. So I've seen that online, and I've seen that repeated in kind of general histories, but I'm not convinced how true that, I mean, it may be true. Maybe listeners who, particularly Austrian listeners who might have heard German language versions of this, maybe more familiar with it, but in, for example, Frederick Morton's book, which is kind of day by day. There's no mention of this. Just mentions her laughing at him. There's a slight disconnect actually between laughing at somebody because you think they're joking. Yeah, and then going to the police. And then going to the police. Is it a better story if they go to the police? She goes to the police. Maybe there's a better story. What we do know for certain is that Mary didn't laugh. Mary is not a joker in that way, and she takes her relationship with the grandparents incredibly seriously. She sees it in these very overall terms. But of course, this is again, what we don't know. We don't know what they said to each other. We cannot know how much she was coerced. You know, he's 30. He's the crown prince. She's a massive goth, though, isn't she? I mean, you said she's a massive goth, of course, but how much she enters into this pact, you know, voluntarily, difficult to say. Anyway, Rudolf's friends and acquaintances suspect absolutely nothing. That month, he seems calm. He seems untroubled. He seems polite. He goes repeatedly to operators or to the opera on the 23rd of January, for example, he goes to see a comedy called The Dandes of Vienna and he's cheered by the audience. He's working on his encyclopedia. He writes an article, one of his many anonymous articles for a monochist, periodical, in which he basically says, "People just stop going on about Germany and how brilliant Germany is. People should put their faith in Austria, ancient, united and undivided." And of course, being a Habsburg, he does a lot of hunting. So he's not quite in his cousin, Franz Ferdinand's league. So Franz Ferdinand is kind of younger cousin and protégé and sort of a world-class butcher of birds. But Rudolf still, you know, sees an eagle. He likes to shoot it. So he's shot three eagles on the 20th, three more on the 21st and five deer on the 23rd of January, on the 24th of January, so Thursday the 24th, he now has less than a week to live, by the way. Bradfisch drove him to meet Mary by the Prater Park. Again, it was very cold, very deserted, no one there. And they fixed a date at this meeting. They said, "Let's go to the Miling Hunting Lodge on Monday, because he said I'm going there anyway with some friends to do some more hunting." And that evening, the evening of 1st of the 24th, he went to the court opera and he sat beside his father in the imperial box. They were spotted deep in a very serious conversation, but nobody knows or will ever know what was said. On Friday the 25th, he has five days to live. He goes hunting again on the banks of the Danube. He's shot 26 ducks. It seems like a lot actually. Then he went back to town. He went to Hodex Taxidermis shop on the Mariah Hilfer Storasa, where they'd been stuffing his eagles for him. God. I mean, the whole empty fairgrounds, stuff the taxidermis. It's brilliant. It's got it all. I was thinking about this. I think this would be an Alfred Hitchcock film. David Lynch would enjoy it as well. Yeah. There were lots of directors who would do really, really good different versions of this. Christopher Nolan would cast Killian Murphy. Surely his crown prince Rudolph. A young Killian Murphy. Yeah. A Michael Cain as his father. I was about to say Tom Hardy. Tom Hardy is the coachman. Tom Hardy is Brad Fish. Surely everyone wants to see that. That would be the spin-off series. Brad Fish. Yeah. He's solving crimes. He's solving crimes with Freud. Fantastic. All right. So he's gone to the Taxidermis shop. Then he goes to a painter's studio. I've put the painter in just so I can say his name. His name is Tadeesh Aduka Vich. And he is a pole, I think, for given his name. And he's painting Rudolph on horseback showing him his infantry general. And then he goes to the palace for dinner. Does the painting, the portrait of Rudolph start to weep tears? Surely. Yeah, definitely. Of blood. So Saturday, now 26, he has four days to live, the same routine. And as if to punish him, the fates are mocking him. Because that evening there's a court dinner to celebrate of all things. Kaiserville on the second's birthday. So Rudolph has to dress up in his uniform as an honorary colonel of the second Brandon Burke Ulan regiment. And this must be a terrible thing for him because he regards the Kaiser's the worst man in history, a dreadful bounder. But he has to sort of smile and make small talk about how brilliant the Kaiser is. The next day, Sunday 27th, we're in our three days to go. Same routine, tunting taxidermity shop, portrait. And then he rushes back to the Hofburg and he changes into civilian clothes. And Bradfisch drives him to the back entrance to the tradesman's entrance of the grand hotel. And there he goes upstairs, up the back stairs, to countess Larriches, the sweetest. She's come back from Bohemia. She is the go-between once again with Mary. Then he goes back into the coach. They go off to the parrata, the deserted park. Mary is waiting there in a coach of her own. Again, a hurried meeting with Mary to finalize the plans for tomorrow. And then back to the palace. Another quick change into another German uniform because he has to go to another reception for the Kaiser's birthday. I wonder if he sees himself. I imagine you're almost hated enemy having to dress up in uniforms and go to. It's like a nightmare, right? Or a Greek punishment. It's like Cicifus had it easy. So he has to go to a reception at the German embassy for the Kaiser's birthday. Now at this reception is his father and also his wife, Crown Princess Stephanie, she's looking very elegant and his lover, Mary Vetsera. So they're all there. It's their relationship now common knowledge. Does Stephanie know? Do we think? I don't know. We just don't know. So there is a moment, suppose it is a moment, I think this has made up actually, where Stephanie and Mary came face to face. And there was apparently a little pause before Mary curts it just too, you she waited just too long, like a little gesture of disrespect to Rudolph's wife. Well, that's what people said afterwards, but I suspect at the time. Yes, it sounds retrospective. It's retrospective, yeah, exactly. Now Rudolph is very pale and quiet at this reception. Partly because he hates the Kaiser, but also maybe for other reasons. At one point he's making a small talk with a sculptor called Victor Tilgner and later claimed, again, this may be retrospective, that at one point Rudolph gave a kind of shiver or shudder and said to him, this whole uniform is distasteful to me, unbearably heavy. And that that was the only hint of something. But of course, that could be just a banal thing. It could be he hates German uniforms. I mean, it really could be heavy. He could indeed. I get, I imagine there were a lot of medals. Sure, and epilets. Yeah, weighing his shoulders down. He doesn't stay long at this reception though. By midnight he's gone and he doesn't go back to the palace. He goes to the apartment of his mistress, Mitsy Caspar, and they drink champagne laced with cognac. Our favorite drink. Our favorite temple. A favorite drink, exactly. We'll be drinking that at the rest of the history Christmas party. And Rudolph says to Mitsy, tomorrow morning, I'm leaving to go hunting forever. And Mitsy kind of laughs at him. She doesn't go to the police. She laughs. And she said she thinks to herself this is the kind of mad thing that Rudolf says all the time because he's a bit of a Goff he's always saying morbid things like this. Three o'clock in the morning he leaves her apartment to go back to the Imperial Palace of the Hofburg and there's a lot of little gesture as he leaves he makes the sign of the cross on her forehead. Even though he doesn't believe in God, he is told that he doesn't believe in God. We talked about this yesterday about whether he would have viewed suiciders as in but clearly not. So he goes back to the Imperial Palace. He has a couple of hours sleep and he's up by 7 o'clock in the morning. He goes through his paperwork. He has meetings with officials at 11 o'clock outside his office the clock of St. Michael's which is the chapel next door sounds the hour. And Rudolf calls in his adjutance and he says cancel my appointments please for the rest of the morning. I'm going shooting now be back tomorrow. Five o'clock I'm going to have dinner with the Emperor as agreed. And on his way out of the palace he stops briefly to his wife's apartment. He says goodbye to Stephanie enter their daughter Elizabeth and he repeats this message. I'll be back tomorrow for dinner. So by half 11 he's on his way and Rudolf has left the palace. Now meanwhile Mary Vetsera and Countess Laryshire were ready left the Vetsera family mansion which is on the Saliziana gassa in Vienna. They told Mary's mother they were going shopping which they've said so many times at 10 30. But once they got into the cab they changed the address they went to the Hofburg Palace back entrance again. Once again Rudolf's coachman is to Bradfisch play by Tom Hardy is waiting and he takes them out of the city. So the carriage rolls out of the city and they go into the Vienna woods and they stop the site in called the red barn the router startle which is closed for the winter. Again a very gothic scene that's abandoned in people always being murdered in red barns and they yeah right good spot so they wait for 20 minutes in the cold by this in and then they see a man and a fur collared coat coming through the woods towards them and this is crown prince Rudolf it's such a great film it is isn't it be amazing of course he's coming through the the mist or whatever it comes to the trees and he gets into their carriage. His own carriage that brought him out of the city is now going back to the city being tailed as always by the police so the police always followed him so they've shaken off the police now he's shaken off the police. So he and Mary and Bradfisch drive on together towards his hunting lodge at myelin which is about 20 miles southeast of Vienna and they arrive round about sunsets it's about five o'clock of course they do of course the ravens flocker flock around the gate house it's a really cold dark evening servants of lit the fires and the hunting lodge here they will be alone well alone except for all the surface. Until the next day but back in the city countess larish who is engineered all this has this flash of revelation and we absolutely don't know why is it something that Mary said before she left is it something that Rudolf said in the last few days that has been you know praying on her mind or who knows but at lunch time once she'd seen Mary off she went back to them for a ceremony and she was there. Sarah mentioned and she asked to see Mary's mother and she said I've lost your daughter I don't know where she is I'm worried about her and that afternoon one of Mary's uncles Alexander Bell Tatsy went to see the police commissioner of Vienna and he said we've lost Mary we've lost 17 year old. Yeah Baroness can you help us find her and eventually he said to the police commission look we think she's gone off the crown prince Rudolf and the commissioner said well come on I mean she's gone off the crown prince Rudolf hardly going to launch a massive police investigation. For one thing we are constitutionally barred from investigating the Imperial family but for another what are you so stressed about the crown prince has loads of affairs clearly Mary vets area is one of his mistresses. For 17 years old she knows what she's doing you know she's quite racy she's mature beyond her years these things happen what are you worried about. Yeah what's the worst that could happen what's the worst that could happen well we will find out the answer to that question after the break. And everyone and welcome back to the rest of history where it is the early morning of Tuesday on the 29th of January 1889 and we're in the myelin hunting lodge some 20 odd miles outside Vienna where two friends of crown prince Rudolf count years of chaos and the prince Philip of Coburg have arrived for a day's sport they're going to go out and murder birds. And Dominic what happens as they approach the hunting lodge well a very sort of gothic or fairy tale scene they approach the house and it's completely still and silent and they see the curtains on the bedroom windows of Rudolf's ground floor apartment are closed. But the servants are up the servants admit them and in the billiard room crown prince Rudolf is waiting so live and well his alive and well and he seems in good form or is he well. Well he's not well he's got gone a rear and he's like office face a morphine champagne but apart from that and he looks really haggard and gaunt and like looks like a man who's conceived a murder suicide pact but apart from that he looks like his in brilliant form. And he's got the kind of little snuffle possibly yes he's got a bit of a cold he says he's got a silk scarf tie very tightly around his neck he says I've got a cold and I probably won't come hunting with you lads after all. So you go ahead I'll sit it out they have a cup of coffee and then Hoyos and Coburg go out to do some hunting and they return at lunchtime and Rudolf is waiting for them and he's still in good form the prince of Coburg is going back to Vienna straight away the afternoon. And Rudolf says well because of this cold I'm not going to head back when I thought dinner with my father. So please you pass on my message and he also says to his valid who's called lost check he says can you send a telegram to my wife please crown prince Stephanie telegram reads please tell Papa that I ask his pardon for not appearing at dinner but because of a heavy cold I wish to avoid the journey this afternoon. So the prince of Coburg goes off the telegram is sent count Hoyos goes shooting on his own so that's what I think that's a joyless thing to do frankly anyway he goes hunting on his own goes and shoots loads of birds and then he comes back to spend the evening with Rudolf to have dinner with Rudolf. And they have it's very rest is history Christmas party actually they have patty before I go out they have venison they have roast beef red wine and then they have a sort of leisurely smoke. And they talk about the latest army legislation which has been held up in the parliament in Budapest because of wrangling with the Hungarians and Rudolf is clearly in quite good form coming up with some great banter. He says it's much easier to deal with gone dogs than with Hungarian politicians and Hoyos thinks this is absolutely hilarious. So afterwards he turned on me the whole beguiling force personality. So actually I mean the mad thing is that Rudolf hates the Kaiser because this is the kind of banter the Kaiser would very much enjoy. Yeah it is. They think his mother would approve. No she loves Hungarian. Exactly. Anyway at nine o'clock Hoyos says right I'm turning in now. Hoyos is going to spend the night in guest quarters in a converted farm cottage which is about 500 meters from the main house. And as soon as Hoyos has gone down the path the door of Rudolf's bedroom opens an outcomes Mary Vetzera and she has been hiding in Rudolf's bedroom all this time. And because she's been hiding in the bedroom and they've been afraid to send in food to her because Hoyos would notice. So she's starving. So lost check the ballot brings her cold venison and he likes a fire in the billiard room. He brings champagne from the seller and he calls for brat fish. The coachman he's still hanging around. Alia in the chat points out the brat fish means grilled fish. So I think that's a terrible surname of Franklin. He's called grilled fish. That's his name. I think we've established it's a ludicrous name. So brat fish sits on the stool in the corner of the billiard room and he sings and whistles songs of old Vienna while they're eating their dinner Mary and Rudolf. That sounds incredibly annoying. What do you make him shut up? Some bloke called Mr. grilled fish turns up and whistles at you. It's the last thing you want. Yeah, especially in the last night. Spoyler. How do you want to spend your last hours? They want to really shot themselves. Right. So they sit at very late. Lost check the man servant. He turns in at two o'clock. But he doesn't sleep for very long because at half past six he's woken by footsteps. He looks up and this one really freaks you out. He looks up and standing over him is the separical figure of crown prince Rudolf in a dressing gown and a silk scarf looking very pale. So Rudolf standing over lost check says I want you to call me for breakfast in an hour and he also says tell brat fish to have the horses. ready. And then he walks back to his bedroom, a bizarre detail this whistling one of Bradfisher's tunes. So he walks back and he closes the door behind him. Now, lost check at this point, he gets dressed, you know, he's about about three hours sleep or something, gets dressed and he goes to tell the kitchen staff, get up, come on, sort yourselves out, start getting breakfast ready. And at 730, as instructed, he knocks on the crown prince's door. And this is the scene with which we opened the first episode, this tremendous scene. Lost check knocks and he knocks again, he keeps knocking, he cools your imperial highness. He runs upstairs and then this is spiral staircase at the back that goes down to a back door of Rudolph's apartment. And he knocks on the back door again, they reply. Lost check is becoming quite anxious now because Rudolph is a famously light sleeper. And the dogs started barking. So it's a slightly chaotic scene that hunting dogs are rebarking because of the knocking. Lost check has gone into a massive panic. He comes back to the front door, he gets a log from the fire and starts hammering on the door with this log. Bradfisher, the coachman joins him. Count Hoyos has come up from his cottage to find out what's going on. And then as if that's not enough, the prince of Cobra, good going back to Vienna, he now turns up as well because he's come back to do some more hunting. They're all completely shocked and confounded by the scene. And they say to Lost check, okay, break down the door. And this is the point, he's now sobbing with worry. And this is the point when he says to them, I have something to tell you, Baroness Mary Vetzera has been staying with the crown prince. And then this is the point when Hoyos and Cobra go into the billiard room and they have the sort of little conference. And eventually they come out and they basically say, well, even so, fine, okay, women of the world, break down the door. And Lost check hacks at the door. He hacks at the panels. As you described in that reading that you did for the first episode, the whole becomes this kind of gash and he's able to look through. And he drops the axe and horror. Inside it's total darkness. You can see the air is very heavy with smoke, but you can see two people lying on or near. It's really not clear from the descriptions of the bed. One of them is Mary. She's stretched out on the bed. Her hands are clasping a rose and there's blood on the sheets around her head. And the other is crown prince Rudolph. He is kind of slumped against or leaning on a bedside table in front of a mirror. And there is blood trickling from his mouth. And it is absolutely obvious that they are both dead. And for a moment, the men outside are paralyzed with horror. And nobody dares to go in. And eventually, Hoyos says, okay, "Bratfish, I need you to drive me to Barden station, which is the nearest railway station." They get to Barden station. And he has to go into the station master and say, something terrible has happened at crown prince Rudolph's hunting lodge. I must get to Vienna instantly. And the station master agrees to stop the express train from Trieste and Hoyos climbs on board. So at 9.50, he is in Vienna. And within about 25 minutes, he has reached the Hofburg, the imperial palace. And here, he completely loses his nerve. He doesn't know how he can possibly break this news to the Emperor. So he goes to find Ceci's Chamberlain, who is called Baron Nobscher. And they say, "Well, we will tell the Empress." And then she can tell the Emperor. So Ceci, Elizabeth. She got up early that morning. She got up at 6.30, as she always did. Her days always began with this long bath and then a massage. Then her hair famously long. There was a special maid, coma hair for two or three hours, letting Greek, all of that. And then she would have a herbal tea, and she would do some exercises in her private gym. Then she 10 o'clock had started a Greek lesson with Monsieur Rousseau for us. And they were reading the Iliad together. And at 10.45, there was a knock on the door. And the lady in waiting said, "Baron Nobscher and Count Hoyos want to see you urgently." And Elizabeth was furious. You don't interfere with my Greek lessons. But then Baron Nobscher came in. She saw the look on his face and she realized something was terribly wrong. Now her husband, Franz Joseph, had been up even longer. Well, he always gets up early, doesn't he? Because he's got an empire to run. Right. He got up at 4 o'clock in the morning from his iron military bed. And he'd been washed by his foot money. He'd had breakfast at 4.20. And then he'd got straight into his paperwork and had his first meetings at 5 o'clock in the morning. And a lot of this had been about the Budapest Parliament and the Army Bill. As Frederick Morton said, that morning, Franz Joseph did what his ancestors had done before him. He ruled and overruled with utter confidence, with axiomatic competence and without the slightest inspiration. Just before 11 o'clock, he went set off to go to see his wife in her apartment. Franz Joseph was looking forward to this because he knew that his wife actually had a pre-arranged meeting with his confidant, Katarina Schrat, the actress. A Katarina Schrat was going to do a drama recital for his wife. And this was this is brilliant for him because he'll see his two favorite people at once. And you know, their little main arch at Wad, they, he loves all that. But he gets there and he finds Baron Nopster blocking the door to his wife's apartment. Baron Nopster's face is streaked with tears and through the door Franz Joseph can hear his wife sobbing and sobbing. So in the next few hours, the news that something terrible has happened, races around the city. Crown Prince Rudolph's wife Stephanie is having a singing lesson and that's interrupted and she is told. And soon after that, all the operas, the theatres, the cabarets, the musicals are told to cancel their evening programs with their explanation. And by mid-afternoon, there's a crowd outside the Hofburg. People know something has happened. There are people talking about Crown Prince Rudolph, but no one knows exactly what it is. And it's actually not until the following morning that the news is confirmed. It's broken by the Vienna tag blot. Our Crown Prince is dead. Says this huge headline. It's reproduced. There's an image of it in Frederick Morton's book, A Nervous Splendor. But what there aren't are there are no details of how he died. So the assumption that most people make is he has had a stroke or a heart attack, you know, a freak accident or something who knows, throttled by the Kaiser. He's died of apoplexy. After the Kaiser has been rude about an Austrian army belt or something of that kind, surely. Be the obvious explanation, wouldn't it? But not it's the following evening, the Vienna tag blot prints the headline. The most horrible truth. And it says Crown Prince Rudolph was killed by a gunshot and he fired the pistol himself. I mean, I can't imagine. Because it's still a very devoutly Catholic. Of course. City and country. Yeah. I mean, the impact must be devastating. Exactly. I mean, this is, we said it's the royal scandal. To end all royal scandals. I mean, let's try to imagine. I mean, it's not even Prince Harry. It would be impulsively your fellow Aston Villa supporter, Prince William. Prince William. Yeah. Carrying on with a 17-year-old and having a murder suicide pact at a hunting lodge in stains. I think it's much worse than that because suicide is no longer framed as a sin. No, true. Yeah. You know, it's treated with sympathy and kind of understanding now. But back then, it was a sin. I mean, it endangers your mortal soul and the Habsburgs. It's important to their legitimacy that they are Catholic. Completely. They're the guardian of Catholicism. Yeah. You know, they are the absolute, his apostolic majesty, Franz Joseph. You know, it's so important for them as kings of hungry and as emperors of Austria. Absolutely. So let's actually focus on the Imperial family for a second. By the way, one small detail actually, which I forgot to mention, Mary Vets Sarah's name has never been mentioned in any of those newspaper reports at all. And we'll come back to her role in the story in a second. So Franz Joseph spent the first afternoon trying to console his wife along with Katarina Shrap and then being Franz Joseph, he went back to work and he worked late that night and he rang by ten o'clock that night. On the day he heard the news about his son, he was still ringing the Hungarian Prime Minister to talk about the army bill. The next day, he got up at four o'clock as usual to start work. But at dawn, he had a visitor, the Imperial doctor, Professor Hermann Viderhoffa, who had been to Miling and it was the first person who basically went into the room to inspect the bodies. And Professor Viderhoffa says, I have some pretty bad news. It is clear that the Crown Prince died by his own hand, a gunshot wound to the head. But what is worse, there was no doubt that he killed Mary Vetserra with the same gun two hours earlier. So actually, this is so interesting. He had killed Mary Vetserra before he appeared at the man servant's bedside to say, get my breakfast ready. So a breakfast? Yeah. So what do you think was going on there? Don't know. Did he ever plan to eat the breakfast? Change his mind? Impossible to say. Strange. I mean, everything about this is strange. Let's not deny that. No. But the worst of it, I think, for Franz Joseph, is what Viderhoffa then says. The Crown Prince has left a number of letters. So he's left a letter to his mother, CC. This is the only letter that was written at the scene of the crime. The other letters were written beforehand. He wrote to his mother, "I have no right to go on living. I have killed," and he asks that he and Mary are buried together at the nearby abbey of Highlegan croits, Holy Cross. He wrote a letter to his sister Valerie beforehand. He said, "I advise you, I'm going now. I advise you when our father dies, leave Austria, for what will happen then in Austria is unforeseeable. This is, again, his kind of existential apocalyptic dread about the geopolitical outlook for his country." And a shrewd analysis. Yeah, I guess so. He wrote a letter to Stephanie, his wife. "Dear Stephanie, you are now rid of my presence and annoyance. Be happy in your own way. Take care of the poor little one. She is all that is left of me." He wrote a letter to Loshchek, his valet. Thank you for all the years of service. He also wrote letters to his friend Baron Moritz Hirsch and to his mistress, Mitsy Caspar, but the contents of those letters as unknown has never been released. And for his father, the Emperor, there was no letter at all. Nothing. And that is the moment when the doctor says that to Frans Joseph. That's the moment when Frans Joseph loses his composure and he breaks down in tears and he collapses and falls to the ground. And you can absolutely understand why. For a father, that would be… Of course. Devastating. That would be almost the worst blow of all, I think. Such kind of posthumous cruelty as well, isn't it? Yeah. So eventually he composes himself and he says, "Where is my son?" And Dr. Vida Hoffa said, "Well, we brought the body back to the palace as you ordered. We've dressed him in uniform. We've bandaged his head and we put him in bed." And Frans Joseph went to his son's bedroom and he stood by his son's body for 15 minutes in silence, kind of vigil for a brother officer, as per the army regulations, always the way with him. And then he said to his aides, "Work, we have two priorities now. Number one, my son must have a Catholic burial, the Habsburgs have Catholic burial, Catholic funerals, even though he is both a murderer and a suicide." And then secondly, he said, "All mention of this girl must be suppressed, her presence at the scene, her body, even her name must be deleted from the public record." Now what made this difficult is that the Habsburgs themselves have told the Vetsera family what happened to Mary. CC herself broke the news to Mary's mother. Now at the time, the Imperial staff said to Mary's mother, "Baroness, LNVetsera," they said, "You have to get out of Vienna. The press will be hounding you, there will be crowds paying for your blood. People will blame your daughter for this and you have to get out." And she got on a train to Italy, but then she changed her mind halfway, and she came back to the city, and she found that the city police had cordoned off her townhouse, her mansion, because of the crowds outside. She was in a terrible state. She wanted to go into the house. And eventually, the Austrian Prime Minister Count Taffer turned up. He was very, I think we described him in the last episode. He's very suave, top hat cigar, and he sort of said, "My dear lady, what a terrible business this is for you. I really do think you should get out of the city and you should keep a very low profile." It's now clear by the way that this was a genuine suicide pact, because Mary's mother is now given a letter by Mary. "Forgive me for what I have done. I could not resist love. In agreement with him, I wish to be buried by his side at the Alland Churchyard, such a slightly different place from the High Lincoln Quits, Abby, but there you go. I'm happier in death than I was in life. I mean, imagine what that must be like for a mother to read from her daughter." Of course, there is a big issue here for the families now. If Mary and Rudolf are suicides, they cannot be buried in consecrated grounds. The emperor, however, gets in touch with High Lincoln Quits, Abby and his staff do anyway, and they say, "Basically, we want you to find room for Mary Vetzera's body. No questions asked. You must find her a plot." That same day, Thursday, the 31st of January, two of her uncles, the Baltazzi brothers, went to myelin. They identified her body, a doctor washed the blood off her body, and they dressed it in coat and hat, in a veil, a bowler, shoes. Remember, she's very fashionable. Then an absolute bizarre scene. Mary's uncles propped her up and walked her out of the hunting lodge as if she was alive and put her in the carriage and sat either side of her. If anybody's seen the film "Weekend at Bernays," that's what this is. They even stuck a broomstick up the back of her dress so that it would keep her upright. Because they're all kinds of stories for Sherlock Holmes turns up. Yes, and so it's the case, aren't they? I don't think he'd have been fooled by that. No, he wouldn't. I mean, this is so Sherlock Holmes, isn't it? It's sort of scandal in Bohemia. All of that. The carriage rolled through the night to High Lincoln Quits, Abby, which is about three miles away. There were loads of police waiting, and only the next morning, when the rain stopped a little bit, they buried Mary, and then the police sent her coded telegram to Vienna, just with the words "all finished." And that was the end in every way of Mary Vetsara. There was one mention of her in an illustrated paper published in Graz, which said, quite erroneously, "Mary Vetsara died in Venice and has been buried in Bohemia." But otherwise, to quote Frederick Morton, her name never appeared again in any book magazine or newspaper published in Austria-Hungary. No printed mention was ever made of her death or even her life. It was as though nobody remembered that she had walked the earth. So that is a contrast with Diana in the '90s, because nobody was going to leave the details of that alone. And in fact, they came up with all kinds of conspiracies to explain it. But I'm wondering what about foreign press? Well, come on to that and just say it, but you're absolutely right. Of course, the foreign press does print it and a problem for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy is sort of an extremely large country to their north that prints everything in German, so people can read it. And it's very easy for people to travel to in Germany and Austria-Hungary with German newspapers. So they're fooling nobody. I mean, everybody knows about it. No, they don't fool anybody. Meanwhile, what about Crown Prince Rudolf? Well, they held an autopsy the same day, the 31st. And the autopsy concluded that on studying Rudolf's brain, it was clear he was suffering from abnormal mental conditions and was in a state of mental confusion. And the Catholic Church said, "Oh, in that case, he's not really a civil servant, is he?" Or even a murderer. He was poor fellow. What a terrible shame. He can be buried on the Capuchin crypt in Vienna alongside his ancestors. And this apparently was quite common. Vienna, you know, coroners or whatever, were well known for thudging reports on suicides to allow people to be buried according to the the rights of the church. I think, though, it's very unusual for a case that is this high profile. So the people Nuzio in Vienna, and he says it's probably the first time that a people Nuzio had ever been obliged to attend the funeral of a murderer and a suicide. Yeah, that's right. So he's not happy about it at all. And the people Nuzio actually then went to the hunting lodge and asked loads of questions, kept kind of looking into it. So he could team up with Bradfisch exactly. Set up an agency if the papal muntsewing doesn't work out. Brilliant. So anyway, Rudolf lies in state for three days, various places in the Hofburg. And finally in the Hofburg Chapel, the Hofburg Cabella, and there was a huge public crush, all thousands upon thousands of people, especially women dressed in black. So many that people were injured or fainted in the in the crowd. Ambulances had to be called and it ended thousands of people being turned away. And then the funeral took place on Tuesday, the 5th of February in the Capuchin church in the Capuchin crypt, which you can visit. I mean, you can see Crown Prince Rudolf's tomb. I would say it last summer. Of course, this is not the last, you know, very high profile funeral there's going to be in Vienna. And not for the last time, France Joseph specifically asked foreign dignitaries not to come. And in a preview of what will happen in 1914, the worst person, the last person that you would ever want at a somber family occasion, the Kaiser says, no, no, I'm coming anyway. And France Joseph has to send him a special message. You may judge how deeply crushed my family is if we have to address this request, even to you, even to you, even to you. If you'd suffered a terrible tragedy. And then Kaiser Wilhelm II announced that he was going to turn up. I mean, that would be the worst. So the funeral was another incredibly sort of V&E's occasion. The richer would be that the Chamberlain would knock on the door of the Capuchin crypt. And the voice would say, who is it? And he'd say, his most serene imperial and royal highness, the Archduke Crown Prince Rudolf of Habsburg. And the voice would say, we know him not. And they'd repeat this. And then eventually, when the voice said, who is there, the Chamberlain would say, your brother Rudolf a poor sinner. And then at last, they would open the door and let him in. And then right at the end, very memorable moment when they carried the body down to the crypt, France Joseph the Emperor, that's the one moment in public. One of the only moments in his entire life, probably the only moment when he lost control of his public dignity. And he burst out crying and he broke down and he was kissing the casket and sobbing. The one moment when you see the man, you know, the grieving father behind the facade of the sort of the Imperial Wars. So if he widened the picture out a bit, at one level it's only a royal scandal. But the great sort of Austrian music critic, the most forbidding critic in Vienna at the day was a guy called Edward Hanslik and he wrote afterwards. He said, "I've lived through the saddest catastrophes in Vienna. I've lived through revolutions, the loss of land, murderous devastations by flood and fire. But nothing of all this is comparable to the horror of January the 30th. The disconsolate, desperate turbulence which ripped through the entire population is indescribable." And we know from when you mentioned Diana a few times how these sort of personal tragedies can often cut through with the great mass of the population in a way that geopolitical things don't. Yeah. I mean, you said that Diana's world wasn't gothic. It was "Hello, magazine and everything." Yeah. And so it seemed expressive of a kind of age of celebrity that was running out of control. But presumably in the Viennese context, there are all kinds of cultural swells that find echoes in this case. And also there is the sense that the crown prince has gone. The emperor doesn't have another direct male heir. And it must have symbolized for people at the time in the empire an anxiety that indeed the storm clouds are gathering. Don't you think? Yes. I think exactly both those things. I think first of all, it's a huge shock for the dynasty because as you say, he doesn't have another son. So they're going to have to search elsewhere in the family tree for an heir. Of course, the man that they find turns out to be a great friend of the rest of his history, but a slightly ill-vated figure in his own right, although the bird population of central Europe might not agree. And I think you're dead right. The cultural atmosphere of fantasy likely to be in at the sense of neurosis, the sense of introspection, of cultural anxiety, also cultural excitement, of course. This seems reflective of that world. And also the German speaking world more generally, because Varkin is the Liebeschthod, the idea of love and death. Yeah. And two lovers who are united in death. Yeah. Tristan was older, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's probably the most celebrated work of music that has been produced in the late 19th century. And we've seen how much part it is of the kind of cultural furniture of people at this age. It must just be overwhelming. Completely. And precisely because it's overwhelming, that's where you get the conspiracy theorists. So we're talked about this with the Kennedy assassination with lots of things. What appears to be a freak event, if it's seen by the public as cataclysmic enough, of seismic importance, people will often refuse to accept. They don't like chance, luck, personal quirks in history. Great events must have great causes. And so people look for conspiracy theories that are related to the political anxieties of the day. So people say, I mean, first of all, there are the sort of more humdrum conspiracy theories, Mary Murdoff, or her relatives Murdoff. Perhaps because they found out he'd given her gonorrhea, and they wanted to punish him for it. What about Stephanie? Yeah, there are theories that the grandpa and sister Stephanie did it because she was jealous, of course. The Freemasons, the Jesuits, the Jews, Bismarck did it, not the Kaiser. The Kaiser, no, there are theories that the Kaiser did it. But the most common, the most, and this obviously reflects the political atmosphere of the day, that I mean, this is such a weird theory. He, the killed himself, always murdered because he was about to be exposed as having plotted to seize the throne of Hungary from his father and break away from his father and set up a secessionist Hungarian kingdom. Well, I guess that's expressive of what is clearly a deep sense of tension between father and son. But also between the two halves of the Emperor? Yeah. And he's, you know, the Emperor is obsessing about this even on the day of his son's suicide. Right. Isn't there a theory that was proposed by Emperor Zeta, who was the last Empress, that it was the French, and that it had been organized by Clemoso, which I think is generally not regarded as plausible. Why did Clemoso do it? Remind me why Clemoso wanted to kill Crown Prince Rudolph? Well, he wasn't even I think, he wasn't even Parliament at this time. I think she made it up, but she lived to a kind of ripe old age. I think she kind of died in the 70s or something. She did, yeah. Maybe in the 80s. And she was kept repeating this. I have to admit, I showed Hercules himself control by not falling down lots of rabbit holes on my, because there's so much stuff online about this by people because people love Ceci and they love Crown Prince Rudolph. So if you go to the Capuchin crypt, they have tombs of all the Habsburgs. And some of these are like massive figures, I don't know, Maria Theresa or something. But Crown Prince Rudolph's tomb has more flowers, has a lot of flowers, given that he never wielded power, and actually in the grand scheme of things, you could argue, it's not a terribly consequential person. But there's clearly something about his story that speaks to people even today in the 21st century. It's a cuckabane of Austro-Hungary. I mean, it's talked about the political meaning of it. Anyone any historian writing about the Austro-Hungarian empire or the Habsburgs gives this a lot of welley, understandably, and they see it as a symptomatic of this wider loss of confidence of the imperial project. It's the Titanic. Yeah, but as with the Titanic, I think a lot of this is massively overblown. So we know why Mary and Rudolph killed themselves. I mean, he's morbid, he's got gonorrhea. Today, he would be diagnosed as having mental health issues of a very serious kind. That does speak of something that is genuine, which is the the way in which to be born into the Habsburg dynasty is to feel trapped, is to feel a prisoner. We have all these counts of both men and women, almost sowing themselves into their uniforms and their clothing. So, you know, transfer to land when he gets shot. It takes time for them to realize that the blood is welling out. We're going to hear something similar about CC and due course, I think, that there is that monarchy is a kind of trap for those who find themselves enclosed within it. Very 21st century theme, right? People often say that's about the house of Windsor, don't they? Yeah, but the difference with the house of Windsor is that they can kind of make radio programs about it and kind of have features in newspapers talking about bad mental health, whereas Rudolph couldn't. And the idea of any of these people really having a kind of interior emotional life is verboten. Yeah. Interesting that nobody had done this before him, though, no? But what does that tell you? Something changed in the second half of the 19th century that made this possible. There would not. I mean, it's hard to imagine a 14th century prince. No, and it's changing nowhere more than in Vienna. Yeah, exactly. Vienna is the, you know, this is where all these ideas of of repression and neurosis and psychosis and everything are being defined at this very moment, maybe a particular kind of introspection and a sense of yourself or, I don't know, he's vibe lauding, I believe it's the phrase. It's vibe lauding, is that the phrase? Yeah, Jensy joins us on the podcast, brilliant. So what happened next? Franz Joseph, I mean, this is very Freudian and Frederick Morton makes this point in his book. He wants to erase every trace, every memory of this incident and the way he does it is by literally erasing the place. So the hunting logic miling, every trace of it is expunged from the earth. It's completely pulled down and it is replaced with a caramelite convent, which stands to this day and the nuns of the convent are enjoined to offer daily prayers for the salvation of the late crown prince. He needs all the prayers he can get. He does. So the most likely heir to Franz Joseph now is his younger brother, Carl Ludwig, who is in his late fifties, but Carl Ludwig's not in brilliant health and in the late 1890s, in 1896, he went on a sort of pilgrimage to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire and he decided to drink some water from the river Jordan. He basically ran a drink, dirty water polluted with sewage. So do we get his dysentery returned to the show, dysentery returned to the show and carried off Carl Ludwig and the heir became his son Rudolf's Protoche, Franz Ferdinand. So a great friend of the restless history, but we know what became of him. And actually this brings us to the wider issue of tragedy in the Habsburgs. So you've already alluded to this. In the decade after Rudolf's death, his mother C.C. cut out ever more, ever lonelier and more melancholy figure. So she basically, she's dressed always in black in mourning for her son. She drifts around the Mediterranean. She's thinner than ever. She looks very sad, you know, solitary. And in autumn of 1898, she was staying at Lake Geneva. And Franz Joseph, her husband, was still writing to her all the time from Vienna. And he would write to these very sweet letters, the end of one letter he signs off. He says sort of farewell, my most beautiful, my best and sweetest angel. But the sad thing is she never got to read this particular letter because While it was en route, on the 10th of September, 1898, she was boarding the steamer to Montreux on Lake Geneva, which just had one lady waiting with her. And she was standing amid the crush of people when suddenly she collapsed. And no one could work out why she collapsed at first. As you said, she is very tightly sewn into her corset. - Yeah. - And when finally they worked out what happened, they realized that she had been stabbed through the heart with a sharpened stiletto, a kind of improvised stiletto. By an Italian anarchist called Luigi Lucane. And he had traveled to Geneva to kill a royal because it was a favorite royal hangout. And he said afterwards he didn't care which one he killed as long as he killed one. And CC was the person that he killed. And when the news got back to Vienna, Franz Joseph, apparently when he heard the news, he sobbed uncontrollably and then he said to one of his aides, so I am to be spared nothing in this world. Nobody knows the love we had for each other, just a sort of bitterly ironic thing for him to say. - Yeah. - So this for him was the crowning blow. He still had his actress, Catarina Shrat, though their relationship had actually cooled by this point. He's very lonely. He writes, Catarina Shrat at one point, I feel endlessly sad in my hopeless loneliness. His son has killed himself. His wife has been murdered. He's effectively on his own. And he lives for another 18 years after his wife's death. It seems incredibly old at this point. He actually looks older than he is. So he turned 70 in 1900, but at this point he looked about 150. And people talked about him as a relic at this point. They would call him the last night or the old gentleman or something. And he remains enormously popular, Franz Joseph, a great rallying point for his empire and his suffering actually worked quite well as a political asset. 'Cause the papers were called him the Man of Sorrows. Sort of a man who has lost everything. Wife, son, you know, all the light has gone from his life. And yet still he dedicates himself every day, gets up at four o'clock in the morning. His red box is to his, yeah, to the peoples of his empire. But I suppose another way of looking at it is precisely because he is such a relic. He seems like the embodiment of an antiquated institutional conservatism, an empire that seems utterly beleaguered by the modern world. And an empire that feels itself to be so embattled. And of course, that's the context in which his heir, who he doesn't get on with at all now, Franz Ferdinand goes off to Bosnia to see some army maneuvers in 1914. And Tom, we all know how that story was to end. - We do, well, thank you Dominic. A gothic chiller, an amazing story. And we have a bonus out this week on the nephew of one of the characters in this series. And that is Baron Nopcia, C.C.'s Chamberlain. And his nephew is also Franz Baron Nopcia. And he is one of the most remarkable figures in the entire history of paleontology. I see Dominic's face light up at the mention of that word. So Nopcia, Nopcia Jr. absolutely titanic figure in the history of the study of dinosaurs. But he also, he hung out with bandits in Albania, became a spy in the First World War, is in the Guinness Book of Records as the first man to have hijacked a plane. And his end has some striking. And actually, I wonder if they're entirely coincidental echoes of the Miling incident. So if you're already a member of the Restor's History Club, you already have had that. If you're not, then you can sign up at therestor'shistory.com. That sounds amazing. And the good news doesn't stop there. Because Dominic, we're also doing a live show, aren't we, about the ultimate Victorian adventure, which is the Abyssinian expedition of 1868, or kicked off when the Abyssinian Emperor wrote a letter to Queen Victoria, and she neglected to reply and he got an massive stop. And chaos ensued. And actually, I think that ends with him, with the Abyssinian Emperor killing himself. So bit of a theme developing there. - Yeah, it's absolutely amazing story. It's one of the most lurid, implausible, and entertaining of all 19th century imperial adventures. So I'm really looking forward to the show. - It's very flash man, isn't it? - There's a flash man book about it. Flash man on the march. - Yeah, it's the ideal flash man story, if you like flash man. And even if you don't, it's still brilliant. Anyway, that is at the South Bank in London, on Friday the fall for September, and you can get tickets once again at therestashistory.com. I think you should just bookmark therestashistory.com and buy everything it's got to offer. And Dominic, I have even more exciting news, because we are running a summer sale, and so for a limited time, if you want to sign up to the rest of the history club, listen about the dinosaurs and a host of other supplementary benefits, then you will get an extra 20% off and annual membership using the code Summer26. And this is only valid until the 31st of August. So hurry, hurry, hurry, while stocks last. So that is the Miling Incident. Next week, we begin a six part series on another Royal, but this is a Royal who lives through a ripe old age and does heroic things, all her reign, and it is Elizabeth the first. And we will be looking at the road that takes Elizabeth the first to the fateful decision to execute Mary Queen of Scots and thereby inspire the launching of the Spanish Armada against her. Francis Drake's in it, isn't he? Francis Drake is in it. Sir Philip Sidney. Sir Philip Sidney's in it. Edward Campion, the Jesuit is in it. Lord Cecil is in it. It's just non-stop Elizabethan action. Brilliant. So if you love a Tudor, you're going to love this series. We will see you then. Bye-bye. Have a good day.