“Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Habsburgs”, by Greg King and Penny Wilson

352 pages, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN-13: 978-1250083029

Mayerling. The mere mention of this benighted place is redolent of forbidden love, joint suicide and…Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve (?), doomed lovers who died in each other’s arms when their love was denied by a cruel and uncaring Imperial Court. The truth, however, is much more prosaic and the lovers a lot tawdrier, as told in Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Habsburgs by Greg King and Penny Wilson. The Empire referred to in the book’s title is the Habsburg Empire, by 1889 a mere shadow of its original self after the rule of Emperor Franz Joseph, who had been on the throne since 1848. Comprising Austria and its unwilling partner, Hungary, the two countries fought like cats-in-a-bag over everything political, religious and societal. By 1889, Franz Joseph and his heir, Rudolf, were at odds over damn near everything, with the father refusing to share any power or responsibility with his son, whom he regarded as weak and easily led…and that description of the Crown Prince was largely true: his defective personality was the result of bad parenting, drug addiction, severe inbreeding in the Hapsburg/Wittelsbach gene pools (his parents were first cousins, fer Chrissake), and the effects of the gonorrhea he acquired through indiscriminate sexual adventures. Countess Mary Vetsera, his 17 year old inamorata, was a vain, silly girl from a disreputable family, whose mother was basically pimping out her young daughter to eligible noblemen. Throw in Rudolf’s attempt at gaining the Hungarian throne in a coup (which failed) and Mary’s possible pregnancy, and you have all the angst necessary for a bad ending.

Twilight of Empire details Crown Prince Rudolf’s miserable childhood and early adult years as he was deprived of contact with either parent and forced through an unimaginative and harsh education and grew up to be intelligent but flighty. He lent his support to politicians and editors attempting to liberalize the Dual Monarchy’s increasingly scoliotic government but gained nothing but enmity and distrust from his Paleolithic father. He spent most of his time in a series of love affairs with women from all classes of Society – eventually including one Mary Vetsera, a pretty young teenager who nowadays would be labeled a juvenile delinquent. Her ambitious mother and family, anxious to be admitted into Viennese High Society, encouraged her brazen affair with the Crown Prince…which ultimately led to the events of late January 1889 when Rudolf found himself embroiled in political intrigues that bordered on high treason. He was called on the carpet by his father and berated for his disloyalty and for his carryings on with Mary…that, along with the general hopelessness of his life in general, caused Rudolf to take Mary to his hunting lodge at Mayerling (hopelessness here being a relative term; as heir to the Habsburg throne, his life was still so much better than the majority of his would-be subjects, gonorrhea or no). We read about the immediate aftermath of the murder-suicide as the Imperial Court scrambled to make sense of and cover up the most sensational aspects of what had happened, while rumors swirled throughout Vienna and the rest of Europe, and King and Wilson do a superb job of analyzing the available material (many official records dealing with Mayerling have been destroyed) and coming up with a plausible explanation for what really happened on the night of January 29^th, 1889.

Twilight of Empire makes it amply clear that Mayerling was not a fairy tale gone awry. The events leading up to it and the subsequent actions taken by the Court and Government were for the most part tawdry, causing controversy and confusion that has lasted for more than a century. None of the principal actors (excepting Crown Princess Stephanie and Rudolf’s sisters Gisela and Marie Valerie) behaved with any real dignity or honor, and as the Epilogue makes clear, most of the people involved in some way with Mayerling went on to lead unpleasant and difficult lives. The tragedy at Mayerling has gone down in history as either a story of thwarted romance or as a darker tale of political vengeance. King and Wilson get to the facts of the case, blowing the romantic aspects completely out of the water. They are very good writers and their book is a gripping read (just don't be too disappointed if you’re a romantic).