Two gunshots echoed from Mayerling hunting hotel within the early hours of 30 January 1889, sending shockwaves thru the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Crown Prince Rudolf used to be realized needless alongside Baroness Mary Vetsera, his 17-year-damaged-down mistress. Mary had been shot by Rudolf, who, quite a lot of hours later, grew to turn out to be the gun on himself.

Within the next weeks the imperial family sought to erase all memory of the baroness’ presence at Mayerling, incandescent that her damage would sigh Rudolf a Catholic burial (his suicide used to be excused by an abnormality within the brain). This, mixed with the mixed messages the royal household sent out to the public about Rudolf’s death, started a recreation of whispering and finger-pointing that continues on the present time.

Endless theories be pleased circulated since: damage by international agents or on the notify of Rudolf’s hated uncle, Archduke Albrecht; an orgy gone abominable; a botched abortion; an assassination by a jealous neighbour. However, whereas there is serene a lot left unanswered about Mayerling, predominant sources and forensic discoveries unequivocally notify that Rudolf killed his mistress after which himself. 

Mary, fancy many younger girls her age, aloof images of Rudolf. After seeing him from afar in April 1888, she wrote in her calendar that a ‘passion used to be born’. By that autumn she used to be determined to meet him and, having written him a fervent letter expressing her prefer, her prefer used to be quickly fulfilled. 

A assembly used to be arranged within the Hofburg, the set Rudolf’s cousin, Marie Larisch, acted as chaperone. In a letter to her buddy and damaged-down piano teacher, Hermine Tobis, Mary wrote that the Crown Prince begged Larisch to bring her support as quickly as doubtless.

The 2 met in most cases between then and January 1889, nonetheless it used to be no longer till 13 January that their affair used to be consummated. ‘We both misplaced our heads’, Mary wrote to Hermine, ‘and I modified into a girl! Now we belong to every barely about a in physique and soul.’ Her letter makes it obvious this used to be Mary’s first sexual ride. This no longer simplest disproves the abortion theory (her pregnancy might well serene no longer be pleased been evident by the purpose of their deaths) nonetheless furthermore casts shadows on the aristocratic authors and diarists who took the chance to malign the Vetsera family and tell Mary as a sexual adventuress and even a ‘titled trollop’, as Count Carl Lonyay named her in 1949. 

The come upon intended loads to the baroness that, two days later, she sold a cigarette case engraved with the words ‘13th January, thanks to destiny’ and requested in her farewell designate to her sister that she leave vegetation on her grave yearly on this date.

On 28 January Marie Larisch took Mary to the Hofburg for the last time. Mary used to be then pushed to the inn Roter Stadl by Josef Bratfisch (the carriage driver who in most cases introduced Mary to her rendezvous with Rudolf). Rudolf adopted rapidly after and joined Mary and Bratfisch to high-tail onwards to Mayerling. 

Rudolf’s hunting company, Prince Philipp Coburg and Count Josef Hoyos, arrived the next day. Rudolf excused himself from the hunt and a family dinner within the Hofburg, complaining of a cool. Afterwards, Coburg returned to Vienna for the dinner, whereas Rudolf and Hoyos dined together. After Hoyos retired, Mary and Rudolf be pleased been entertained by Bratfisch. Items be pleased been exchanged and Mary said to the carriage driver that it could probably perchance well be the last time they’d interrogate every barely about a. Early the next morning, the pair used to be realized needless by the afraid valet, Loschek, who heard gunshots and realized the door to the Crown Prince’s mattress room locked.

The half-truth of the Crown Prince’s suicide quickly modified into known, nonetheless simplest after a series of announcements that at the initiating tried to file natural causes of death. 

Mary’s physique used to be rushed out of the hunting hotel in secret. Her uncles compelled a broomstick up the support of her clothes and sat along with her corpse between them in a carriage. She used to be fast buried on the cemetery at Heiligenkreuz. Her mom, Helene, used to be no longer allowed to hunt the advice of with and the memoirs all the contrivance in which thru which she sought justice for her daughter be pleased been suppressed. Moderately heaps of the copies which printed Mary as a sufferer be pleased been confiscated by the police chief, Baron Krauss. One escaped and used to be printed in a French day to day newspaper.

The disappearance of these memoirs and the continuing refusal of the imperial family to discuss the reality ended in over 100 years of rumours and conspiracy theories. Despite the indisputable truth that the contents of Mary’s farewell letters be pleased been suspected, their whereabouts be pleased been unknown. It used to be no longer till they be pleased been realized deposited in an Austrian financial institution in 2015 that we gained a clearer record of a younger girl titillating to enter eternity alongside the man she cherished.

‘True about a hours earlier than my death, I wish to instruct “adieu”’, she wrote to her sister Hanna. ‘We are both going blissfully into the risky beyond.’ She acknowledged to her mom that, in agreement with Rudolf, she wished to be buried subsequent to him. What is glaring all the contrivance in which thru her letters is that she went willingly to her destiny: ‘I am happier in death than in lifestyles.’ 

But in death, Mary used to be no longer current her leisure. Her stays be pleased been anxious a pair of instances, most particularly in 1992 when Helmut Flatzelsteiner stole her physique from its tomb. Below the guise of checking out how an ancestor died, Flatzelsteiner had the stays examined. Gunshot wounds are seen on her cranium and the bullet’s entry point is on the left. The staunch-handed Mary used to be shot by her lover.

What, then, motivated the couple’s suicide? Romantic movies would be pleased us focus on it used to be their no longer doubtless love. This used to be completely the case for Mary. Paperwork written by Mary point to a younger girl who felt intensely and who, months earlier than Mayerling, said that she would die for Rudolf – ‘for what does lifestyles imply to me?’ she requested. She unearths her motive clearly to Hanna in her closing letter: due to the she might well now not marry for love, she would notice Rudolf into the unknown. 

Though he completely had feelings for Mary, Rudolf’s incentives be pleased been barely about a. His abominable childhood, disastrous marriage and his father blockading him from political involvement had created a best doubtless storm. Too fearful to die by myself, Rudolf had already proposed a suicide pact to others, at the side of his long-term lover, Mizzi Caspar. When she rejected him and unsuccessfully tried to alert the police, Rudolf grew to turn out to be to Mary, taking tremendous thing about her feelings and youthful naivety. In doing so, he inadvertently began to flip the wheels that indirectly ended in the plunge of the monarchy.

Lucy Coatman is a postgraduate at Central European University, Vienna, researching the Habsburg family within the 19th and early 20th centuries.