Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Habsburgs

The quote comes from a Guardian Review of Kenneth Macmillan’s ballet Mayerling, but it seems fitting for the book as well. I read this book before seeing the ballet and am very glad i did, because I understood a lot more. It is a fine book in its own right. I am not usually a fan of royal histories but this one is great with a cast of truly awful characters.At the heart is Prince Rudolf who as the book makes clear started as a man of voracious sexual appetites and who having apparently contracted gonorrea fell into an abyss of morphine addiction, liberally washed down with champagne and brandy. His fairly awful mother the Empress Sissy who seems to have been largely absent and entirely self-absorbed apart from rescuing Rudolf from a particularly insane and sadistic martinet who had been entrusted with his education. Then there is the equally awfully Vetsara family and there attempts to enter the inner circle of Viennese aristocracy. The only one you actually feel sorry for is Mary Vetsara who we should not forget was only a 17 year old. In fact she seems to have pimped by her family in conjunction with the bitter and vindictive Countess Larisch and had the great misfortune to meet Rudolf when he was well on the road to his own personal hell.And so we head to the denouement at Mayerling. The book makes it clear that Rudolf was casting around for a suicide partner for some while. It is also clear that he was in the process of trying to dump Mary. He seems to have been driven to suicide by getting out of his depth in a plot by the Hungarians against his own father. So no starry eyed lover’s suicide pact as in the glossy film with Omar Sharif and Catherine Deneuve. Rudolf seems to have convinced the impressionable Mary to get involved in his exit strategy. In brutal terms, he shot and killed her and then appears to have prevaricated for another six hours before summoning the courage to finish himself off. Mary got a secret midnight funeral and the Hapsburgs squared with the Vatican that Rudolf was insane in order to get him a religious state funeral.Rudolf seems to get a good press as a liberal type who had he lived might have prevented the First World War. The book makes it clear, that such was his state of health and balance of mind, that that was a very unlikely hypothesis indeed.The book is well written and very readable and brings out the thoroughly uunpleasantness of everybody involved. I suggest that if you read one book on Mayerling it is this one.Unfortunately, it is not a book for the romantic at heart. The overarching conclusion is that rather than some misty eyed doomed romance, we are reading about the sexual exploitation and murder of a seventeen year old girl and of the Hapsburg’s attempts to cover it up and rewrite history after the event.

A tremendous book, the authors have assimilated just about all the material needed to get to the historical reality of this story. I deducted one star for a couple of reasons: more books of possible interest have come out since this book was published, and their hypothesis as to how the events played out is logical but not inevitable (other shades of interpretation are available). Nonetheless if one wants to read a book about Mayerling, this is the one to get.

A brilliant unravelling of all available historical research, that deftly examines all the rumours and romantic reconstructions of what was, essentially, a thoroughly sordid story. King and Wilson have constructed a tragically believable narrative: of a ruling dynasty weakened by perpetual intermarriage, of a crumbling imperial regime, of a deeply dysfunctional imperial family, and a teenage minx with delusions of romantic notoriety. A potent and deadly collision of horrors that created a tangle of conflicting tales only now becoming coherent and comprehensible. Every praise to King and Wilson for making all this accessible at last.I have always had some sympathy for Rudolf, who really couldn't help his awful inheritance and probably had very little chance of developing normally: nevertheless, it's hard to avoid thinking that he didn't have to turn into quite the waster he eventually was. Mary, I think, emerges as an airhead who got caught in events that were too complex for her to understand. Nowadays, she might be a minor reality tv star, whose agent would probably recommend a spell away from the cameras, doing voluntary work in some deprived part of the world. I hope this book destroys the lingering notion of the earnest, liberal, upright Crown Prince and his virginal companion in a hopeless romance, because the truth is far otherwise. I'm most sorry for Princess Stephanie, who, from the moment she married Rudolf, was absolutely in a no-win situation and destined to be cast for ever, even by her own daughter, as the scapegoat for events she had nothing to do with creating.A really horrific indictment of hereditary monarchy at its worst - backward-looking, incestuous, ridiculously privileged, and relentlessly mendacious. Just as well they are no longer players on the European stage.

This has to be the most significant and important work produced by Greg King and Penny Wilson. It is a fascinating book based on original research, which is comprehensively cross-reference and verified. It is structured in four parts – the events up to the event, a straightforward account of the event, the various conspiracy theories and then the psychological motivations with a realistic proposition on what may have really happened. This book is the denouement of the fictionalised romanticism surrounding the events at Mayling. The authors look at all angles and aspects of the situation as well as the motives of the various key players, and in balancing fact and probability they come to an interesting, if unsettling, conclusion. For me this has to be the seminal work on the death of Crown Prince Rudolph. It is, by far, the best and most important work on the tragic end to the Austro-Hungarian heir that marked the beginning of the demise of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

I read "My Past" by Marie Larisch which was published in 1913 and felt great sympathy for her in the way the Habsburg's treated her after Mayerling .But this book gives lie to just about everything she wrote . Greg King has come up with a reconstruction of the tragedy at Mayerling with new evidence and facts .It is a book I couldn't put down .It also shows how a silly, romantic seventeen year old was so ill used by Prince Rudolph ,who was in fact trying to end their relationship .It would appear from this book that Larisch had it in her power to save this young girl from her own foolishness, unfortunately for Mary Vetsera she did nothing. A brilliant read I recommend it .

Aproveché que se encontraba en oferta, no es un libro de bolsillo por lo que la inversión es muy buena y más que es pasta dura. Estoy por leerlo pero por reseñas y recomendaciones en varias redes se que será muy bueno. Lo recomiendo.

This was one of the most insightful historical books I've ever read. It shed so much light on new research and I honestly couldn't put it down.

sehr gut

"Mayerling". The mere word is redolent of forbidden love, joint suicide, and...Omar Sharif as Prince Rudolf and Catherine Deneuve as Mary Vetsera, doomed lovers who died in each other's arms. The truth, however, is much more prosaic and the lovers a lot tawdrier, as told in Greg King and Penny Wilson's superb new history, "Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling".The "Empire" referred to in the book's title is the Hapsburg empire; now by 1889 a mere shadow of its original self. Comprising Austria and its unwilling partner, Hungary, the two countries fought like cats-in-a-bag, over everything political, religious, and societal. Ruled over by Emperor Franz Joseph, who had been on the throne since 1848; by 1889, Franz Joseph and his heir, Rudolf were at sixes-and-sevens. The father refused 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, 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 men. 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 for a bad ending.That "bad ending" took place over a two day period in late January, 1889, at Mayerling, a hunting lodge a little southwest of Vienna. Both were found dead, and from that point the lying, name-calling, and cover-ups by most involved began. The story of the joint suicide as a lovers' tragedy began, too, and has been told and retold in both books and films. 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 wonderful read. Just don't be too disappointed if you're a romantic!

I really enjoyed this book, great photo's as well.