Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Hapsburg by Greg King and Penny Wilson from St. Martin's Press is a well written, well researched, engaging account of the double suicide or murder suicide of Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress Countess Marie Vetsera (Mary) at Rudolph's hunting lodge, Mayerling. My interest in this book came from having seen the movie Mayerling when I was very young. Hollywood's romanticized version is totally different from what you'll learn in the fascinating book.
Greg King and Penny Wilson open the pages to a story of a mentally unstable, married Crown Prince with a history of womanizing, suffering from venereal disease, addicted to morphine and alcohol, his 17 year old mistress with quite a past (already) and her socially ambitious mother and so much more. Nothing like the myth of the romantic Hollywood version.
The interesting aftermath of the event at Mayerling changed the history of Europe and the rest of the world. With the death of the Crown Prince the successor to his father would eventually be his cousin Franz Ferdinand whose assassination would lead to WWI. This book is a great read.
Thank you Greg King and Penny Wilson, St Martin's Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Authoritative and comprehensive account of the events at Mayerling and an insightful and meticulously researched exploration of the last days of the Hapsburg Empire.

I first heard of Austria's Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress Mary Vetsera in 1989 when I spent a week with a friend in Heiligenkreuz and we visited the cemetery where Mary Vetsera is buried. This book about their tragic deaths caught my eye. Some questions surrounding the murder/suicide may never be answered since some evidence was destroyed (or at best, was not preserved) and some of the principals took their knowledge to their graves. King and Wilson make good use of contemporary accounts and surviving documentation to build a convincing case that there was more to this incident than love gone wrong. It may have had more to do with the poor relationship between Rudolf and his father, the emperor Franz Josef, and Rudolf's sympathy for Hungarian independence. Recommended for readers with an interest in late 19th century Europe and its royalty.

This review is based on an electronic advance readers copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley.

Twilight of an Empire is the twisted tale of Crown Prince Rudolf Hapsburg and his young lover, Mary Vetsera. King and Wilson are a good writing team. The narrative is solid, except the authors have a tendency to posit at least one fairly far fetched supposition about what really happened at Mayerling and the reasons behind it. They also like to postulate on how the main players were thinking and delve into posthumous diagnoses, which needs to be avoided.
All in all, the author's offer an interesting perspective on the Mayerling tragedy, which definitely affected the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Hapsburgs was good but was a little slow at times.
3 1/2 stars

The subtitle of this history is “The Tragedy of Mayerling and the end of the Hapsburgs.” The authors take a fresh look at the facts and theories surrounding the deaths of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress Mary Vetsera at Mayerling Hunting Lodge on January 30, 1889. They explain in the introduction how they divided their study into four sections. Part One covers the background of the principals and the events that led up to the tragedy. Part Two deals with the deaths and the initial damage control. Part Three is a look at how others viewed the facts and the many theories about what happened and why. Finally, in Part Four, they offer their own possible explanation of the deaths and why those left behind acted as they did.

The writing is engrossing, especially for readers interested in actual facts and reasonable explanation as opposed to conspiracy theories. But the conspiracy theories and cover-ups are interesting in their own right as the authors analyze just why so many different explanations were offered as late as the 21st century.

The reader meets the Rudolf and Mary in the first part. (Any similarity between the pair and their film counterparts is purely coincidental, although Audrey Hepburn’s eyes surely were as fascinating as Mary’s glittering orbs.) Neither individual was a role model. Rudolf was neglected by his parents as was the custom and abused by his first tutor. Although he had a fine intellect, he was not encouraged to pursue his studies, was married to a princess he had met only a few times, and had no real role in governing the Hapsburg Empire. If he had strong ideas, especially in the belief that Hungary should be separate from Austria and have its own king and elected officials, those ideas were ignored or actively discouraged by his father. He found solace in champagne, drugs, and sex with lots of willing women who received silver cigarette cases and a dose of clap when their affairs ended.

Mary Vetsera was a buxom seventeen year old, sexually experienced thanks to the encouragement of her mother who saw her daughter’s affairs as an entry door into the closed court society with its wealth and benefits. But even if Rudolf was not her first lover, she still was only seventeen, read juicy French novels, loved dressing up, and thought lovers’ suicide pacts were the most romantic way to leave this workaday world. The brightest gem in the jewelry box she was not. But she was seventeen!

These two were aided and abetted by Mary’s mother and by Rudolf’s illegitimate cousin Marie Von Larich, a lady-in waiting to the Empress who must have modeled her life after Cousin Bette. She surely hated the fact that, although her blood was as blue as the rest of the royals, because she was born before her parents were married, she was a bastard. The Emperor looked the other way; the Crown Princess fumed; the court gossiped. It was the perfect storm for tragic murder-suicide.

In the second part the authors describe the initial reaction to the deaths. Rudolf died of a stroke; no, a heart attack; no, a jealous gamekeeper shot him because the crown prince dallied with his wife; no, Mary hit him over the head with a champagne bottle and then shot herself in remorse when she realized she had killed him. In an almost Marx Brothers scenario, according to strict court protocol no one had the authority to inform Franz Josef his heir was dead. Mary is buried secretly (a gothic incident if there ever was one) and Rudolf is given a state funeral.

“Why” is the topic of the third section? Was it a plot by Hungarian nationalists who felt betrayed by the crown prince and managed to sneak into the lodge and murder him and his young mistress? Did Rudolf finally succumb to the strain of insanity that ran in his mother’s family and, in a state of deep depression, kill Mary and then himself? This was the reason presented to the Pope to allow a Catholic burial and the theory that surviving members of the Hapsburg dynasty clung to for most of their lives. A mentally ill suicide was not morally responsible for his actions and so could enter heaven. Or, in the most outlandish theory, was Rudolf even dead? Maybe he escaped to New York or South America and made a new life for himself. A body was planted in the bed chamber.

Finally, in the last part, the authors take the evidence and theories and make sense of them. Their conclusion, based on historical facts and modern psychology should be the definitive answer to the Mayerling deaths. At least, I hope so.

The cast of characters is fascinating, from the royals to the servants who knew too much to the police who had to tread a very careful line. The sources are the letters and diaries and memories of witnesses and their descendants who recalled family stories about the events in 1889. Some are reliable and some are not, but all are carefully noted in footnotes and bibliography.

This is a fascinating and fast-moving account of the beginning of the end of the Hapsburg Empire.

I have enjoyed many books by Greg King and Penny Wilson (including “The Assassination of the Archduke,” about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, “Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy and the end of the Edwardian Age,” and “The Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson and the World’s Greatest Royal Mystery”) and so I was delighted to receive their latest volume to review.

Subtitled, “The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Hapsburgs,” this is an in-depth examination of the death of Rudolf, Crown Prince and Archduke of Austria-Hungary, and his teenage mistress, Mary; or, to give her full name; Marie Alexandrine von Vetsera. This is often viewed as a rather romantic, if tragic, suicide pact. As with all such things though, this is a far more complicated story than it seems.

Prince Rudolf, later seen by his grieving father, Emperor Franz Josef I, as the perfect son, was actually often in conflict with his father and his ministers. His marriage to Stephanie, Princess and Archduchess, was an unhappy one; although the couple had a daughter, there was no hope of any more children and Stephanie also had an unhappy relationship with her husband’s family. In fact, this is a twisted tale of families who intermarried too often, of neglectful parenting, a lack of communication on all sides and thwarted ambition.

To make matters even worse, the death of Prince Rudolf and Mary Vetsera was covered up by the Hapsburgs; making an unhappy situation even more complicated and giving voice to endless speculation, gossip and conspiracy theories about what really happened. Did Prince Rudolf make a suicide pact with his beautiful, young, indiscreet mistress, or was he already bored with her? If so, why did she die alongside him?

Although I felt for many of the characters in this book, it was Mary that I felt the most sympathy for ; along with her ambitious mother, Helena. Mary was a young girl, who enjoyed the intrigue and romance of an affair with the Prince. She was pushed forward by her mother, whose family reputation was so notorious that, at first, she could not get her daughter’s disappearance taken seriously. So keen were the Hapsburg’s to cover up what happened, that Mary, and her family, were really treated outrageously by those in power (even, shockingly, after her death)- as indeed was Rudolf’s young widow.

Overall, this is an intriguing read for anyone who enjoys well written history, with a wonderful background and a fascinating cast of characters. The authors are excellent at plucking characters from history, whose full story is often glossed over, and really bringing them alive. Another wonderful read and history at its most enjoyable. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

Crown Prince Rudolf has fascinated me for years, but finding information on him can be a challenge for an English speaker in the United States. The Road to Mayerling by Richard Barkeley is fabulous, but I think Mayerling: The Facts Behind the Legend by Fritz Judtmann a stronger resource. If asked a week ago, it’d have been the only title I’d have recommended, but that was before I’d gotten my hands on an advanced copy of Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Habsburgs.

Between these pages, Greg King and Penny Wilson offer compelling and complex arguments for Rudolf’s actions, present a detailed glimpse at his inner circle, and pull aside the curtain the surrounds his relationship with the Baroness Mary Vetsera. They understand the sentimental romanticism that characterizes their subject matter, but what I love about this book is how the authors dissect and separate fact from fiction to uncover the truths beneath.

Twilight of Empire is easily one of the most comprehensive and detailed accounts of the of the double-suicide and while I don’t agree with all of the authors’ conclusions, I do feel they come closer to than any of their peers and recommend their work as one of the best available.

Unlike all the memoirs written to sell once their authors were broke after WWI, this study of the murder-suicide at Mayerling is pretty straightforward--Rudolph's behavior and death was the predictable outcome of a very thin gene pool of known depressives, abusive and neglectful parenting, 19th century romanticism gone wrong (thanks, Young Werther) and untreatable gonorrhea. The interest is in the lengths to which the imperial bureaucracy and then the imperial family went to try to contain both the news and the circumstances (trying to convince the pope that Rudolph wasn't really a suicide), and the matted web of connections amongst the second and third tiers of Europe's royal courts--lots of illegitimate relatives, hangers-on, lackeys and bag man.

This is a very readable account of the still-mysterious and controversial Mayerling Affair where Crown Prince Rudolf and Mary Vetsera were found dead in his bedroom on January 28, 1889 - suicide pact or murder?

King and Wilson track back through the events that lead up to this shocking event telling it first in factual terms, then looking at the theories that have sprung up, before offering their own psychological explanation. It's the latter that became the most questionable for me, rooted as it is in speculation - but that's a personal qualm.

Throughout, there's a strong atmosphere and good storytelling - a popular rather than an academic history, and unlikely to be the last word on what happened in that hunting lodge in the Vienna Woods.

This review is based upon a prepublication copy of "Twilight of Empire" provided to me by the publisher for the purpose of review. "Twilight of Empire" is a fascinating and well written examination of the events surrounding one of the best known scandals of the 19th century, the murder/suicide of the Hapsburg Crown Prince Rudolf and his young mistress at a country estate called Mayerling. Perhaps no scandal with the possible exception of the Dreyfuss Affair in France almost two decades later would so catch the pubic eye and shape powerful forces preparing to reveal themselves in modern Europe. Both would have a profound effect on European History.
In "Twilight of Empire," the authors focus closely on the surviving documentary evidence of what happened and why one night several decades before World War I. Given that such evidence was long suppressed by the Hapsburg Monarchy and its survivors, that is no mean accomplishment. What emerges is, essentially, a family tragedy writ large. The cast of characters includes spurned wives and lovers, powerful aristocrats and ruling monarchs, and the most fabled dynasty in European History. In the end, notwithstanding plenty of bad behavior all around, one is left feeling sorry about the unrealized human potential of the Crown Prince and his young lover. If ever one wanted to see how the sins of the fathers play out in future generations, this would make a good case study. Each character seems trapped in a straitjacket of his or her own making, following a path right out of a Greek tragedy. The authors are clear about their purpose here, in focusing closely on this singular scandal, they reveal much about the Hapsburg dynasty and what it had become as it stumbled towards its end. The authors examine rumors, try to establish a chain of evidence, and posit a number of possible scenarios to point to what happened and why. It is something of a tour de force given the paucity of surviving hard evidence.. Whatever happened, it was the subject of an obvious and extensive cover up involving the full power of the state, and that, in itself, helps to point the way to some possible conclusions. If you are one of those people who thinks that government conspiracies and cover ups are a uniquely modern phenomenon, this book will leave you disillusioned and saddened, but wiser for all that.

This work of history reads like a compelling murder mystery. The murder/suicide of Crown Prince Rudolph of the Austro-Hungarian empire and his mistress Mary Vetsera was more than a lover's tragedy, it changed the world. Who knows what would have happened had Rudolph lived and Franz Ferdinand not been assassinated. World War I might never have taken place and the whole history of Europe would be completely different. This is a story that has been hidden for a very long time and I am pleased that it is now available to the modern reader.