This is Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria. He had a way with the ladies. (Allegedly, he showed up at his own wedding with a lover as his date.) No one’s exactly sure of the circumstances of his death, but it appears that on the night of January 29, 1889, he shot himself in the head after shooting and killing his mistress, a teenaged baroness named Mary Vetsera, in a hunting lodge. He was 30. The white bandage you see in that picture is there to cover up the gunshot wound.  Mary’s body was smuggled away and buried hastily, to avoid a scandal. Rudolf, on the other hand, lies in the Habsburg Imperial Crypt in Vienna. His father pulled some strings to get him interred there: special arrangements were necessary because his death was a suicide. His death left his parents—Franz Josef I, Austria’s emperor, and Elisabeth of Bavaria, cousin to King Ludwig—without an heir and likely caused their already shaky marriage to collapse. His mother—whose extreme fasting and exercise regimens, by the way, remind me of the the fads of a century later—also died a violent death. She was stabbed with a needle file by an anarchist in 1898. You can read more about the (alleged) murder/suicide here and here. Image source: Wikipedia.

This is Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria. He had a way with the ladies. (Allegedly, he showed up at his own wedding with a lover as his date.)

No one’s exactly sure of the circumstances of his death, but it appears that on the night of January 29, 1889, he shot himself in the head after shooting and killing his mistress, a teenaged baroness named Mary Vetsera, in a hunting lodge. He was 30. The white bandage you see in that picture is there to cover up the gunshot wound. 

Mary’s body was smuggled away and buried hastily, to avoid a scandal. Rudolf, on the other hand, lies in the Habsburg Imperial Crypt in Vienna. His father pulled some strings to get him interred there: special arrangements were necessary because his death was a suicide.

His death left his parents—Franz Josef I, Austria’s emperor, and Elisabeth of Bavaria, cousin to King Ludwig—without an heir and likely caused their already shaky marriage to collapse. His mother—whose extreme fasting and exercise regimens, by the way, remind me of the the fads of a century later—also died a violent death. She was stabbed with a needle file by an anarchist in 1898.

You can read more about the (alleged) murder/suicide here and here.

Image source: Wikipedia.