COUNT LONYAY HAD HIS SAY

I failed to learn what year this book by Count Carl Lonyay was written but this is a first edition, the publisher, Scribner, sold it for $5. My guess is the early 1950's.

Rather than a lack of interest in a romantic tragedy that occurred in 1889, the question of what happened at Meyering carries on perhaps because it concerns royalty and changed history. Vintage copies of the book, some with a cover showing Rudolph in his coffin, his blown off head wrapped in white gauze (what! No wig?), are selling for $20 or more.

I was unable to get a copy to read this one cover to cover, so I won't review it. I was able to find a promotion review in Google Books which must've been in a Life Magazine. So to paraphrase, the Hungarian Count Carl Lonyay gets his credentials because he says his uncle married Prince Rudolph's widow, Princess Stephanie of Belgium! He wrote that the Prince wasn't at all in love with Baroness Mary Vetsera. He says the Prince even spent the night before the murder suicide with another woman. Though she was not yet 18 when Rudolph murdered her, the author paints Mary as a flirt and seductress who'd already had many affairs. I hope that doesn't imply she deserved to die because she wasn't a virgin.

It's not easy to know if the Count was telling the truth or repeating what his uncle married to Stephanie had to say. Was there a wish to blame Mary?

C 2019