In a retelling of the the vivid story of Mary Vetsera and Crown Prince Rudolf, this film attempts to take us back in time to a period when stability in Europe was in question and Crown Prince Rudolf was a reluctant heir, frankly not suited for the role. The Prince seemed desperate for a life of irresponsibility.
A bad relationship with his father and his parents own unhappy arranged marriage as no good example, and with few Royal women of interest, the Prince pursued the party. He went to houses of prostitution and got VD which wasn't curable. He used morphine, though a doctor supplied it. The family were devout Catholics so he upset them and the bishops by hanging out with the Masons and mixing with commoners. He had a secret romance with a Jewish woman, who didn't know he was a Prince. But, like the Buddha, he also discovered the suffering, the poverty, the orphans in the streets, the fact that there were Greek Catholics and people of other religions in the Empire he was born to rule. He was no longer protected from the realities of the Empire.
He's a progressive, interested in the new technology of electricity. He had new ideas that were not welcome. When he wasn't in Vienna, he's in Prague. Oddly, using a Jewish pen name, he writes articles that are published in a Jewish newspaper.
After rejecting five possible matches, he could resist no longer and married Stephanie of Belgium who hadn't even had her period. Stephanie soon grew into a woman who had political opinions and was into her role as an upcoming emperor's wife. He thought of her as just one more society girl. The couple were miserable, especially when he gave her VD that resulted in infertility and there was no longer a reason for their marriage.
His mother lived a life separate from his father, who had a mistress. She even lived in Godollo, a town in Hungary - part of the Austrian Empire but far away. So the Prince accepted an assignment in the military, as it was hoped this responsibility would give him self discipline and confidence. His father told him to fix his marriage. He wanted an annulment. The couple followed his parent's example and he lived a bachelor's life separate life from his wife.
Despite all this, there were women competing for the Prince and mothers pushing their daughters to become his mistress. The question was and is, did Mary Vetsera really want to be with him or has her life story been rewritten to explain how or why a beautiful young women, who could have had a had good marriage among the nobility, ended up in a suicide pact.
Her love for the Crown Prince may have been played up, so that she appears to have been desperately in love, possessed, enthralled and - utterly hopelessly fatally romantic. The story might have also been invented, I speculate, to get a pushy mother out of trouble or save her reputation. (For, from other sources, I know it appears there was a cover up that her family cooperated with that resulted in her reburial.) Was Mary a murder victim? Was the Prince not just a rebel but mentally ill.
The story goes that Mary, even as a girl, had a crush on him, and her mother ripped up the pictures of him that Mary kept of her idol, when he married to discourage her.
Perhaps there was another woman, a relative, who served as an intermediary between Mary and Rudolf? For in this version of what happened at Meyering, called a hunting lodge but one of his residences and the scene of wild parties, the Prince, who was now shooting up morphine and a very ill addict, not to mention possibly becoming deranged from the complications of VD, only planned to kill himself, but young Mary went to him, desiring to be with her Prince for eternity, the only way they could be together.
Mitzi, the common and more pragmatic Mistress is shown as the only person to be concerned about him to reach out for help. She was rebuffed.
The production appears to have come out of Austria or Germany and is rich with details. Perhaps it's my research that has lead me to more speculation.
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