Doomed to Fail - Ep 25 - Part 1: A Lover's Pact to the Death - The Mayerling Incident

Episode Date: June 14, 2024

🎧 Step back in time to uncover the mystery and intrigue of the Mayerling Incident! This week, we delve into the tragic and controversial events surrounding the deaths of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his lover, Baroness Mary Vetsera, in 1889. Was it a pact, a political conspiracy, or something even more sinister? Join us as we unravel the secrets and scandals of this royal enigma. 👑🔍 Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

Hello, Taylor from Doom to Fail. We're a podcast that brings you History's Most Notorious Disasters and Epic Failures. We are re-releasing our first 26 episodes in two parts because we used to do long episodes and now we do two a week that are a little bit shorter. So we're almost done with our re-releases. This is episode 25, part one on the Myerling incident. So this is something that happened in 1889 when the Crown Prince of Austria and his mistress were found dead by suicide at Myerling, which is like a hunting

lodge that the Austrian royal family had. So it's a story of like intrigue, love affairs, probably some misunderstandings. And it's one that I hadn't heard. So I hope that you enjoy. Also for this one, I wrote a book called Twilight of Empire. Not to be confused with the book that I just read about the Opium Wars called Imperial Twilight. But Twilight of Empire was by Greg King and Penny Wilson, the author, I tagged her on Instagram and she said that she listened and we did a good job. So, I mean, that means a lot to me and that's super, super exciting. So I hope you enjoy it as well. Again, episode 25, part one, the Myerling incident. Thank you. In a matter of the people of the state of California versus Horthall James Simpson, case number

B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast where we explore two red flaggy relationships, one historic, one true crime, and point out all the little markers that could have prevented something usually negative from happening. I'm Fars. I'm joined here with my co-host. Taylor. Hi, Taylor. Hello. So, Taylor, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and why you like to cover historical red flaggy relationships and events?

Yeah. Yeah, I'm Taylor Pinero and I try to do a little bit more historical, trying to go back time when I can, try to go all over the world. A lot of it is because I love history and there's so many amazing stories that were just not taught. I definitely feel like I was totally, I don't know, what's the word, like stilted by the American education system because I had terrible history teachers and they made it really boring and that's super unfair because there's so many fun things that happened. So I like to do relationships when I can find them. but also like big famous disasters. Like I did the Hindenburg and things like that. Is stilted the combination of jilted and stunted? I think so because it like made it seem boring. And also I feel like I could have used it more in my life because people don't change or the same people we've always been. You know, so even things from 2,000 years ago,

they happen today every freaking day. Exactly. Exactly. That's awesome. And I am a fanatic of true crime, mostly because I like to think about how these people can do the things that they can do, going into like the deep recesses of whatever thought patterns are created and how they're created and why things happen the way they do is always really interesting for me.

So that's kind of where my passion and the on the side of things lies. The reason we decided to do red flagged relationships is just mostly because Taylor would examine my relationships and say, as far as you see the red flags, and you'm like, yeah, I see him. it's still fun, I'm still going to do it. It's like, this should be a podcast because you're probably not the only one. I'm like, as far as you tend to like a little bit of crazy and you're like, no, I don't. I'm like, I think that you do. Yeah, yeah. Taylor nailed it for sure. So how's your week start a week, then, or week weekend then, Taylor? Good. We are going to a like, I don't know, what's lower than there's professional baseball, minor league baseball and like one

notch below. I think that's the kind of baseball game we're going to after this. So we're going to Palm Springs to the Palm Springs. I don't know what they're playing their baseball stadium. But the kids get to go out on the field and they get to have their like baseball signed by the players and stuff. So it'll be quite cute. That's really fun. I love those games and because they're so cheap. They're really inexpensive. They're like $5. Yeah, you feel like it's a community all out there doing their thing. Like I had, I had floor seats one time at Madison Square Garden at a New York Liberty game. And like, yes, it was a WNBA, but also I had four seats at Madison Square Garden. It was dope. Yeah. Yeah, I'm all for it.

Very accessible. Yeah. I woke up this morning and I read a Facebook post that completely ruined me. It was for this dog rescue called Austin Animal Center that said five of these gorgeous dogs, they're like two to five years old. We're going to be put down in the next week. if someone doesn't accept them and foster them. And because my life's not busy enough, I went and filled out the application. I reached out to them directly and asked if I can foster. Apparently, I got to ask like really, really, like just in time when somebody else had already asked, and they were pairing the dogs, one of the dogs with that family. So all the dogs were off the kill list for next week, which is fantastic. And in the next week or two, I'm probably

to be a foster dad. Aw, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm excited. So usually the format of the show is that Taylor or I go first. We usually interchange one of the other. Who goes first to sweet Taylor? I think that I do. Sweet. Then in that case, I'm going to tell you my drink is and then we'll segue to the historic story. So my story, my story and my drink are from my old shopping grounds, Miami, Florida. So I'm going with a cafe con lece, which is just Spanish for coffee and milk. It is not good. It is like just piles of sugar with like a couple of drips of coffee in it. People love this stuff in Miami.

I think they also call it Cuban coffee, but it never was my thing. But again, Miami is known for stimulants, so that's a good one to have. So that's what I'm going to go with. Cool. Well, I can't wait. I have a drink that I've never heard of, but I want to share with you. It's actually a soda called Alm-Duddler, A-L-M-D-U-D-L-E-R. M-D-U-D-L-E-R, which is Austria's national drink.

So, Austria, the country is where we are going to be going today. And that's the, it's only, the only thing more popular than Alam-Duddler is Coca-Cola. So, Austrian's fucking love it. Cool. I'm going to talk about the Meyerling incident. Have you heard of that? He repeated the Meyerling? Myerling incident.

Never heard of it. It is the murder-suicide of Rudolph, the Crown Prince of Austria, and his 17-year-old mistress, Mary Vistera. Cool. Yeah, never heard of it. Cool. So I watched a bunch of YouTube videos on this, and I read a book called Twilight of an Empire, so I'll put my sources in

in the notes as well. But there's two things that I want to start with before we get started to start, like, thinking about, like, where we're going with this. One of them is there's so much, like, there's so much sex in politics, and sometimes we don't care. Like with the Kennedy, it's like, we don't give a shit. We're like, whatever.

You know, with the Clintons, we were like, We kind of care, but like, nah, nothing like super weird happened. But sometimes it changes the course of history. So in, do you remember in 2004, there was a U.S. Senate, a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Illinois named Jack Ryan, not Jake Ryan from. This sounds really familiar. So Jack Ryan was running in 2004, in 2004 against a Democrat, and he was going into a seat that a Republican had retired from.

he was he had just got a divorce from actress jerry ryan and she's in star track so like you might if you look sharp you'd recognize her she's pretty the story the story's starting to resonate more to keep going so in their divorce filing there were custody documents that were hidden from the public but they became public in those custody documents jerry had said that jack had tried to take her to sex clubs in yes yes and in europe and she didn't want to go she didn't want to perform publicly in these in these clubs. And so that was ultimately led to their divorce. And that was in their custody papers because she was using that to like gain more custody of the kids. So he was probably going to lose his campaign anyway. Like Jack probably wasn't going to win. But he left the campaign and another Republican

entered. So the Democrat won in a landslide 7030. And that Democrat was Barack Obama. Oh my God. That's so cool. Yeah. So he definitely with his little sexual deviance, he definitely boosted Obama's campaign. And that was in 2004 when he became a Senator Illinois. And four years later, you know, he's president. So. Well, what was the big, the huge boost was obviously getting to be a U.S. Senator was a huge deal. But he also gave the keynote at the DNC's convention. And that like launched him into like the national stratosphere. So that's great. That's a really good way to tie that together. That one asking his wife to go to a sex club results in Obama being president. That's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. So do you remember when Gmail was hard to get,

they had to get invited? So I would get invited that I could invite five people and they could invite five people. There was a dude and his name was something very that was already taken like John Smith. So he was trying to get like John. Smith at Gmail and he couldn't get it. So he was watching the DNC speeches while he was trying to figure this out. And he saw Barack Obama. It was like, oh, I've never heard of this guy. Let me grab barack.com at gmail.com. And he grabbed it and he gets like a hundred million emails a day. That move. So funny. Anyway, there's that. There's sex and politics. Always been a thing. And this matters because similarly, when Rudolph, our main person in this story, he was heir to

the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And when he died, his cousin became heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And his cousin was Franz Ferdinand. So that's the life-changing person who became heir to the throne. because, as you know, Franz Ferdinand gets assassinated World War I. Yeah, whenever you mention somebody getting killed who's Australian royalty, I was like, okay, this is going to end in a lot of death for a lot of people. Yeah, absolutely. So the other thing that we should start talking about is incest, which I know we've talked about a bunch. In these royal families, there's just so much of it.

And I mean, obviously, I have no idea what they could possibly be thinking. But in my mind and what I know about genetics, which is almost nothing, enough to know that like things aren't going to go great if you continue to you know intermarry in between families like how is that better than having like smart people from other families come in you know what i mean like that just that concept doesn't make any sense to me okay so in the first time in history where you will hear me say this i think i'm going to defend incest in this case please do because i don't get it because i think that if you're like in this royal position where literally everybody is beneath you like you engaging with you

them is like a travesty all you have that are your peer group is like your relatives like what else do you have but yeah yes but like it's not going well it doesn't go well i'm not saying it's good i'm not saying it's good it's like i can understand it is what i'm saying yeah but i mean so rudolph the the crown prince of austria he's a hapsburg so i do want to talk about the hapsburgs i think later i'll go further further back but essentially the hapsburg started in 1273, Rudolph I first of Habsburg is elected King of Germany. Lots of this have happened. They also still exist. There's still Habsburgs, but they're less inbred now. But like some of the things like Franz Ferdinand himself said, quote, with us, man and wife

are always related to each other 20 times over. The results are that half the children are idiots or epileptics. Yeah, the clues were there. It's not great. Yeah. If you look, you can see it. Rudolph's parents were first cousins. His grandmother those were sisters and his, so his wife him and his wife ended up having the same grandfather. It's very confusing. It's like, you can't even draw a family tree like this. Right. It's so confusing.

Some of the history, there was Charles, the second of Spain. He was Charles the Bewitched or Charles the Mad. He was the last Habsburg ruler of Spain, one in 1661. But he has so many disabilities. He had severe physical deformities. They have that prominent jaw, that like big Habsburg underbite, you know. And his tongue was so swollen. He could, like, barely eat or talk.

Which is so gross. like so terrible. He was infertile, had a range of health problems. The jaw, perhaps for jaw and lip, it's like a distinct facial feature. You can see it in portraits throughout history. It also, there's a lot of times like nature does, nature intervenes and puts infertility in the lines because they're like, yeah, nature's like, you can't do this anymore. Yeah, guys. So a lot of people can't have children, which I guess is for the greater good. And also it reduces the genetic diversity. So it means they have more susceptibility to inherited diseases and it weakens their health. Because if you have like the same genes on top of each other, top of each other, you're

not bringing you anything else that can like protect you from other things. Right. Makes sense. Yeah. I'm a doctor. So I get that like they don't understand genetics and I get that like what you're saying how like you think everybody else is beneath you. But like come on. I don't understand how this can be better. So Ferdinand the first is another one around this time. He could barely speak. Transferdinand's father, Carl Ludwig, was a religious fanatic who terrorized his families. And then also for Rudolph himself, his mother's line was from Bavaria, but they were also not great. They were also pretty inbred.

She had a cousin who believed she had swallowed a piano made of glass. And like, wouldn't stop talking about it. Another dude believed he was a hero in a Wagner opera, and he would, like, have picnics outside in the snow and talk to people who weren't there. And, like, just, like, really weird, eccentric things. And they're rich. So, like, if you're, like, going to go crazy, go crazy in a castle. Yeah, there's a lot of mental illness, obviously, a lot of in-breeding. Okay.

Yeah. And also, there's a lot of depression. So, like, depression and other and other things are happening to. And so this is, like, compounding into this, these people. So now we're in the late 1800s in Vienna in Austria. This story is not a love story. Like, it's a tragedy, but there's, it isn't a love story. This isn't, like, star-cross lovers or anything.

And we'll get into that. I just want to make that clear. There's a bunch of movies that were made in, like, the 60s and 50s and 60s. There's one with Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer, and they look so good together. I don't know if you've ever seen, can you picture that? Have you ever seen them in War and Peace? No. What's that names?

Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer. Oh, yeah. Audrey Hepburn, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. And they were married in real life. And in, I don't know, in War and Peace, for anyone who knows, like, Bolkonski is the fucking worst, and he's the person that Mel Ferrer plays. they just look so beautiful together. I'm Team Pierre.

She ends up with Jane Fonda's dad. What's his name? But anyway, they still look great together. And then there's another one where Omar Sharif plays Rudolph. Do you know who he is? Yeah. You know how I said earlier in this podcast that I don't believe eyes or the window to your soul? Is Omar Sharif the one that gets past for that?

He is. Because Omar Sharif's eyes are always like wet with like romantic pain and desire. Like imagine him in like the last scene of Dr. Javago and you like, his eyes are like always just like really wet. Yeah. Which is like part of the reason why I hate eyes. But I also feel like if I'm going to see anyone soul with their eyes, it's Omar Shrefs.

Did he die recently? Yes. Yeah, it's pretty recent, right? Yeah. When he died, I read a tweet that someone was a server at a restaurant and they were serving him and they were like,

I'm so sorry to tell you to like bother you, but Dr. Javago changed my life. And Omar Shreif took their hand and said, it changed mine too. Yeah. I love that guy. Okay. Anyway, watch those movies if you want to cry for seven days.

Where we are now, we're in Vienna. Vienna at this time is very romantic. It's a very romantic city. It's in Austria. They have tons of museums, tons of old houses. It's the house of the Habsburgs for generations for centuries. Everybody is just like very, very, very romantic. Like they believe that they are.

And part of that culture, there's a lot of suicide. It's like a big thing. It happens all the time. So like some people are like, you shouldn't really go out the morning until they've cut down the bodies that are hanging from the trees from last night because like every day someone dies by suicide. Servants will, you know, die by suicide if they, you know, break a plate. Children will, children die by suicide if they, like, feel a lesson. Everyone's very, being very, very dramatic. So it's a whole thing and the people are really thinking

about it a lot. So that's kind of one other things happening in Vienna. Our main people that were talking about, Rudolf Franz Karl Josef, was born on the 21st of August in 1858. His parents were Emperor Franz Josef, Joseph, the first of Austria and Duchess Elizabeth of Bavaria, but they called his mom's sissy. His father, the emperor of Franz Josef, he was born in 1830. It's a weird time to be an emperor because this is like things are starting to modernize. You know, if you're part of a dynasty from like the 1200s, you know, it's a totally different world. There's some compromises that he has to deal with as different parts of the empire want to be free. This is, you know, like 50 years after like the U.S. and France have had like their revolution.

So he did make some compromises, but he was also a very, very, very stern father. He tried to make his son Rudolph tough by like waking him up by like shooting, shooting in his bedroom. Like, wake up, boo pooh, you know, like, and like, have him running the snow and like do things that he considered to be very manly. He was also like very conservative and his son grew up to be a little bit more like of a liberal, which always happens. Usually how it goes. Yeah. His mother, Sissy was born on. Oh, so one more thing, sorry.

Emperor Franz Joseph didn't die until 1916. He died of sickness. So he died post World War I. Wow. He died much later. His mom, Rudolph's mom, Sissy. She was born on December 24th, 1837 in Munich, Bavaria. She was a daughter of a Duke and a princess.

She was very beautiful. And what also I think is interesting about these people in this story is it's that precipice between paintings and photographs because they have the traditional, like, huge, beautiful portraits that are painted of them in, like, huge regal stuff. And then there's also photographs of them. because it's like the beginning of when you could have photographs, which is interesting and cool. So. Are the portraits and the photos, they align? They do.

Oh, cool. Which is good to know, I guess, for all of history. Yeah. Yeah. So Sissy is very beautiful. She has really long hair. There's a portrait of her holding her hair. And like she's like holding it like a baby.

She's taught so much hair. It's like a very intimate portrait that the emperor loved. And she did all this like stuff for her face and body. And not that I don't do this because I will put like any face oil on my face. I will, I'll do it seven times a day. Like, absolutely. But she would do things like in the morning, she'd take a cold bath at night. She'd take an olive oil bath.

She would sleep with like rags soaked with apple cider of vinegar around her waist to keep her waist slim. And in photos of her, her waist is like, I mean, obviously corsid it. But you could like put your hands around her and touch each other, like that kind of a waste. And she just like did all this stuff to remain youthful. She had a daughter who died in infancy. So, you know, that happens a lot. She tried to write poetry, was passionate about the arts. But she was also very controlling of her son.

She loved him a lot, but also, like, wanted him to kind of straighten up and, like, become a good heir to the throne. I won't get to this, but Sissy, she is the empress of Austro-Hungary, and in 1898, she's walking in Geneva with a friend, and an Italian anarchist stabs her in the heart and kills her while she's walking down the street. I'm not going to say that's common, but that seems like a common thing to have happened back then. Didn't a Rasputin get stabbed in the stomach just randomly by someone? Maybe, but he deserved it. fair enough so rudolph the son of cissy and franz josef he's a playboy they can do whatever he wants like you can when you're like a prince and he has dozens of affairs that are very very obvious like it's very obvious that he's super sexually active they say he might have had up to 30

illegitimate children which is like too many and also doesn't make sense the bloodlines like he's having kids all over the place so where do they go you know it has to be like the right weird bloodline right which i think is dumb and like Like, did you watch, wait, did you watch House of Dragon? I can't remember if you did. No, I never got around to that one. So, like, one of the sons, obviously, well, a bunch of them are like, do this. And one of my friends was like, it's very convenient that in the Game of Thrones world

that you are guaranteed to have the hair color of your father, because, like, how would you know? It's like, it's hilarious. It's hilarious. They're like, oh, there's like kids with white hair. They must be so-and-so's, you know, like, it's just really funny. Taylor, hold on. Speaking of series, watching series, have you seen any of the new Black Mirror?

I'll watch the first two. Okay. It gets good. I mean, those are really good. And it keeps saying better. The last one of the series, there's a whole section where this woman is watching that Rha, Raskouta, Rasputin. No way.

Song, yeah. It was like plenty of my God. Yeah, I shouldn't. And one of the main characters is one of the lead singers in that song that came in Anyways, whatever. I'm not going to ruin it, but it's fun. It's very fun. Okay. I'll get there. I can't watch, I can watch like two a week before my like brain explodes. So I watch the first two. They get intense. They get really intense. But they're good. He had all these kids. Whenever he breaks off an affair, he has someone deliver like a silver cigarette box to her like to signify that it's over, which I think is hilarious.

And like imagine being like you have you like are somewhere and like you pull your cigarette box out of your purse and like someone else is the same one and you just like look each other and laugh because you know that you both had an affair of this guy. be nice. That's a good way to break up with someone. That's classy. There's a gift. A breakup gift. He just like has a room of them, you know. So in 1881, Rudolph marries Stephanie of Belgium and they have a daughter, Elizabeth. So they have one child, but again, it's not a man. So they need to have a man to be able to have an heir, to have a boy. But Rudolph gets, I mean, riddled with STDs. Of course. You know, some sources say it's gonorrhea. Some say it's syphilis. He probably has both. either one he gives it back to his wife and it makes her unable to have any more children so he they will not have an air which is like I think an STD can make you sterile I guess I mean I'm sure

they could have had super SDs back then too yeah I mean it's just so awful I remember yeah I mean it must have been so gross down there for everyone you remember what Taylor no I was going to say I remember this is stupid I remember I stopped it's a dumb story but I was in London studying abroad and I was studying like diaspora and people coming up to the UK and I was in a center for immigration and I was walking with a bunch of people and I was at the back of the line with one of my friends and a door kind of slammed in our face and there was a big poster on it that said could you have gonorrhea and we were both like I don't think I don't think so that's like a really funny awakening moment of like what is going on is this like destiny or something fate like

Did someone slam this door on my face on purpose? Could I? Could I, could I, can I? I don't know. So I do not. I did not know. But that was funny. Anyway, I told that story.

Thanks for me. Can you tell that story first? Because you started with Iron. And we're talking about these tests. Anyways, whatever. Anyway. So in 1888, Rudolf asks one of his girlfriends, Mitzie Casper, to do murder suicide with him.

He's like, come on, it'll be romantic. And she's like, no. You know, I'm not doing that with you. Also in 1888, he meets another lady at court, Mary Vesterra, who is 17. So Mary's 17, Rudolph is 30. And their affair is, like, very obvious. Like, everyone knows. In the Omar Sharif movie, I couldn't watch the whole thing.

I found, like, a clip of them doing the waltz on YouTube, but, like, they're dancing. Everybody's just like, oh, like, we fucking know these two are hugging up, you know, like, annoyed. There's also in one of the palaces in Vienna, there's a staircase that leads up to Rudolf's bedroom. It's called the Vesterra staircase because she used to sneak up that staircase to see him. Sometimes she would sneak up wearing only a fur coat with nothing underneath, which is very scandalous for the time. Mary herself was a baroness. So Baroness Marie-Alexandrine Vosstra was born in 1871 on March 19th. Her mother was a pill and wanted her to be rich. So she was like, I have these daughters. The only reason I have these daughters is that they will marry

well and give me like the money and power that I want. So this was not Mary's first rodeo. She's 17, but she's, like, been in these affairs with older rich people for a while. Her mom's been trying to, like, get someone to marry her. She was, I thought this was, like, really funny that she had to go, she went to school in a convent called the Institute for Daughters of the Nobility. Like, imagine what you learn there. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So her mom was actively helping with this affair between Mary and Rudolph. Like everybody, everybody knew there were other people actively helping as well. So here's what happened. Here's the Myerling incident. On January 29th, 1889, so they haven't even been together a year. They won't know each other for a few months. Rudolph excuses himself from a dinner with his family, and he heads to Myerling, which is a hunting lodge outside of Vienna.

Hunting Lodge in that, like, it's a palace. Yeah, it makes sense. You know, I watch... It's like a Murdof thing where the hunting lodge was like 6,000 square feet. Exactly, exactly. I watched, there was a show called Versailles that I watched a couple of, and there's one where the king is like, I'm going to go to Versailles. And his brother's like, oh, dad's hunting lodge, you know, like you do.

One day we're going to have that life, Taylor. So he heads to Myerling with Mary. On January 30th, the next morning, Rudolfs Valet, Loshek, goes to wake him up and the door is locked. He can't get it open. He ends up using a hammer and, like, putting his hand through and unlocking it from the inside and opening the door. When he gets in there, Mary's body is laying on the bed. She's probably naked.

She only brought one off it, probably naked or wearing the car underclothes. And she had been shot in the head and there was like blood everywhere and she was pretty far into Brighamortus. Rudolph's body was leaning over the bed with a bullet in his head and there was a mirror next to him. So he might have been trying to do a thing like that they had someone else had done recently where you like use a mirror to shoot yourself like kind of like see to see the back of your head or whatever. He might have been trying that. There was also like blood coming out of his mouth and his skull was shattered. So she was in like I said, she had been dead before him. There is a lot of speculation about what happened, and that's kind of going to be the thing that happens after this.

But in Twilight of the Empire, the book that I read, it sounds like Mary was sitting up holding a handkerchief, so possibly crying on the edge of the bed when she was shot in the back of the head and then fell over. So he may have just impulsively shot her in the head. With the bodies, there were some suicide letters. There were a couple of them. More were actually found in 2015. They've been put into a safety deposit box in 1926 by a relative, and they weren't found until 2050. which is cool and those there were letters like from mary to her mother and they said things like i'll be much happier in death because i can be with him we cannot be together in life we be together

in death and so what's a suicide rudolph rudolph shot himself and then the bullet went through her head no no no he killed her hours before he killed himself did she want to die probably but probably in like a state of we have to die to be together yeah like if you if it would have been like hey baby you should think about this then she probably won't enough you know but it was like a very like emotionally heightened experience for everyone that they were in

because can you know because because she was more advanced like rig and mortis than he was they know that she died a lot earlier than he did so he shot her and then like started her body for several hours there's probably a point of no return for him also because now he's a murderer you know not that they couldn't have hid that somehow but he's just like kind of going crazy in this room by himself but we'll talk more about like what might have happened in the room in a little bit so nobody knows what to do because this guy's the heir to the throne

he's definitely dead everyone's kind of like trying to figure out how they tell the emperor and initially they're like oh she must have poisoned him and then killed herself because they can't imagine that he would do it so they use that story when they tell the emperor and empress, Mary's poor mother, even though she was trying to tell off her daughter, you know, technically, she can't find her daughter. And she's like been looking for her all over town. She finally goes to the palace and asks the emperor and the empress tells her that her daughter is dead in like a very cold, a cold way to let her know. They said that he died of a heart attack. They said that he died of like, of like a sickness. Their official story from the emperor

and empress changes several times in the first day or two because they're not sure what to do. eventually they do say that he died by suicide because it's just hard to ignore poor mary this is crazy so mary's body they take it and they throw it in the closet and put clothes on top of it and just kind of hide it for now because they don't know what to do her uncles her mom's brothers come and get her come and get her body the people in the palace are like in in myerling the lodge are like you have to pretend she's still alive like you have to pretend that she's still alive when you're taking her out of hair so that no one sees you leaving with a dead body that would be too suspicious so they make them wash her body, get her dressed.

She had like a ice skating outfit, which is like, who knows what that means? But like just like a pretty simple dress and like a jacket. They put that on her body and they try to carry her out. But her head keeps falling down and her body keeps something because she's dead. So they stick a broomstick up her shirt, not up her body, but like up her shirt and kind of like tie her head to it and have to carry her out that way. Was this the inspiration for Weekend at Bernice? God, I don't think so. It could have been.

It's awful. It's awful. So they bring her to a church in Highlandquites, which is nearby. They don't want to bury her because it's a suicide. Everyone's very Catholic. They don't want to bury her, but the uncle's convinced them to let her be buried there in a simple pine box because she was in like a state of mental distress when she died. Also, I don't believe that she killed herself. I think he killed her. You know, later, her mother exhumed her body and buried her in like a nicer cemetery. During World War II, that cemetery was destroyed by the Soviets. And they best. all the bodies when they robbed them. So they, like, robbed her grave and, like, just smashed her bones. Then her bones were re-buried. In the 50s, they exhumed her again to look for a bullet wound in her skull because, like, people were kind of like maybe she wasn't shot,

even though she definitely was. And you couldn't tell anymore because the bones had been crushed. You know. Where was she shot in the back of the head? Yeah. Then why would they think it's a suit? Who could do that to themselves? I know.

They're just trying to, like, make sounds of what just happened, you know? Yeah. They're trying to protect the air. Yeah. And so in the 90s, a man, the 1990s, a man was obsessed with a Myerling incident. He tricked the cemetery into giving them her remains. He could study them. So he took them again. And he ended up getting arrested and giving them back. But like poor Mary's body was just like treated like garbage. At this point, one of us could have part of her skull. It sounds like you're doing really easy, easy, breezy with it. Yeah.

she also just like after that after this people didn't start talking about mary until later when people started talking about the demise of the empire so she was just like disappeared like she used to be like in the society papers and people were friends and then one day she was gone people just like stop talking about her because they were trying to hide what had happened rudolph's body was taken and they had to reconstruct his skull for a state burial there's pictures of it he has like a big bandage over his head because his skull was like destroyed and they had to get special permission from the pope to bury him with his family, like not just like the church, but like the actual Pope had to be like it was okay. And they got the permission because they said that he was insane when he had died by suicide, which was he shot in the back of the head too? No. Okay. He shot himself in the temple. Okay, I was going to say there's some questions that don't sound like they were being asked, but it sounds like maybe they were. Yeah. Yeah, no. He was definitely, he definitely shot himself in the face. He was probably bipolar, it sounds like. So he was like, you know, super high high,

super low lows. And he has probably in like a high high of being excited about this idea of like going to death with his lover and the same time like also being like super low and like suicidal. So he definitely had a lot like going on. People didn't want this to be the case. Like they didn't want it to be a murder or suicide because it's so awful and like confusing and it like destroyed the line and all these things. There's a couple conspiracies and things that people think might have happened.

So some people and this would have been like. kind of speculating on it for like hundreds of years. They think that maybe it was a political conspiracy. And Rudolph was most likely talking to the Hungarian side of the empire more than he should have been and about to go against his father in some ways. So he was like also involved in like those shenanigans. So like someone could have killed him for that. Other theories were like maybe it was an accident.

Like maybe he was just like playing with his gun and shot her. Because like that happens in America right now. So don't give me that face as far as that happened all the time. But, I mean, like, okay, so it happens with like kids or with like drunk hillbillies. When you're like with your lover in like this regal, like you're not just like, hey, let's play, let's play catch with the with the revolver. That's fair also, but he was definitely drunk. Oh, okay. Well, you know, again, details.

Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I've got to tell you they were drunk this whole time. And the, so. Now it's sounding like an Alabama. story. I get it now. Yeah. So people were like, well, maybe the gun discharged and then shot them both at the same time. They went through him and then hit her. That's crazy. That could never

happen. I guess like, well, whatever. I'm saying that no, no. Some people were said that when they saw him, he had glass in his skull. So they said that she had smashed him over the head of the champagne bottle in a rage and then killed herself. It doesn't make sense, obviously, because we know she died hours before him. So he definitely, she definitely died first. Another theory that people thought for a long time was that maybe she had a abortion and died from complications of that. But like a complication of abortion is not getting shot in the head. Yeah. That's not how that works. So what it probably is and what I've been saying it all the time, like it's fun because of the conspiracies, but what it is is a murder suicide. He was in an unhappy marriage. He wanted to do something

dramatic. And she was just very, very vulnerable. She's 17 years old. Like this prince is telling you that he loves you, that he can't live without you, you know, all the things. So, maybe they got into some sort of argument when they were in the room together maybe she was pregnant and he was like well great I also have I have another this is my 31st illegitimate child like fuck you and I'm not going to marry you still you know and they were fighting and maybe like that was a thing maybe he went there to break up with her and like she like wouldn't take it and she like wouldn't accept it so he shot her and then was so upset and worried and all of that that he ended up shooting himself he was never going to get divorced he was never going to marry her it's

only really a mystery because people want it to be you know because you don't know what happened in that room and that is so fascinating that you're like what causes these two people to have him shoot her and then wait for so long by himself like some people said the room's covered in blood some people said the room's covered in like smashed glass and it was like disarray so for like hours he's what drinking and throwing glass around and the door is locked and everyone else is asleep and no one knows he's doing this and then he you know that he dies so It's, I think the mystery of what actually happened, I don't think it's very mysterious, like, he killed her and then himself. But I think that the mystery of like the why will never be answered and like what it was like, and it was like last minutes of her life and then like the last hours of his reason are by himself, you know?

Our stories are going to be so similar. Yeah, again, we don't coordinate any of this. I have no idea what I was going to talk about. She has no idea what I'm going to talk about. We just hop on and just go with it. But, like, we have a lot of throughlines on these two stories. Oh, it's so crazy. Crazy. So after this, Rudolph's uncle was supposed to be the next in line, but he didn't want to be. So his son, Franz Ferdinand, became the next in line. Franz Ferdinand was not the emperor when he was assassinated.

He was just the heir to the emperor. But as we know, that started off World War I. And one of the YouTube videos I watched, they were like, we can't say that if this hadn't happened, that there would not have been a World War I. but they do feel comfortable saying that Rudolph would not have been where Franz Ferdinand was when he was shot he wouldn't have been that involved in politics

the way Franz Ferdinand was. It might have been different. Rudolph's wife Elizabeth was kind of shunned by the family. Everyone was really mad at her. She went off and ended up they lived their life in the different part of Europe and she was involved in just like she's buried in the family in the family plot. His daughter Elizabeth

she married the Archduke Fran Salvatore of Austria-Tuxany. They had 10 children. So some of their children didn't die until, like, the late 1970s. So some of Rudolph's grandchildren lived until the 70s, which is, is wild because like I said, like it's just this, that time is such a, I think, like, a marker between like modern and like what we think of like as like history, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's, and that's it. So it's a tragic, not love story because they were, like, they were barely together, you know, it's like a love story, but it's like a thing that happened that changed. history for a lot of people. So what's the red flag? I think that he was married and had raging CDs and had 30 illegitimate children

and that her mom was trying to essentially sell her to him. Okay. So you're saying that if somebody's married and has 30 illegitimate children, maybe like look the other way. If you're dating someone and they're pre-ordering a goodbye gift when they break up with you, then that's a red flag. If you open

a closet in your boyfriend's house and it's just 50 candelabra saying thanks for the good times just dip immediately it's not going to end well one of them has your name engraved in it and you're like oh no I'm about to get broken up that that is a good idea that is like I'm not saying I'm going to do that but I'm not not going to do that if you break up with fires you get cigars and jars with bars yes instead of a cigarette cigarette case you know get a jar of cigars I'm a sports from China. Yeah, my friend George suggested this.

So thanks George, because it was cool, listen to. And the book I read, The Twilight of an Empire, was really, really good. I recommend it. Nice. Nice. Very cool. Well, we will transition over to the true climate side of the story.