Crown Prince Rudolph was a deeply troubled man — off his face on morphine and champagne, riddled with gonorrhea, haunted by fantasies of death, and psychologically scarred by a brutal military upbringing that included being woken by pistol shots and sleeping in a zoo.

4:44struggling to cope with forces that in the 20th century will have an absolutely explosive effect. Nationalism, anti-semitism, a host of other modern pathologies. But the scene I just described, Dominic, I mean, it does read like something out of a kind of 19th century Gothic thriller, doesn't it? Like something out of Edgar Allan Poe. >> Yeah, absolutely it does. So, um, hi everybody. The scene is a remote hunting

5:11lodge in the woods outside Vienna. And the two principal characters, so I'm I'm going to give the game away right away. Our killer is the 30-year-old heir to the Austrohungarian throne. He's crown prince Rudolph, an idealistic haggarded man. He's off his face on morphine and champagne. He is riddled with gonorrhea. And he is the kind of man who keeps a skull as a paperwe. I mean, he's another

5:36of the many people in history who look like our producer Callum. He >> does. >> Astonishing number of them. But maybe the interesting thing about this, we did our series on Jack the Ripper and we poo pooed the notion that a crown prince could be a killer in that series, but here there's not much doubt, is there? >> There's no doubt whatsoever. So, there's Crown Prince Rudolph and then there is

5:56his accomplice and victim. And this is his teenage mistress, Baroness Mary Vetzer, who is a fashionista. She's a party girl. She's a social climber. And she has become infatuated with him to the point of self-destruction. And it's a brilliant, brilliant story. I mean, all through the uh decades, writers and artists have been drawn to it. There are manga, comics, there are plays, there are operas, there's ballet. Kenneth

6:22McMillan's great ballet from the 1970s, a real favorite at the Royal Ballet in London. Yeah. because it was staged this spring at Covent Garden. >> Yes. So, it's a fantastic story and we'll get straight into it and we'll begin with the time and place which is a great favorite of the rest is history. The AustroHungarian Empire. So, world of gigantic cakes, uh, even more gigantic mustaches, insanely dapper uniforms,

6:47waltzes, um, nationalism, you know, simmering beneath the surface, the the subconscious sexual psychosis. Exactly. We are here for all of it. Now, to remind listeners, particularly people who didn't hear our series about the buildup to the First World War when the Austrohungarian Empire last featured, it's in central Europe. It's this mosaic of languages and ethnicities. Half of it is ruled from Vienna, half of it from Budapest. Uh there are 13 million German

7:14speakers, 10 million Hungarians, 5 million checks. There are Poles, Italians, Sloines, Jews, you name it. And what binds them is their unity to the Hapsburg dynasty. So it's a 13th century dynasty of the Hapsburgs. Rudolph of course is a Hapsburg. In his book that you mention his brilliant book and nervous splendor, Frederick Morton calls them manipulative, industrious, strangely modest, inexraable, decent, stodgy, staunch, drabness was their secret. Drabness and patience.

7:44And the man who embodies this is Rudolph's father and that is Emperor France Joseph I. um a great great favorite of the show. So because basically he lived forever. He's Elizabeth II, isn't he? Of uh 19th century history. >> He completely is. And we'll get because he's the father of the killer. We'll spend a bit of time with him because he's such an important figure in this