The affair between Crown Prince Rudolph and Mary Vetsera was conducted like a Gothic melodrama — secret carriage rides at dusk, meetings in a gloomy apartment with a skull and a raven, iron wedding rings inscribed 'unto death,' and a mutual suicide pact that Mary's teenage letters show she embraced with romantic fervor.
Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland narrate the secret courtship, the Gothic paraphernalia of skull and raven, the ring inscribed with 'unto death,' and Mary's letters professing her willingness to die for love. ✦ AI generated
Tom Holland · The Rest Is History · 2026-07-23 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 112:00
We talked a while about Vienna. Then he said to me, 'Pardon me, but I would like to talk to the countest privately for a few minutes.' And then he went with Marie to another room. I looked around me. On his desk was a revolver and a skull. I picked up the skull, took it between my hands, and looked at it from all sides. Suddenly, Rudolph came in and took it from me with deep apprehension. But when I said that I wasn't afraid, he smiled. So that is an amazing scene. Uh like something and we said it before from a kind of Gothic melodrama, Edgar and Poe or something like that. But in fact, that is a letter that was written by the 17-year-old Baroness Mary Vetera to her old governness in the autumn of 1888. In fact, it's like something out of Dracula, isn't it? A letter written to a governness by a 17-year-old girl who has invited herself into the room of an exceedingly sinister man.
verbatim transcript · starts at 112:00
111:41door. He hacks at the panels as you described in that reading that you did the the first episode. The hole becomes this kind of gash and he's able to look through and he drops the axe in horror. Inside it's total darkness. He can see the air is very heavy with smoke, but he can see two people lying on or near. It's really not clear from the descriptions the bed. One of them is
112:05Mary. She's stretched out on the bed. Her hands are clasping a rose and there's blood on the sheets around her head. And the other is Crown Prince Rudolph. He is kind of slumped against or leaning on a bedside table in front of a mirror and there is blood trickling from his mouth and it is absolutely obvious that they are both dead. And for a moment the men outside are paralyzed
112:31with horror and nobody dares to go in and eventually Hoyos says okay Bratfish I need you to drive me to Bon station which is the nearest railway station. They get to Bon station and he has to go into the station master and say something terrible has happened at Crown Prince Rudolph's hunting lodge. I must get to Vienna instantly. And the station master agrees to stop the express train
112:54from Triest and Hyos climbs on board. So at 9:50 he is in Vienna and within about 25 minutes he has reached the Hofberg the imperial palace. And here he completely loses his nerve. He doesn't know how he can possibly break this news to the emperor. So he goes to find Cece's Chamberlain who is called Baron Noobs and they say, "Well, we will tell the empress and then she can tell the
113:25emperor." So Cece Elizabeth, she got up early that morning. She got up at 6:30 as she always did. Her days always began with this long bath and then a massage. Then her hair famously long. There was a special maid to comb her hair. >> Yeah. For two or three hours, learning Greek, all of that. >> Yeah. Then she would have a herbal tea and she would do some exercises in her
113:47private gym. Then she uh 10:00 had started a Greek lesson with Mus Roushilos and they were reading the Iliad together. And at 10:45 there was a knock on the door and the lady in waiting said, "Baron Ncha and Count Hoyos want to see you urgently." And Elizabeth was furious. you don't interfere with my Greek lessons. But then Barona came in. She saw the look on his face and she realized something was
114:13terribly wrong. Now her husband, France Joseph, had been up even longer. Well, he always gets up early, doesn't he? Cuz he's got an empire to run, >> right? He got up at 4:00 in the morning from his iron military bed. God >> and he'd been washed by his footmen. He'd had breakfast at 4:20 and then he got straight into his paperwork and had his first meetings at 5:00 in the
114:34morning. And a lot of this had been about the Budapest Parliament and the Army Bill. As Frederick Morton said that morning, France Joseph did what his ancestors had done before him. He ruled and overruled with utter confidence, with axiomatic competence, and without the slightest inspiration. Just before 11:00, he went set off to go to see his wife in her apartment. France Joseph was looking forward to this because he knew