What’s It About?
Born in 1864, Princess Stéphanie of Belgium was married to Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria-Hungary when she was barely sixteen. If you follow my book-reading odyssey, you’ll be familiar with her father, King Leopold II of the Belgians (portrayed in King Leopold’s Ghost). Stéphanie describes her childhood as cold. She longed for affection and praise and almost never got it from either parent. Her mother, she explains, walled off her emotions after her only son died young. Her two daughters, Stéphanie and Louise, found affection and companionship in each other and household staff members.
Stéphanie’s marriage was an arranged one. Her father thought it would be good to have a tie with Austria-Hungary, and that was that. The marriage started out relatively well, but quickly turned sour because Rudolf and Stéphanie had little in common. That’s not surprising – what would a sheltered teenage girl have in common with a worldly, already disillusioned man in his twenties? The couple had one child together, a daughter – not the son and heir the empire desired. But there would not be another child because Rudolf infected Stéphanie with venereal disease, destroying her ability to have another child.
Although they remained married, they were not happy. Rudolf hunted, slept with his mistresses, inspected army regiments, and wrote editorials for the Neue Wiener Tageblatt. Stéphanie was left behind to keep up appearances at court, often filling in for the absent and uninterested Empress Elisabeth.
Then, in 1889, Rudolf died by suicide at his hunting lodge of Mayerling – after shooting his teenage mistress, Mary Vetsera, in a murder-suicide pact. Stéphanie was one of the only people who had tried to help Rudolf by bringing his deteriorating mental and physical condition to her in-laws’ attention. They did nothing.
This book only covers Stéphanie’s life through Rudolf’s death. Later in life, she married Count Elmer Lonyay, a Hungarian noble. You won’t meet him anywhere in these pages, however. The book ends with a lovely condolence letter written to Stéphanie by Queen Elisabeth of Romania (Carmen Sylva).
Stéphanie usually gets a bad rap – she’s described as haughty, ambitious, silly, and unintelligent. And yes, parts of this book are extremely flattering to her, and any modern reader is instantly going to see some self-aggrandizing going on here. But at the same time, there’s more to Stéphanie than most people gave her credit for. She was devoted to her duty as the future empress – which is more than could ever be said for her mother-in-law, the actual empress. She was the only person who really tried to save Rudolf. She writes about the coldness and deprivations of her childhood and her deep need for love and affection. That kind of need, that longing, can really mess a kid up. Not to mention being married so young. I’m prepared to give her quite a bit of slack for the so-called crimes of ambition and imperial haughtiness. She was finding worth and validation through her position – which she was forced into by her parents. In my mind, she was trying to make the best of a situation she didn’t ask for.
Should You Read It?
If you’re interested in the Habsburgs and read French, yes.
In my opinion, Stéphanie doesn’t always see herself clearly. Everywhere she goes, she wants you to know that she won all hearts, that people were crazy about her, that she was universally admired and beloved. Maybe – but something rang a little false about these statements, so I took her descriptions of raving crowds and faithful peasants with a grain of salt. At one point, she admits that her “natural gift for winning hearts” came from her mother “and I had no merit in it.” (Ch. 5)
But even if her descriptions of herself can’t quite be trusted, she says some insightful things about other people.
She mentions several other women accused of being ambitious – her aunt Charlotte (Empress of Mexico) and her aunt Victoria (Crown Princess of Prussia). She couches Charlotte’s ambition as a product of vast intelligence and willingness to do good in the world. Of Victoria, she says: “Already, at that time, she was the target of violent attacks. She was said to be ambitious, proud and intriguing. They forgot to say that when a princess marries a crown prince, her desire, obviously, is to become empress or queen; and then is not this ambition entirely justified? … Like all intelligent women of quality who were forbidden to use their abilities, she suffered from her inactivity.” (Ch. 3)
I kind of love that Stéphanie brings this up – as children, these girls are given to heirs to a throne, and then punished when they like (or convince themselves they like) the perks of the job. As if they were ever given a choice….
Tidbits
- All 3 kids had small gardens at Laeken. After their brother died, Louise and Stéphanie took care of his garden for him. They arranged flower beds, dug, sowed, planted, weeded, and grafted. I love the idea of two sisters keeping their dead brother’s garden alive. Later, after Louise married, Stephanie took care of her garden until her younger sister, Clémentine, was old enough to take it over. (Ch. 1)
- She owned a painting done by her aunt, Charlotte (Empress Carlota of Mexico). (Ch. 1)
- According to Stéphanie, at age 15, her parents called her to them and her father said, “The Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary has come here to ask for your hand. Your mother and I are all in favor of this marriage. We have chosen you to be Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. Go away, think about it and give us your answer tomorrow.” That night, when she went to talk to her mom and express her doubts, her mom talked her into it. Stephanie bought into the vision of herself as a sovereign, there to ensure the well-being of her mother’s people. But the doubts about marrying a man she didn’t know lingered. “I could not have known that already at that time I had been duped. It was only later, much later, that I was told that my future husband had not come to Brussels alone, that his friend, a certain Dame F., had accompanied him.” And by “friend,” she means a friend with benefits. (Ch. 2)
- Stéphanie’s wedding gift from the city of Budapest? “…necklace, earrings, belt, chain and barrettes, a gift from the city of Budapest. All of these jewels represented a kilo and a half of gold, in addition to 32 large brilliants, a thousand smaller brilliants, three hundred opals and four magnificent rubies.” Dayum. (Ch. 3)
- Of former Empress Maria Anna, widow of Emperor Ferdinand, Stéphanie says: “Despite fifty years of residence in Austria, she had not learned German; we had to speak French or Italian to her.” (Ch. 3)
- Stéphanie was a late bloomer. In the first year of marriage, she describes being tired from what sound like growth spurts. Then, when she had her baby Elisabeth in 1883, she says that when she got up from childbed, “I was surprised to find that my dresses were too short. I had grown suddenly and was even slightly taller than the Crown Prince.” (Ch. 3)
