THE EMPRESS OF FAREWELLS

The life of yet another star-crossed, crazy European royal, capably told by the blueblood author of Living with Ghosts (1996).

Charlotte, beloved daughter of King Leopold I of Belgium, was considered a fine catch in the early 19th century. She was pretty, cultured, fabulously rich, and, as her Austrian suitor Archduke Maximilian put it, “very intelligent, which is a little tiresome, but I’m sure I’ll get over it.” Though his future father-in-law thought Maximilian a tyrannical braggart incapable of passing a mirror without checking himself in it—and, worse, interested only in Charlotte’s purse—the two married in 1857 and went off to rule the Italian provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, ceded to Austria at the Congress of Vienna. It was, writes Prince Michael of Greece, “a poisoned gift”; the locals weren’t happy about being governed by foreigners, no matter how enlightened, and once Italy was reunified in 1859 they sent Maximilian and Charlotte packing. When Napoleon III of France sent them to Mexico to rule on his behalf, the Mexicans responded much like the Italians, putting Maximilian up against an adobe wall and executing him in 1867. Charlotte was not there to witness this indignity, having quietly gone mad and been shuttled off to Europe a few years earlier. Unhinged and paranoid, she lived until 1927 while her fortune mysteriously disappeared. The author writes of all this with sympathy and a certain world-weariness, sniffing that Maximilian might have enjoyed a different fate had the US given him, and not the tattered Mexican rebels, its support. He also suggests under his breath that Charlotte’s insanity may have resulted from the consumption (“unbeknownst to her, of course”) of aphrodisiac drugs, which Maximilian apparently consumed endlessly in an effort to become the father of his country.

A sad tale of possible interest to royalty and history buffs.