The only son of Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth, and a tragic figure whose death became one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Habsburg era. In January 1889, Rudolf and his young companion Baroness Mary Vetsera were found shot in his hunting lodge at Mayerling. It was ruled a mutual suicide pact, though questions remain.
Rudolf was a liberal, an intellectual, and a gifted writer who anonymously co-authored the encyclopaedic Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Words and Pictures. He grew up in the imperial summer circuit centred on Bad Ischl and spent his summers in the Austrian lake and mountain country that surrounds Salzburg.
His death at 30, leaving no heir, accelerated the end of the Habsburg world his father had spent a lifetime maintaining.
