A review by srash
Twilight of Empire: The Tragedy at Mayerling and the End of the Habsburgs by Penny Wilson, Greg King

4.0

Re-examination of the scandalous murder-suicide of Austro-Hungarian Crown Prince Rudolf and his teenaged mistress. King and Wilson have written one of my all-time favorite historical nonfiction books (The Fate of the Romanovs), and I appreciated their well-written, engrossing deep dive into the tangled web that was the Habsburg imperial family. The Habsburgs tend to get lost in the shuffle of other better known empires of the time period, but they were a pretty eccentric, dysfunctional bunch, as the book amply demonstrates.

The authors do a good job of bringing to life the tragic world of Rudolf Habsburg and Mary Vetsera and make a compelling argument for their own take on the series of events that led to the shocking deaths, though ultimately it will always be speculation that can't be conclusively proven.