An article of The age-herald (Birmingham, Alabama), February 19, 1899, Section 3, Page 23, Image 23
SOME BROKEN-HEARTED QUEENS
The Jilts of Royal Lovers and How They Consoled Themselves—Some Have Become Insane, Others Have Mended Their Hearts.
Lovers who have been ruthlessly jilted will admit that the “throwing over" process is not an agreeable one to the person “thrown over,” but those who have suffered this indignity, may find consolationiIn the fact that “jilting" has played a most important part in the romantic history of Europe. It is difficult for “ordinary beings" to look upon royalty os mere men and women, playing their own little, if paradoxically, exalted parts in life’s tragedies and comedies, but the fact remains that royal personages are often very, very human, and that princesses and princes of the blood have been jilted in just as cruel fashion as if they had been the Misses Jones or the Mr. Smiths of our prosaic every day life.
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The royal house of Bavaria has had more than its share of these illustrations of the inconsistency of royal hearts. Many years ago Princess Helene of Bavaria was affianced to Francis Joseph of Austria. She was sincerely fond of her lover and was educated with the distinct view of becoming empress of Austria. There was no reason why the young man should not have kept his promise, save the one to him all important reason. Just as the long standing engagement was about to be consummated, Francis Joseph met his fiance’s younger sister, Elizabeth, with whom he immediately fell violently in love. Princes Helene was forgotten and was left to nurse an almost broken heart, while the younger and more beautiful sister, who was recently murdered by the anarchist Lucchini, assumed her position at the head of the house of Austria.
The story of the sad fate of the Duchess d’Alencon, who met a terrible death in the Paris charity bazaar fire, ended a romance that at one time was the sensation of all Europe. The Duchess d’Alencon was formerly the beautiful Sophia of Bavaria, and in 1867 her Cousin, the mad King Louis, fell in love with her. His was a life full of excesses, but he reached his highest note of rapture in his love for this beautiful girl. A marble bust of her was enshrined in his palace and each day he surrounded it with banks of the rarest exotics. He had thousands of pictures of her printed, beneath which were engraved the words, “Sophia, Queen of Bavaria.” These were to be distributed throughout the kingdom on the day of their wedding. Suddenly there was a revulsion in the fantastic mind of the already half mad monarch.
The first inkling of the estrangement was when the heavy marble bust came crushing through a window of the palace, nearly killing a sentry who was on duty in the courtyard. In the palace all was in an uproar for Louis, half clad and with hair tousled, was rushing from one apartment to another urging his attendants to use more speed in the destruction of the precious pictures of the princess. Barfus, the artist, was called out of bed to destroy the plate, and then, half crazed, the king, without completing his toilet, fled to his
castle on the Starenberg lake. After the death of the king it was slated that the jilting of Princess Sophia was due to his belief that a strong attachment existed between the beautiful girl end Edgars Haufstaengl [sic, for Hanfstaengl], the ton of the Munlbh artist. Sophia married the Duke d’Alençon, but her affection for him was never strong, and on learning of King Louis' suicide, in 1886, she became insane and for several years was an inmate of.an asylum.
An almost parallel romance helped to wreck the mind of mad King Otto of Bavaria. He loved the beautiful Countess Larisch, and the young girl exercised an influence over him that might have prevented his mental collapseiIf he had been permitted to keep his promise to her and make her his wife. The requirements of kingcraft were too strong, however, and she was cast aside. Her name was never again mentioned by Otto and it was imagined that he had forgotten her until after his death, when it was found that through all the vagaries of his befuddled brain, the playing at stork, the washing of his dogs in a mixture of beer and champagne and the festooning of his button holes with sardines he had carefully treasured and carried in his pocket a little box containing a few faded flowers and withered berries that she had given him. His love for this woman had cost him his reason and his throne.
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