Princess Stéphanie of Belgium

1864 – 1945 · Generation XXI · Consort

Stéphanie (1864 – 1945). Consort. Married Rudolf in 1881. Wife of Crown Prince Rudolf; their only child was a daughter. The second daughter of Leopold II of Belgium and Marie Henriette of Austria, she was engaged at fifteen and married in Vienna on 10 May 1881. The marriage soon soured. Rudolf strayed repeatedly and gave her a venereal infection that doctors passed off as peritonitis; only when the couple tried for another child did she learn she was sterile. In October 1888 she warned Franz Joseph that his son was gravely ill, in vain, and three months later Rudolf was found shot dead with Mary Vetsera at Mayerling. Her 1900 marriage to Count Elemér Lónyay, a Hungarian of lesser rank, cost her the imperial titles but proved happy; the couple settled at Rusovce and were raised to princely rank in 1917. Her memoirs appeared in 1935, and in 1944 she disinherited her estranged daughter. Driven out by the Red Army in 1945, she died of a stroke at Pannonhalma Archabbey.

Place in the family

Princess Stéphanie of Belgium married Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, a son of Franz Joseph I of Austria.

Partners

Married Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria (1858 – 1889) in 1881

Life

1864 — Born
1881 — Married Rudolf
1945 — Died