3. The Diamond Necklace Affair, 1784-5
A missing necklace cost Marie Antoinette of France her head. The 2,000,000-livres necklace was designed for Madame du Barry, mistress of former king Louis XV. The king died before it was paid for, sending the jewelers into debt.
Enter Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémy, a social climber who called herself the “Comtesse de la Motte” and claimed to be descended from the royal Valois family. She became mistress to Cardinal de Rohan, who had fallen out of Marie-Antoinette’s favor and desperately wanted to regain it. La Motte pretended to be close with the queen and offered to pass letters between the cardinal and her majesty. The “replies” she passed to the cardinal were forgeries. In them, she asked the cardinal to lend her the money to buy the infamous necklace. She even arranged a late-night meeting between the cardinal and the queen at Versailles, hiring a prostitute to pose as Marie Antoinette.
When the cardinal bought the necklace on an installment plan, La Motte had her husband sell the diamonds in London. After a missing payment, the jewelers complained to Marie Antoinette, who revealed she had no knowledge of the purchase.
King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette prosecuted La Motte and her conspirators, but La Motte escaped from prison and spread rumors that Marie Antoinette was to blame. It would be the final grievance in a long list that led Marie Antoinette to the guillotine in 1793.
4. The Mayerling Incident, 1889
On January 30, 1889, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was found dead in his hunting lodge in Mayerling alongside the body of his teenage lover. Crown Prince Rudolf had shot Baroness Maria Vetsera before turning the gun on himself in an apparent murder-suicide. Rudolf’s father, Emperor Franz Joseph I, concealed documents related to the case, though Rudolf’s wife, Crown Princess Stephanie, published Rudolf’s alleged last letter to her: “You are relieved of my presence and vexations; be happy in your own way…I go calmly to my death.”
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