Today is the birthday in history of Her Royal Highness Princess Stéphanie Clotilde Louise Herminie Marie Charlotte, daughter of SM King Leopold II (and also Queen Marie Henriette of Austria). She was the good, innocent, very young, traditional girl given in a finally unhappy marriage to the Hapsburg Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and Hungary, ending in his suicide at Mayerling castle with his mistress. The sad Belgian princess deserved a better fate than that. She married later a Hungarian to the disappointment of King Leopold and had to escape the persecution of the Soviet Army at the end of World War II. She had only one child, a daughter, by her second husband who married in the Windisch-Graetz princely family. So much hope was placed in her that things would work out for a union of the Coburg and Hapsburg houses but her husband was not suitable for her. I have much sympathy for Princess Stephanie, she deserved a much happier life.
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