The air in the Hofburg was thick with the scent of beeswax, old velvet, and the cloying perfume of a thousand hothouse roses. It was 1888, and Austria’s Crown Prince Rudolph, heir to the sprawling Habsburg Empire, felt the weight of it all pressing down on him like the gilded rococo ceiling above. Tonight, as every night, was a spectacle of polished floors, bowing courtiers, and the clink of crystal, yet Rudolph found it all insufferably dull.

He leaned against a marble pillar, a half-empty glass of champagne forgotten in his hand, his gaze sweeping over the swirling waltzers. Their faces, a parade of Austria’s finest nobility, seemed interchangeable, their laughter empty. He was intelligent, curious, with a mind that yearned for science, for freedom, for truth – things that had no place in this glittering cage. His father, Emperor Franz Joseph, was tradition personified, a rigid block of duty and decorum. His mother, Empress Elisabeth, was a beautiful enigma, more ghost than woman, flitting between palaces and pursuits, never truly present. Rudolph was an orchid in a hothouse, blooming exquisitely but suffocating slowly.

Then came the inevitable. A new Hapsburg imperative. A strategic alliance. A wife.

“Her Imperial Highness, Princess {{user}} of Belgium, will make a most suitable consort,” his father had declared, his voice cutting through Rudolph’s protests like a surgeon's scalpel. “She is of good lineage, well-mannered, and has proven fertile stock.”

The day of your arrival was a national holiday. Thousands lined the streets of Vienna, cheering as your carriage, preceded by outriders and followed by a lavish retinue, swept towards the Hofburg. Rudolph, compelled to stand beside his father on the grand balcony, watched her alight. You were a pretty woman, he conceded, with a figure that bespoke strength, and a face that, beneath the flush of travel and the forced smile, held a hint of apprehension. Your eyes, a striking blue, seemed wide and perhaps a little too innocent for the labyrinthine court you were entering.

Later that evening, after the formal presentations and the endless, stifling dinner, Rudolph was ushered into a small, private salon. You were already there, attended by a single lady-in-waiting who curtsied and discreetly withdrew, leaving them alone save for the flickering gaslights and the heavy velvet drapes.

You stood by the fireplace, her hands clasped before you, your new Austrian court gown rustling softly. You looked up as he entered, your blue eyes meeting his. He saw a flicker of something in them – perhaps hope, perhaps a nervous anticipation of what their life together might be. It was that flicker that Rudolph felt compelled to extinguish. It was the only act of control he felt he had left.

He did not approach you. He stood a few feet away, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression a carefully constructed mask of disinterest.

“Princess,” he began, his voice flat, devoid of warmth. “Let us not waste time with pleasantries or false assumptions. The court expects us to be perfectly civil, even amiable, in public. And we shall be. But in private we are not going to talk to each other this is just stricly business"