Private Vices & Public Virtues

Royal passions that rocked a Crown A voyeur's eyeful... DAILY TELEGRAPH. Revelations about royalty are hardly new... throughout history, scandal has rocked even the British throne. Human temptation is no respector [sic] of royalty, with perhaps one vital difference - that until recent years the monarchy remained free of the probing eye of the media and consequently their private lives were a suspended mystery, hinted at, but rarely if ever, definitively recorded or explained; except where one artist or another - Shakespeare for one - used them as a source of drama. The story of royal love and power has been told many times before but never has the royal scandal of Mayerlng ever been shown to reflect such a provocative insight into our own society today. A century ago in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Crown Prince Rudolph heir to the Hapsburg throne - had all the sins of youth. A revolutionary zeal... an unhibited [sic] interest in sex... He plotted against his father, the Emperor, whose removal from the throne Rudolph saw a not only being for the good of the Nation but for the good of Rudolph as well. From Conspiracies like these legends grow and each generation present a fresh view of their PRIVATE VICES AND PUBLIC VIRTUES.