Rudolph
an Austrian Archduke, son of Francis Joseph I., born in 1858.
He was carefully educated and entered the army at the age of twenty, but distinguished himself as a traveler and writer. In 1881 he married Stephanie, daughter of King Leopold II., of Belgium. In 1889 he became the subject of a great deal of romantic interest, because of his death in a hunting lodge in the royal preserves, at Myerling, near Vienna.
He had obviously committed suicide, the rumored cause being being his love for an actress, but this phase of the scandal was suppressed. Archduke Rudolph was one of the most accomplished members of the Imperial family. He was the author of "Fifteen Days on the Danube" (1881); "A Trip to the Orient" (1884); and planned and partly edited the monumental work "The Austrian-Hungarian Empire through Word and Picture" (1886- 1902).