Stephanie (21 May 1864 – 23 August 1945) was a Belgian
princess by birth, and then made Crown Princess of Austria through her marriage
to the heir-apparent of the Habsburg dynasty, Archduke Rudolf. She was famously
widowed in 1889 when Rudolf and his mistress, Mary Vetsera, were found dead in
an apparent murder-suicide pact at the Imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling in
the Vienna Woods.
Her grandfather Leopold I of Belgium was the country's first
king. Her aunt, Charlotte of Belgium, the future ill-fated Empress of Mexico,
was married to Maximilian, the brother of her future father-in law, the
Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph.
