Chapter Text
Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, had not meant to get pregnant again after Rudolf’s birth.
She had done her duty as an Empress, she had provided her husband with a son and heir after her 3rd pregnancy. And that should’ve been it.
Yet she had fallen pregnant again, and court rumours were spreading about the child being the product of a love affair with Count Gyula Andrássy.
It was... challenging. But Franz Joseph quickly disparaged those rumours, forbidding anyone to talk about it within the walls of any Royal residence.
It wouldn't stop people from talking in their private residences, but at least Sisi didn’t have to hear the random accusations of her being unfaithful.
Her 4th child was very active, much more compared to their older brother and sister, which gave the Duchess in Bavaria by birth quite a few sleepless nights when the baby moved.
The pregnancy might have been no fun, but at least the labour was easy.
Archduke Andreas Stephen of Austria really wanted to come into the world on 22 February in 1860.
The Imperial couple’s 2nd son wailed his little lungs out mere seconds after his birth, only calming down his fussy fit once in the arms of his mother.
Despite it being an unwanted pregnancy at the beginning, Elisabeth was happy to have another son. She wasn't exactly much of a mother, but she did want to care for her 2nd son, and she would fight her mother-in-law to raise him herself.
Niki had been stuck between his siblings.
He was born fairly soon after his older brother Rudolf and differed about 1,5 years in age, but the two of them were incredibly different in character.
Rudolf had been raised in a more militaristic and traditional Austrian way whereas Andreas had received a much culturally broad education and had learned to speak Hungarian besides English, German, French, Italian, and Russian.
The difference in education was a barrier between the two brothers, and the same difference was there between the 2nd born Archduke and his eldest sister, Gisela. However, it was a difference in attitude between him and his younger sister Marie Valerie considering she disliked everything Hungarian simply because of the many rumours surrounding her paternity.
The Imperial couple’s 3rd surviving child could understand, but it did mean that he wasn’t close with any of his siblings, nor his 4 paternal cousins born to his uncle Karl Ludwig.
The upcoming wedding of his brother the Crown Prince was likely to create an even deeper rift.
Gisela had already married 8 years ago, aged 16. And in a couple months, Rudolf would marry the Belgian King’s 2nd-born daughter Stéphanie.
The Austrian Emperor was searching for a bride for his second son and was considering several Princesses including Infanta Maria Antónia of Portugal, Princess Mathilde of Saxony and Princess Franziska of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Rosenberg, two ‘proper Catholic Princesses’… just how the court wanted it to be.
But the Archduke was uncomfortable with an arranged marriage. He did, however, decide to write the 3 Princesses to see whether either was a potential fit for him just to please his father and the court. Yet he found that neither was the wife he wanted.
He wanted his Archduchess to be less… feminine, and a little bit more adventurous in character while also possessing a degree of intellect. And sadly, few Princesses possessed such a thing.
None of the women he met during his early teens had appealed to him, and neither did the women his father had suggested to him more recently.
It wasn’t until 27 February 1881, the wedding day of Prince Wilhelm of Prussia and Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein in Berlin, that the 19-year-old finally met someone.
Princess Maud of the United Kingdom, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria. She was only 21 years old, and younger than her nephew whose wedding she was attending. She was beautiful, educated, and a great conversationalist. She was, however, not a Catholic.
The Emperor’s 2nd son didn’t really care about faith. But he knew the court did, and there would likely be as much protest as there had been when his 1st cousin once removed King Albert of Saxony married his wife Princess Carola of Vasa (who had also been born Protestant).
He would have to convince his parents, if marrying the British Queen’s 6th daughter was going to be his choice. He would write the young woman, hopefully getting to know her better. He wanted to be certain that he would make the correct choice when it came to the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with as he didn’t want to end up in a loveless marriage.
He didn’t want to end up feeling like his mother, trapped and in despair.
Niki wrote Maud ever week, and received weekly letters in return.
It was at Christmas that year that he was certain that Victoria’s last-born daughter was the one for him, and he sent a ring with his next letter. He hoped his proposal would be accepted.
It took 2 weeks for a reply to come, and a ring was sent back. It just wasn’t the one he sent to England.
‘Though I may have given my mother an extreme headache after our argument, she has allowed me to accept your proposal for marriage. I shall send you a letter in return to show that you are taken as well. It should not only be me who wears a token of pending marriage whilst our families sort out our wedding. I am very much aware that I should convert, and I will take a Catholic baptism at Westminster Cathedral, the heart of London’s Catholic population. You will hear from me again shortly.’
It made the Archduke immensely happy, to know that the woman he had fallen in love with had accepted his proposal and basically proposed to him in return.
Not ‘ladylike’ as some members of the court would state, but that was exactly what the 19-year-old had been looking for in his future bride apart from the adventurous spirit.
He knew the wedding was going to take place at Saint Augustine’s Church, the place where all Habsburg weddings had taken place since it had been built as part of the Hofburg. He should perhaps inform the Pope and the local Archbishop of the pending wedding.
The wedding did eventually take place the next year, on 11 May 1882.
One day after Rudolf & Stéphanie’s first wedding anniversary.
After the grandiose wedding event, the newlyweds went to stay at Grassalkovich Castle for several weeks.
The Imperial couple’s 3rd-born was named after the Hungarian patron saint, King Saint Stephen of Hungary. It had been one of many attempts to appease the Hungarians, which hadn’t quite happened until 1867.
The couple would be able to quietly get used to married life at this Royal Palace without the scrutiny of Austrian-Hungarian courtiers. And they were very happy to live away from Vienna and bond with the people of Hungary to keep the multi-national Kingdom together.
And that’s the life they lived, until the Mayerling incident.
Niki had known his brother had been unhappy in his marriage since shortly after his daughter’s birth, and things had gotten worse after the Pope refused to grant him an annulment.
Rudolf shot himself, after murdering his very young mistress Mary von Vetsera on 30 January in 1889.
It was an immense tragedy for the Habsburg family, and the death of the Crown Prince meant that his younger brother would have to take his place as the next in line.
Rudolf never had a legal son, so his brother would always have been his heir apparent.
Considering the now deceased Crown Prince had been rather happy in his marriage at the beginning, Andreas Stephen had hoped he would one day lose that status.
The younger son had never wanted the crown. He’d been content with his life.
But duty called, and he became Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary.