The Deadly Game

Just a few more drawings that link into the last chapter and some added just for the hell of it. Did Mary feel any quaver of doubt towards the end, I wonder? What was she actually doing, letting Rudolf pull the trigger. Was she actually calling the shots in those last desperate minutes, so to speak?
Loschek, who had a small room adjacent to Rudolf's, heard them arguing loudly at one point. Was the loyal valet sorely tempted to put a glass tumbler to the wall to find out what was going on? What about Mary's peculiar mind-set did she really think that this was 'it' and that Rudolf was the great love of her life and he was worth dying with/for? 
A prematurely balding, diseased, frustrated, embittered Crown Prince from a dysfunctional family who loathed his wife, but adored his only child and was also clearly in the habit of making full use of that circle of loose/giddy women (both titled and untitled) that made themselves available to him?

'Before I Sleep...' does Mary notice that receding hairline at all?

The style of the above sketch is a bit 'Bunty', but I like the way Mary is clinging to Rudolf as there is something almost childlike about it.

Mary in Rudolf's suite at Mayerling, putting pen to paper on a wintry afternoon.

I can't imagine Mary being much of a letter-writer in her ordinary day to day life. I think her preferred form was the 'billet doux'. After all, she had first got Rudolf's attention by sending him a flirty 'fan' letter. However, that afternoon at Mayerling proved to be another exception. Again this sketch is a bit on the 'Bunty' side. Not sure that I don't prefer an earlier sketch that makes her look like Tatiana from Onegin (lol!) Here:

Yes, while we're about it, Mary was right-handed and couldn't possibly have pulled the trigger herself as she was shot in the left temple. Yet, according to an official autopsy report made c1955 (at the time her remains were decanted into a makeshift tin coffin, after the original copper casket had been damaged by Russian soldiers during WWII) an 'area of trauma' on her skull was identified but there was no actual evidence of a bullet wound per se. So was she bludgeoned to death instead? Is that why the witnesses (Loschek et al) claim only to have heard a single shot? The mind boggles! A later forensic report initiated by the nutty body-snatching Flatzelsteiner (c1991) came to a similar conclusion.


Also, on a less macabre note, would she have used a dressing table as a writing desk at Mayerling? I will have more to say on that subject later on.

Flashback: Mary wants to look her best for Rudolf...

I quite like her expression in this sketch it reminds me of a (warped) Jennifer Aniston. All very 'Me, Me, Me it's all about Me!' (Note the crescent moon hair decoration) I think Mary spent a lot of time admiring herself in the mirror.

A much earlier sketch (with speech bubbles) Mary calling the shots (!)

I prefer rough storyboard style drawings/vignettes. I also think that speech bubbles are cumbersome, tricky to position and just get in the way of the drawing, but that's just me. I'm kind of using this blog as a sketchbook for ideas and it's going to be very organic and not at all linear. Think curling tendrils of an Art Nouveau climbing plant, with new branches shooting out in all directions (you have been warned!)