The Marriage of Blessed Karl and Princess Zita
Editor’s note: today is the feast day of our patron, Blessed Emperor Karl. When Pope St. John Paul II beatified Emperor Karl (Karol Wojtyła’s own namesake, in fact), he chose October 21st as his feast day, which is the anniversary of Karl and Zita’s wedding. Here we publish an excerpt from the biography written by our contributing editor, Charles Coulombe, with the kind permission from TAN Books.
[T]he emperor [Franz Joseph] called Charles to Vienna for a heart-to-heart talk. There had been rumors linking Charles romantically to various noblewomen. But still smarting from the affair of Franz Ferdinand over a decade before, Franz Josef told his great nephew that he must make a choice from one Europe’s other imperial or royal houses. Little did the exasperated old monarch know that his requirements for his heir were to be fulfilled with a love match! Of course, his own had been one such, and a disaster, but the strong-willed Zita was no Sissi.
In May of 1911, the Archduchess Maria Theresa invited both Charles and Zita with two of her sisters for a weekend at her hunting lodge in Sankt Jakob in Walde, in Styria. There, nine years before, young Charles had shot his first gamecock under the guidance of the imperial huntsman Erhard Orthofer. Now he was on a far sweeter hunt. “It was here, during a week of beautiful May weather away from military duties and official work that Charles was able to get to know Zita. They spent long hours talking together and it was here that he proposed marriage to her. They were away from the nods and smiles and interest shown by others at balls and dances, and could be themselves.”[1] Alas, in 1922 this romantic haven burned down, save its clocktower. On the site is a Gasthaus run by the Orthofer clan, whose dearest pos
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