Stephanie of Belgium

Her Royal Highness Stéphanie, Princess of Belgium and Duchess of Saxony (Stéphanie Clotilde Louise Herminie Marie Charlotte of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, May 21, 1864 – August 23, 1945) was the wife of Crown Prince Rudolf, heir to the Austrian imperial throne. She was a daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium and his wife, Marie Henriette, Archduchess of Austria, and was born at Laeken .

On 10 May 1881 in Vienna, when she was almost seventeen, she married the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf. After an initially happy marriage, difficulties soon developed between them. Rudolf was highly intelligent, unconventional and very liberal, while Stéphanie was more formal, very conscious of her royal and imperial status, and considered not particularly bright by her parents-in-law. In 1883 their only child, Archduchess Elisabeth, was born.

She received no support from the Imperial family. Especially the Empress Elisabeth avoided her, calling her 'a moral heavyweight' and an 'ugly elephant'. When Rudolf infected her with a venereal disease, which made further pregnancies impossible, they even talked about divorce. In 1889, however, Rudolf was found dead at Mayerling, with his mistress, the seventeen-year-old Baroness Mary Vetsera. Her husband's death destroyed Stéphanie's hopes for a better future as the scandal (it was and remains uncertain whether the couple died in a murder-suicide pact or had been killed by assailants), and her widowhood isolated her even further from the court in Vienna. She also had a bad relationship with her own father and had to fight him in court for her inheritance.

To distract herself she undertook many journeys, using different names, like Countess Lacroma, Eppan or Godrecourt and even Lady Bonchurch. On 22 March 1900 at Miramar, Italy, to the disgust of her father, she married a Hungarian nobleman of low rank, Count Elemer Lonyay de Nagy-Lonya et Vasaros-Nameny who, in 1917, was elevated by the Emperor of Austria to the rank of Fürst (prince).

In 1935 she wanted to publish her memoirs to set the record straight, but this caused a scandal and the court forbade their distribution.

When the Russians invaded Hungary, the princess was forced to leave her castle, Oroszvar, and, on 23 August 1945, she died in the Benedictine monastery at Pannonhalma.

Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa named asteroid 220 Stephania after her.