[The following is in regards to Carlota of Belgium/Mexico, whose mind had snapped while trying to garner European support for her husband’s failing monarchy in Mexico. The stress broke her then and she had never recovered. Those of you who have been around since the beginning will likely recall that her and her husband may be my two favorite historical figures of all time.]
The one-time Empress of Mexico long outlived her brother [Leopold II]. When she received a visitor, it was in a room with twenty or more chairs lined up. Carlota would enter the room and solemnly greet an imaginary guest in each chair before talking with her caller. As the years passed, she spent endless hours changing her clothes and doing her hair. Then one day she reportedly caught sight of herself in a mirror, realized that she was no longer a youthful beauty, and ordered all the mirrors in her château smashed. At a party forty-five years after her husband’s execution, she exclaimed, puzzled, “And Maximilian isn’t here!”
She was probably one of the few people in Belgium who barely noticed the four-year German occupation during World War I. She died in 1927, at the age of eighty-six, muttering madly about imaginary kingdoms and dynasties to the very end.
Source:
Hochschild, Adam. "Victory?" King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. 276. Print.
Further Reading:
Marie Charlotte Amélie Augustine Victoire Clémentine Léopoldine / Carlota of Mexico
Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph / Maximiliano / Maximilian I of Mexico
Occupation allemande / Duitse besetting (German occupation of Belgium in World War I)
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