Tragic: These Royals Were Murdered

Some royals met a cruel fate - they were murdered. In the following slides, we will show you the tragic stories.

On September 10, 1898, Empress Elisabeth's fate was sealed in Geneva when the Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni stabbed her directly in the heart with a sharp file. At this point, Sisi didn't notice her injury and mistook the attack for a punch. Alongside her lady-in-waiting, Irma Sztáray, she continued her journey and went to the departure point of the paddle steamer with which they wanted to travel on to Caux.

However, shortly after the steamer departed, the empress collapsed and wondered what had happened to her before finally dying as a result of her injuries. Luigi Lucheni was arrested and found hung in his cell in 1910.

It is one of the most terrible tragedies in the history of the Russian monarchy: on the night of July 16-17, 1918, the entire Romanov family was wiped out by the Bolsheviks. Tsar Nicholas died instantly when the ten riflemen aimed directly at his chest. Alexandra was also shot in the head within seconds.

The children of the Romanov family suffered an agonizing death because they had secretly sewn the family jewelry into their clothes, causing the bullets to ricochet. The riflemen finally resorted to bayonets and stabbed the defenseless royals. Although the perpetrators thought everyone was dead, two of the girls, believed to be Maria and Anastasia, suddenly gasped and cried out. The riflemen again stabbed them with the bayonet until they stopped moving. The gruesome death process lasted nearly twenty minutes, wiping out the entire family. A total of 18 members of the Romanov dynasty were killed during the revolution.

The Sarajevo assassination is one of the most formative events of the 20th century. Together with his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg, the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este traveled to Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1914 for operations. Despite clear warnings, the couple decided to drive through the capital Sarajevo in an open car.

On June 28, 1914, the couple was killed in an attack. Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Serbian secret organization Black Hand, shot the couple twice at close range, fatally wounding them. The assassin then tried to kill himself with potassium cyanide but vomited the deadly poison. When Princip turned the gun on himself, he was overpowered. Since he was not yet of legal age at that time, he could not be sentenced to death. Instead, he was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor but died of tuberculosis four years later.

On August 27, 1979, a tragic incident took place that is still deep in the memory of King Charles III. On that day, his beloved great-uncle, Louis Mountbatten of Burma (1900-1979), was assassinated by the IRA. His grandson, Nicholas Knatchbull (then 14 years old) was killed. Both were close confidants of King Charles III, the Earl was considered his paternal mentor and Nicholas was even his godson. The royals had spent their holiday together at the summer house in Sligo. On a fine day, they planned to take a fishing boat trip along the Irish coast. What they didn't know, however, was that the IRA had planted a bomb on the boat. The Earl, his grandson and two other people died in the explosion. Several passengers were seriously injured. The British royal family has not been able to cope with this stroke of fate to this day.

There was also a murder in the Swedish royal family. Folke Bernadotte (1895-1948), a nephew of King Gustav V, and his wife Estelle dedicated their lives to charity and peacekeeping missions. As Vice President of the Swedish Red Cross, the officer successfully conducted negotiations with Heinrich Himmler to secure the release of concentration camp prisoners. The White Buses mission rescued at least 15,000 prisoners. In 1948 the diplomat was employed as a UN mediator in the Palestine War to enable 300,000 Palestinian refugees to return to Israel. The situation was extremely dangerous. In the end, Folke Bernadotte's courage had to be paid for with his death: on September 17, 1948 he was shot by the Lechi terrorist group in Jerusalem.

To this day, Folke Bernadotte is remembered in the Swedish royal family. Crown Princess Victoria paid her respects to her relative in 2018 by unveiling a bust honoring Folke Bernadotte with her mother, Queen Silvia, in May 2018. Even their daughter Estelle bears the name of Bernadotte's wife.