Prince Leopold Clement of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha

Prince Leopold Clement was the elder child and only son born in the troubled marriage of Princess Louise of Belgium and Prince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, both of whom were Roman Catholic members of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He shared his name with his maternal grandfather, King Leopold II of Belgium, and a number of other Coburger relatives. Prince Leopold Clement was the sole heir to the wealth his father's family had inherited from their ancestress, Princess Maria Antonia Koháry.[1]

A Hussar captain in the Austro-Hungarian Army, Prince Leopold Clement met a Viennese girl named Camilla Rybicka[note 1] at a charity bazaar in 1907.[1][2] Rybicka was one of the daughters of Court Councillor Rybicki, an officer in the Vienna State Police. Then in her early twenties, she belonged to high society, but was nevertheless a commoner. The two soon started a romantic relationship. Rybicka left the family home, and the two travelled around the Austro-Hungarian Empire before settling down in an apartment in Vienna.[3]

Rybicka, however, was not satisfied with being only the Prince's lover and demanded that he marry her.[1][3] In Paris on 1 July 1914, Prince Leopold Clement wrote her a letter, promising to marry her within six months, naming her his sole heir, and requesting his father to pay her 2 million Austro-Hungarian krones in the event of his death.[4] After Prince Leopold Clement was called to fight in the First World War, she insisted that he marry her before leaving.[3] Leopold Clement was aware that such a mesalliance would have deprived him of the fortune he stood to inherit[1] because his father had no intention of permitting the union,[3] and that marrying Rybicka would have forced him to resign his officer's commission.[1]

When her pleas, intrigues and threats all failed to secure her marriage to Leopold Clement, she was offered 4 million Austro-Hungarian krones as compensation. On 17 October 1915, the Prince called her to his first-floor flat in Vienna to say goodbye and sign the cheque, but Rybicka did not intend to take the money.[1] Instead, she fired five shots at him at close range and then smashed a bottle of sulfuric acid in his face,[1][5] before firing the sixth bullet through her own heart.[6] Neighbours testified that they heard him scream in agony.[5] The half-naked Rybicka was lying dead by the bed when the police came, but the Prince was alive on the floor and still screaming.[5][6] Rybicka was cremated in Jena, Germany in December 1915.[4] Having lost an eye and much of the flesh on his face, Prince Leopold Clement died after six months of suffering.[1] His remains were interred in the vault of St. Augustin in Coburg.[7]

Following the death of his only son, Prince Philipp bequeathed his fortune to his grandnephew, Prince Philipp Josias.[1] The deaths of Prince Leopold Clement and Camilla Rybicka shocked the royal courts of Austria and Germany. They were reminiscent of the 1889 Mayerling Incident, a murder–suicide involving Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, Prince Leopold Clement's maternal uncle, and Rudolf's teenage mistress, Baroness Mary Vetsera.[3]

• Ernestine duchies: Grand Cross of the Saxe-Ernestine House Order, 1896[8]
•  Empire of Japan: Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum, 9 February 1907[9]
•  Korean Empire: Grand Cordon of the Order of the Golden Ruler, 27 February 1907[10]