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thehomelybrewster · 11 days

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1d8 "Free" Fantasy RPGs To Replace 5e At Your Table

D&D 5e sure is a roleplaying game, and it's one that I have enjoyed a lot. However, that doesn't mean that I'd recommend it automatically for other people. This has many reasons, which I won't elaborate here. It has also shaped the perception of TTRPGs significantly thanks to its market dominance, and not in a good way.

5e has a reputation for being an expensive, complex game, and 5e players fear that other RPGs might just be the same. That it's too much of a hassle and too much of a financial burden to switch systems.

So, to help 5e players pick out a different system, I've made this handy 1d8 rolling table to help them pick a fantasy TTRPG with a combat component that they can try instead!

Let's now go through these eight nine RPGs and see what's up with them, right below the "Keep reading" section!

I'll be listing some metrics like the page count for the rulebook(s), the core resolution mechanic, how complex the game is in terms of character creation & combat, and how well-supported the game is by their publisher and the community-at-large.

1. Cairn

Author: Yochai Gal

Release Year: 2020

Cost: Free PDF, printed copies cost between $3 to $10 depending on the print quality.

Page Count: 24

Website: https://cairnrpg.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 Roll Under system for ability checks/saving throws, attacks hit automatically, "fiction-first".

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Random character creation, class-less and level-less, advancement based on "Scars" (suffering damage that reduces your HP exactly to 0)

Setting: Implied. Low-magic European-style fantasy; mysterious woodlands.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Hit Protection and Ability damage instead of HP, Slot-Based Inventory.

Degree of Support: Very high. Available in fifteen languages (e.g. Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and German); full rules text is under CC-BY-SA 4.0; multiple published third-party adventures & supplements available; some official bonus material (e.g. bestiary, magic items/relics, and spells) is available for free on the website.

Addendum: An expanded 2nd Edition is currently on Kickstarter (ends April 26th 2024); Cairn is legitimately easy to learn, however the Hit Protection system and the connected Scars system is a very different abstraction to health and advancement compared to 5e.

2. Cloud Empress

Author: worlds by watt

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free PDF of the rulebook and the creator-written sample adventure "Last Voyage of the Bean Barge", $20 for the print edition of the rulebook, $12 for PDF supplements, $25 for print + PDF supplements; free solo rules also available as PDF only.

Page Count: 60

Website: https://cloudempress.com/

Resolution Mechanic: d100 Roll Under system for stat checks/saving throws, critical successes or failures on doubles (11, 22, 33, etc.), 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, attacks generally hit automatically.

Action Economy: Two actions per round with no free movement.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, four classes ("jobs"), no rules for character advancement in the ruleset.

Setting: Specific. "Ecological science fantasy" heavily inspired by Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind"; costly magic, giant insects, dangerous mushrooms; only human player characters.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Damage points culminate in Wounds; Wounds and Stress as ways to track your character's physical and mental state; slot-based inventory system.

Degree of Support: Low-ish. Several official supplements exist, however third-party material is very sparse. May improve due to the recent establishment of a Cloud Empress Creators Fund, has a simple 3rd party license system.

Addendum: A supplement, "Cloud Empress: Life & Death" is currently on Kickstarter (ends April 26th 2024, yes, the same day as Cairn 2e) and as a disclaimer I even backed that current Kickstarter; Cloud Empress is built on the engine of the sci-fi horror RPG "Mothership"; clearly built for one-shots and short campaigns; has a wonderful resting system that encourages roleplay between players.

3. Iron Halberd

Author: level2janitor

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free PDF of the rules; no print option available.

Page Count: 60

Website: https://level2janitor.itch.io/iron-halberd

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system against difficulty or armor rating, however most non-combat-related actions follow a fiction first approach without dice rolls.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, class-less but there are four different "gear kits" that nudge your character towards certain archetypes, levelling up with XP.

Setting: Essentially non-existant. General European fantasy with magic, gods may or may not exist/shape the world, various fantastic ancestries included.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Includes rules for building strongholds and maintaining warbands; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: None. The game is intended to be relatively compatible with other OSR content and the creator suggests using adventures made for the D&D retroclone Old-School Essentials if you wanna use pre-published ones. An official introductory adventure, "Sea-Spray Bay", is apparently in the works. No 3rd party license available, as far as I know.

Addendum: One thing about Iron Halberd I like especially is how it uses random tables for generating equipment. Most of the equipment is listed in a numerical order by category, and the various gear kits include references on different rolling formulas for those equipment categories. For example someone taking the "soldier's kit" rolls twice on the d20 Weapons table and takes their preferred pick, while someone taking the "sage's kit" only rolls a d4 on that table.

4. Mausritter

Author: Isaac Williams

Release Year: 2020

Cost: Free PDF of the ruleset available; box set with the rules and several goodies including an adventure costs $55; additional box set + PDFs containing eleven official adventures costs $55 (or $20 digital-only).

Page Count: 48

Website: https://mausritter.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 Roll Under system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, attacks always hit.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Random character creation, class-less, levelling up with XP.

Setting: Vaguely specific. You play as mice and everything is related to mouse-size; cats are the equivalents of devils or dragons; humans exist as a setting background but may or may not be present in a campaign.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Includes rules for recruiting warbands; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: Very high. Several official supplements exist, as well as loads of content, be it adventures or supplements, made by other creators. Available in seven languages (all of them however are European). Has a simple 3rd party license system.

Addendum: Mausritter uses the phrase "adventure site" instead of dungeons. On the website a free adventure site generator is available, as is a digital tool that can be used to generate your own item cards for the slot-based inventory system.

5. Maze Rats

Author: Ben Milton

Release Year: 2017

Cost: $4.99 for the PDF, no print option regularly available.

Page Count: 32

Website: https://questingbeast.substack.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 2d6 + Bonus Roll Over system; advantage system that uses 3d6 drop the lowest + Bonus.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Semi-random character creation, class-less but instead there are character features (e.g. spell slots or attack bonuses), levelling up with XP.

Setting: Essentially non-existant. Magic is very irregular (s. the section below), but otherwise it implies a vaguely European fantasy setting.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Spells are randomly generated each adventuring day and spell effects are negotiated between the GM and the spellcasting player; includes several fantastic d66 tables that can be used to randomly generate worlds.

Degree of Support: Decent. The rule text is licensed under CC BY 4.0 and unofficial translations are available. Some third-party content has been made specifically for the game.

Addendum: The only purchase-only game on this list. However "unofficial" distribution of the PDF is very common. Also this is the oldest game on the list. Ben "Questing Beast" Milton is a prolific OSR blogger and runs a YouTube channel on the OSR. Great dude.

6. Sherwood - A Game of Outlaws & Arcana

Author: Richard Ruane

Release Year: 2022

Cost: Free quickstart PDF titled "Sherwood - A Quickstart of Outlaws" available; digital rulebook costs $7.50 and the print edition (including PDF) costs $15.

Page Count: 25 (Quickstart), 32 (Rulebook)

Website: https://www.r-rook.studio/

Resolution Mechanic: 2d6 + Bonus Roll Over system for skill checks (including attacks), 2d6 Roll Under system for saving throws; advantage & disadvantage system that involves rolling 3d6 and using the higher/lower of the two results; almost all rolls are player-facing

Action Economy: "Conversational", assumption of movement + action.

Characters: Largely choice-based character creation. Combine two (of six) background abilities with the benefits of seven different careers. Big focus on interpersonal relationships during character creation. Limited character advancement takes place during downtime.

Setting: Specific. Takes place in a fantastical version of 13th century England, with fey and magic coexisting with outlaws and crusaders.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: The group of outlaws possesses two shared resources (Resources and Legend) that can be spent to gain certain benefits; spellcasting is divided into two categories: arcane talents and sorcerous rites, with the former being immediate and the later taking significant time; slot-based inventory.

Degree of Support: None. No further publications exist for the game and while it is published under the CC-BY 4.0 license, no third-party content exists as far as I know. It does include a guide on how to convert D&D and Troika (N)PCs into Sherwood characters, as well as three adventure seeds (one in the Quickstart, two in the rules), which is at least something.

Addendum: Might just be the game on this list that encourages the most roleplaying; the character sheet is sadly very provisional-feeling and the Quickstart feels outdated compared to the finalized rulebook.

7. The Electrum Archive

Author: Emiel Boven

Release Year: 2022

Cost: Free Rules PDF available, zines cost $12 as digital PDFs or $24 as print + PDF combos; the first zine contains the entire contents of the Free Rules PDF

Page Count: 26 (Free Rules), 72 (Issue 01)

Website: https://www.electrumarchive.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d10 Roll Under system, attacks always hit.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Largely choice-based; three archetypes roughly corresponding to fighters/rangers (Vagabonds), rogues (Fixers), and spellcasters (Warlocks); player characters are presumed to be human; levelling up with XP.

Setting: Specific. Mechanics heavily tie into the lore; humanity has abundant access to minerals but requires a rare substance known as Ink to operate certain pieces of tech (like guns) and cast spells but cannot produce Ink themselves; spirits of various sorts can be foes, targets of worship, or sources of power.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Uses a spellcasting system for the Warlock archetype that's heavily based on the one used in Maze Rats, as in it uses randomly-generated spells whose effects are negotiated between the player and the GM; slot-based inventory with a durability mechanic.

Degree of Support: Minimal. The game consists out of the free rules and (soon) two zines; a third party license exists but content produced under it is very rare.

Addendum: I need to disclaim that I recently backed the Kickstarter campaign for the second zine for this game; the free rules feature wrong page numbers in its table of contents which is unfortunate; The Electrum Archive uses incredibly simple stats for NPCs which makes creating new ones based on other games rather simple.

8. Shadowdark RPG

Author: Kelsey Dionne

Release Year: 2023

Cost: Free player and game master quickstarts exist as PDFs and are available in print for $19, the core rules cost $28 in PDF form and $57 in a print + PDF bundle

Page Count: 68 (Player Quickstart Guide), 68 (Game Master Quickstart Guide), 332 (Core Rules)

Website: https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, natural 1s are critical failures and natural 20s are critical successes.

Action Economy: Movement + one action per round.

Characters: Largely choice-based; players have a fantasy ancestry and a class; levelling up with XP; class progression largely random.

Setting: Vague. General (dark) western fantasy conventions apply; alignment is a force in this universe and a sample pantheon is provided; the most potent enemies in the rules are named individuals that fit classic TTRPG monster types; illustrations and lore snippets have recurring motifs.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: The key mechanic of Shadowdark is how the game handles light, namely that light sources are tracked in real time (i.e. a normal torch lasts 1 hour), which increases tension; slot-based inventory; has a 0th-level character creation option using an eliminationist "Gauntlet".

Degree of Support: Fantastic. Several official supplements and offically sanctioned digital tools exist; lots of third-party content available under a generous third-party license.

Addendum: Definitely the most similar game to 5e on this list besides the next entry; very robust mechanically and the Core Rules features extensive lists of magic items, monsters, and spells; also for early play giving your players only access to the quickstart is a totally valid choice; and finally, before Dionne made Shadowdark, she made 5e adventures for years and it shows (affectionate).

9. Pathfinder

Authors: Logan Bonner, Jason Bulmahn, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, Mark Seifter

Release Year: 2019 (initial release), 2023 (remaster)

Cost: Free and comprehensive SRD available via the platform Archives of Nethys, free "Pathfinder Primer" abridged rulebook available via the Pathfinder Nexus (powered by Demiplane), Core books are priced $20 for PDFs and $30/$60 for print as a softcover/hardcover; a Beginner Box set with shortened soft-cover rules costs $45

Page Count: 464 (Player Core), 336 (GM Core), 376 (Monster Core), 160 (Combined Beginner Box Softcovers)

Website: https://paizo.com/pathfinder

Resolution Mechanic: 1d20 + Bonus Roll Over system, 5e-style advantage/disadvantage, four degrees of success based on result compared to target number.

Action Economy: Three action points per round; various actions may require more than one point; every character can use one reaction per round of combat.

Characters: Choice-based; players first pick an ancestry and a background and a class (the ABCs) and then tend to have meaningful choices after each level-up; levelling up with XP.

Setting: Important. Golarion, the game's setting, is a world that has been long in development and it shows; powerful magic and influential gods; very clear notions of what the societies of the various peoples of the world are like and how they should behave.

Other Noteworthy Mechanics: Balance between character classes and reliable combat challenge calculations are an important design goal; weight-based inventory system; archetype system for "multiclassing".

Degree of Support: Fantastic. Loads of content gets regularly produced by the game's publisher Paizo; the Pathfinder Infinite program (similar to D&D's Dungeon Master's Guild) provides lots of lore-compliant third-party content; uses the ORC third-party license for content produced outside of the Pathfinder Infinite program. Translations into other languages available but Paizo does not provide a comprehensive list of available languages (only German and French confirmed after brief personal research).

Addendum: The most popular and commercially successful of the listed games; but also by far the most complicated, though it is easier to GM for specificallty than 5e; also I dislike how certain feats create situations where fairly mundane actions get mechanics through these feats instead of being things you can generally do; anyway the reason why it's a 9 on a 1d8 table is because if you wanted to try out Pathfinder 2e you already would have and because while Paizo is better than WotC it's still a flawed big company.

...

So this was an exhausting little project. I hope you found this helpful and I hope you give at least one of these games a shot! A follow-up to this post is not out of the cards, but I don't plan on one.

Before we go, have this poll about which of these systems you're most looking forward to try! Shame it can only be open for one week...

#thehomelybrewster #dnd 5e #dnd #indie ttrpg #tabletop roleplaying #ttrpg community #Cairn #Cloud Empress #Iron Halberd #Mausritter #Maze Rats #Dungeons and Dragons #Sherwood #The Electrum Archive #shadowdark #pathfinder

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archduchessofnowhere · 4 months

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“A portent of the catastrophe in the making”: on sources and misquotations regarding Rudolf’s last Christmas

In my post about Rudolf’s last present to his mother I told you I had a second post about the Christmas of 1888, which turned out to be the last Christmas of Rudolf’s life. This post is, however, a little different to the Heine one, since this time I’ll be talking about the sources themselves. Please bear with me because this will be long, and probably also kinda dull.

To be honest I was not planning to write this post. But when I was preparing the Christmas posts I shared the 24, I came across a quote from Greg King and Penny Wilson’s Twilight of Empire I had shared previously on this blog two years ago:

Three aromatic blue fir trees, branches alight with wax candles and bedecked with gilded ornaments, stood over tables crowded with gifts when the imperial family gathered at the Hofburg to celebrate Christmas. Rudolf had bought toys for his young daughter at Vienna’s traditional Christkindlmarkt, or Christmas market; for his mother he had purchased some original letters written by her favorite poet, Heinrich Heine—a thoughtful gift that the empress all but ignored [71]. Indeed, Elisabeth seemed most taken with showing off her latest, unlikely acquisition: Much to her husband’s horror, she’d had her shoulder tattooed with an anchor [72].

Smiles and gifts couldn’t conceal the undercurrent of tension. Something was so obviously wrong with Rudolf that Elisabeth pulled Marie Valerie aside and again warned her of her brother’s malicious behavior. Then she turned to her son. After making him promise that he would be kind to Marie Valerie, Elisabeth embraced Rudolf and said that she loved him. Hearing this, Rudolf collapsed into agonized sobs; his mother, he cried, hadn’t said those words “for a long time.” [73] Franz Josef and Elisabeth were embarrassed at the display; neither recognized their son’s emotional breakdown as a last, dramatic cry for help as Rudolf slipped ever closer to the edge of an abyss. (2017, 98)

And I realized that there is a huge misquotation here. King and Wilson explicitly cite “73. Marie Valerie, diary entry of December 24, 1888, in Schad and Schad, 164-65” as the source of Rudolf telling his mother that she hadn’t sad to him that she loved him “for a long time”. But I have the very same edition of Valerie’s diary, and this is what she actually wrote down (on January 3, recounting the events of Christmas Eve):

Rudolf and Stephanie left with the King [?] before seven o’clock and Mama promised to come over with us as soon as it was done. When the three of us were now in Mama’s toilet room, Papa said he was surprised that Stephanie didn’t find it offensive that Rudolf had been taken into confidence [regarding the engagement] before her… they should get him. Mama hugged him and said with sisterly tenderness: “I love you so much.” I can’t say how happy that made me, because it made him feel so good, he hugged her and asked with great emotion: “No, really? It hasn’t been for a long time.” Excited as I was, I immediately began to cry and yet I was doubly happy that it was Franz [Salvator, Archduke of Austria-Tuscany]’s and my bond of pure young love that had brought my parents this sacred and beautiful hour of union.

Like, she clearly is talking about Elisabeth telling Franz Josef she loved him, and is he who replies that she hadn’t say that “for a long time”. Rudolf had already left when this happened, and Valerie explicitly states she is talking about her parents (“that had brought my parents this sacred and beautiful hour of union”). I couldn’t understand how this error even happened; they are literally citing Valerie’s published diary, the mistake is just baffling. Could they really have read the diary so badly? What was going on?

Since just one mistake in citation is enough to make you doubt an entire book, I started to double check the other two sources King and Wilson cite for this passage:

71. Hamann, Reluctant Empress, 339; Listowel, 207; Morton, Nervous, 177-79; Salvendy, 144-5. 72. Morton, Nervous, 179.

Hamann is obviously the source for Elisabeth ignoring the Heine letters (as I wrote in my post about the present). As for Listowel and Morton their books simply describe the Christmas trees and presents, mention Valerie’s engagement, and finally note that Rudolf “hugged his future brother-in-law. When he put his arms around his mother, there broke out of him a sudden sob” (Morton, 1980, 170) and “solemnly promised [to look after his sister], but with such a sad expression that Valerie felt almost frightened” (Listowel, 1986, 207). No source cited by neither of them.

Not a great start for my misquotation hunt. But my luck changed when I looked up John Salvendy’s work. The book that King and Wilson cited is Royal Rebel: A Psychological Portrait of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria-Hungary, published in 1988. Sadly this book isn’t on the archive but after a lot of perseverance I was able to get a peak at pages 144-45 through Google Books. And guess what I found out:

Rudolf’s last Christmas, that in 1888, had a crucial effect on his assessment of his mother’s inclination towards him. Valerie described what happened following Rudolf renewed reassurance to Elisabeth of his benevolence toward his younger sister and her future husband: “Mama embraced him and told him affectionately how much she loved him… he was so moved and said that he had not heard it for long time”. [54] (144)

Reading this passage felt like being a school teacher that catches a student cheating on a test because they copied the same mistake as their seat neighbor. Now, I’m not saying that Greg and Wilson never read Valerie’s diary, but they absolutely were quoting Salvendy instead of the published edition of the diary when writing the Christmas Eve passage of their book and forgot to double check it. This however opened a second mystery, and one that will remain open for the time being: how did Salvendy make this mistake? Because he also cites Valerie’s December 24 entry as the source:

Which is just wrong. Google books didn’t let me see the bibliography page so I don’t know where did Salvendy got Valerie’s diary, because by the 1980s the original manuscript wasn’t available to the public anymore. But until I can see the bibliography the mystery will remain open; as of know, I’ll consider him the sole responsible of the misquotation.

By this point in my journey of double checking sources I started to wonder which are the sources for Rudolf’s alleged breakdown on his last Christmas, because at no point in the whole entry of December 24 Valerie mentions such thing (you can read it fully here). The only thing that she wrote about her brother was “Rudolf was watching her [Empress Elisabeth], then me, and was very friendly”, and again, after she got engaged “It may have been 8 o’clock when we went over to Rudolf’s, Papa and Mama in front, Franz [Salvator] and I behind - arm in arm. He gave us a very friendly welcome and even kissed Franz” (1998, 164, 166). No word of the supposed breakdown.

So does this mean it didn’t happen? Not necessarily. Brigitte Hamann, in her 1978 biography of Rudolf, quotes a second account of the Christmas Eve of 1888: that of Countess Marie Festetics, lady-in-waiting of Empress Elisabeth. In 1909, Festetics was interviewed by historian Heinrich Friedjung, who wrote of their talk:

However, the Empress knew about the Crown Prince’s shattered health from the scene at Christmas before he died.… On Christmas Eve, the Empress led Crown Prince Rudolf to his sister, the bride, and told him that she hoped that he would always look after his sister with kindness after the parents had passed away. At this point, the Crown Prince flung his arms around her neck and burst into lengthy, uncontrollable sobbing, which alarmed her greatly. This was a portent of the catastrophe in the making. The Empress and the Emperor, too, burst into tears. Immediately after this scene, Countess Marie and the adjutants were called to the Christmas tree and found the members of the Imperial family still tear-stained and emotional. One did not give his remarks that he was nearing his end the importance they deserved, remembering them only later. (2017)

Festetics account seems to be the main (and so far, also only that I could find) source for Rudolf crying in front of his family on December 24 of 1888. But how can we reconcile this statement with Valerie’s diary? Whose words weight more, Festetics recounting an event twenty years after it happened, with the hindsight of knowing that Rudolf took his own life less than a month later? Or Valerie’s account, written a few days after the event but biased by the happiness of her engagement?

A possible answer to this dilemma may be found on a previous entry from Valerie’s diary, dated December 16:

After dessert, Mama asked Papa to entertain Stephanie while she called Rudolf into her toilet room with me to “tell him a secret.” He seemed excited, even frightened, by this and I don’t think he was pleased. But he wasn’t unfriendly at all and so I felt encouraged to throw my arms around his neck for the first time in my life… Poor brother, he also has a warm heart in need of love - for he embraced and kissed me with all the intimacy of true brotherly love - and again and again he drew me to his heart, you could feel that it did him good that I showed him the love that had been almost suffocated by fear and shyness for so long. Mama asked him to always be good for me, for us, once we were dependent on him, and he swore and affirmed it simply and warmly. Then she put the cross on his forehead and said that God would bless him for it (and it would bring him luck) - she assured him of her love and he kissed her hand fiercely and was deeply moved. I thanked him and embraced Mama and him in a hug, saying almost unconsciously, “We should always be like this!” (1998, 157)

Doesn’t this sound almost identical to the scene Festetics described? Couldn’t it be that she is actually misremembering the scene that took place December 16 as happening on Christmas Eve?

I’m reaching to the end of the post and I don’t really have an answer. This started simply as a “double checking King and Wilson because they misquoted something” then it turned into “tracking down accounts by people that saw Rudolf the Christmas Eve of 1888” and finally into “contrasting the only two accounts of said day, which actively contradict each other”. And even after all that, I still can’t tell you for sure whether Rudolf actually cried or no in front of his whole family on December 24. Personally I feel more inclined to believe that Festetics misremembered the dates, but who knows, maybe Valerie actively decided to omit any unrest that happened during the day on her recount, remembering only the happiness that she thought her “pure young love” brought to her family.

Writing this post made me reflect a lot not only on the importance of sources, but also of the importance of sources in its original context. Because neither of the two accounts that we have now come from the hands of Marie Festetics and Valerie themselves: we have what Friedjung wrote down of his conversations with Festetics, and we have the copies made by Corti and Sexau of Valerie’s diary, not her original manuscript. Which opens a lot of more options as to why the two testimonies don’t match. Either way, is disappointing that almost no book about Rudolf and Mayerling notice this contradiction, and instead inadvertently (or not) repeat the same information, sometimes with the same mistakes.

Sources:

Hamann, Brigitte (2017). Rudolf. Crown Prince and Rebel (translation by Edith Borchardt)

King, Greg and Wilson, Penny (2017). Twilight of empire: the tragedy at Mayerling and the end of the Habsburgs

Listowel, Judith (1986). A Habsburg tragedy: Crown Prince Rudolf

Morton, Frederic (1980). A nervous splendor: Vienna, 1888/1889

Schad, Martha and Schad, Horst [ed.] (1998). Das Tagebuch der Lieblings Tochter von Kaiserin Elisabeth. 1878-1899

#I had this in my drafts since christmas but didn't feel like editing it before #ironically the only author i've seen so far (peaking through google books) notice the difference between the two testimonies is SALVENDY #who's the one who misquoted valerie's diary in the first place!!#also if you know of any other account of rudolf's last christmas please share them!#crown prince rudolf of austria #archduchess marie valerie of austria #countess mária festetics #empress elisabeth of austria #franz josef i of austria #house of habsburg

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