Archduchess Marianne receives the long-awaited visit of Countess Thürheim, who – quite literally – seems to have stepped out of the seventeenth century. As the author, I was intrigued by the challenge of portraying a historically authentic and believable depiction of a nearly ninety-year-old, relic-like lady. Fortunately, she turned out to be related to most of Marianne’s young ladies-in-waiting, which allowed me to shape her character more easily.
Born in 1669, Maria Fransisca Michaela Countess Thürheim was an older contemporary of Prince and Princess Schwarzenberg, as well as of Countess Althann, whose true identity is now beginning to take shape. Unlike them, however, she was still alive at the time of the narrative – a living memory and eyewitness to a bygone age and a vanished generation.
Thus, Countess Thürheim is able to provide Marianne with a wealth of prejudiced and contradictory information about the circles of her own youth. One might say that their conversation in June 1757 took place at the very last moment, for the old lady departed this world only two months later. As no portrait of her appears to exist, the old photograph of the Baroque pharmacy in Weinberg Castle, the ancestral residence of the House of Thürheim, fits beautifully with her age and background. One can easily imagine the aged and presumably frail lady visiting this room quite often.
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