All for Love — Dan Jacobson

The tale of a scandalous affair between a Hapsburg princess and a lowly cavalryman, it was the greatest European scandal of the day: she was Louise of Saxe-Coburg, the wife of a prince, the daughter of King Leopold II of Belgium. Her lover was Second Lieutenant Geza Mattachich, ten years younger than the princess, an undistinguished subaltern of dubious origin and extravagant ambition. Ahead of them both lay assignations, adultery, flight, the squandering of a fortune, a duel, imprisonment, bankruptcy, and madness. Shuttling between historical fact and fiction, All for Love draws on the actual diaries of Louise and Geza to paint a drama that is both comic and painful, extravagant and profound.