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Cousin of Empress Sisi, cosmopolitan and highly cultured, and averse to all convention, Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria belonged to the most important imperial house in Europe. Shrouded in mystery, he led a secret life revealed only in these fictional memoirs, dictated to his secretary shortly before his death and discovered in a forgotten manuscript. An environmentalist before his time and a tireless traveler, Ludwig Salvator fell in love with the island of Mallorca, where he created a small, fortunate kingdom. In *The Last Words*, Carme Riera appropriates his voice to narrate in the first person the services he rendered to the Viennese court, his family relationships, his thoughts on some of the events that triggered the Great War—which he may have been able to prevent—and his many controversial love affairs, some of them tragic. History, politics, love, and legend intertwine in this captivating novel that reveals the distance between public and private life, the threads that connect history to our existence, and the intimate need to tell the truth when everything is over and nothing can harm us anymore.