#;;Le journal de Marguerit - das brave und schlimme das ich tue;; Diaries

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I am almost 8 years old and my name is Marie Valerie, (...) I have a little brother Feri, and another brother Rudolf, then a sister Gisela, we are four, we love each other very much, Marie, Gisela, Feri, and Rudolf

Marie Valerie in her first diary entry, 1876

Marie Valerie’s introduction posses a riddle to historians everywhere: Who is Feri? Elisabeth and Franz of Austria had indeed four children. Sofie, who died before Marie was born, Gisela, Rudolf, and the little Marie Valerie. No one knows who this Feri is supposed to be and who she is referring to in this passage. 

Rudolf is roughly ten years older than his little sister, making her the latecomer of the family. We share this fate since my brother is ten years older than I am. As I was a little child all my friends were playing at being the mothers of their dolls, at having a little family of their own. I did not want to be a mother, I wanted to be a little sister. To be the big one for once, the protector who watched over her siblings instead of the little girl that often got left behind because she was too small, too weak, in need of being protected. So I dragged my doll around, calling her my little sister while everyone else was already having daughters.

What if Marie Valerie did the same thing? What if Feri was her silent companion, her stuffed animal that listened to her sorrows, her ideas, her thoughts without brushing them of as being the fantasies of a small girl? So I headcanon Feri to be a small brown rabbit she got from one of her Bavarian relatives.

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