King Victor—Queen Varaga(Angèle Mory)

King Victor and Queen Varaga—once the Parisian actress Angèle Mory—are secret lovers and criminal confederates. Their relationship connects her transformation from an actress recruited for a revolutionary plot into a queen with the covert theft and substitution of Herzoslovakia’s royal jewels; even after the royal couple’s deaths, the truth remains concealed and the missing diamond may still be hidden at Chimneys.

Origins and Alliance

Nearly eight years before the events under discussion, King Victor was active in Paris under the alias Captain O’Neill, carrying out robberies and evading the Sûreté’s attempts to prove his identity. Angèle Mory, an actress at the Folies Bergères, was suspected of assisting him, though the authorities initially lacked proof. The pair’s connection was therefore established in criminal secrecy before it became entangled with the Herzoslovakian court.

When the Comrades of the Red Hand sought to exploit Angèle, they offered her a large sum to captivate the young King Nicholas IV and lure him to a place where they could act against him. She accepted their bribe, but exceeded the role her employers had planned for her: the King fell deeply in love with her, showered her with jewels, and she chose the prospect of becoming a queen over serving as a revolutionary instrument. She entered Herzoslovakia as Countess Varaga Popoleffsky, presented as a Romanov offshoot, and eventually became Queen Varaga. The account suggests that King Victor may have devised this audacious course from the beginning, but distinguishes that possibility from what is known: the two remained in contact.

Courtship, Correspondence, and Deception

As Queen, Varaga continued corresponding with King Victor in a secret code. The letters were written in English and signed with the name of an English woman then at the embassy: Virginia Revel. They were addressed to Captain O’Neill at his Paris rooms, and their illicit tone made the forged authorship dangerous. Had Virginia denied the signature, the letters might still have appeared to be evidence of her own guilt. Their relationship thus depended not only on concealed communication but on making an uninvolved woman bear the risk of exposure.

The correspondence also served the pair’s criminal interests. After the King and Queen were killed in the revolution, many crown jewels passed into the hands of the mob and later reached Paris. Investigators found that in nine cases out of ten, the principal stones had been replaced with paste, including stones of considerable fame. The substitutions were attributed to Varaga’s continued practice of her earlier criminal activities as queen, while the extraordinary quality of the imitations pointed to King Victor’s skill and involvement. The narrative presents their partnership as both intimate and operational: Varaga had access to the jewels, while Victor was believed capable of producing convincing substitutes.

Betrayal and Political Consequences

The Comrades of the Red Hand turned against Varaga after she betrayed their plan by winning the King’s love and pursuing her own elevation. They twice attempted to kill her, and later helped bring the country to a revolutionary crisis. The revolution killed both the King and Queen; their mutilated, barely recognizable bodies were recovered as evidence of popular fury against the foreign queen. Their deaths ended the public royal relationship, but did not settle the fate of the jewels or expose the full extent of the conspiracy.

The relationship’s political consequences continued to be managed through silence. During a later royal visit to England, the King and Queen were guests at Chimneys, where the Queen was necessarily received as a sovereign and, in the investigators’ view, also had the opportunity to act as an expert thief. The suspected substitution was judged too accomplished to have been made by anyone but King Victor, and the plan’s audacity further implicated him. The affair was hushed up; authorities established that the jewel had not left England with the Queen, but never discovered where she had hidden it. Superintendent Battle’s suspicion that it might still be somewhere in the room at Chimneys leaves their partnership’s most consequential secret unresolved.