Who is the mysterious woman who inherited the manor and fortune of Freddie Mercury?

Mary Austin (1951) lives in one of the largest houses in one of London's most exclusive neighborhoods, surrounded by imouros that annually attract admirers from around the world.

But we know very little about her. . Probably the premiere of Bohemian Rhapsody, the film about Freddie Mercury's life and the rise to stardom of his band Queen, did it enlighten the scene? Because he lives there, it's because Mercury left him almost all his fortune at his death in 1992.

Freddie Mercury is better known. Even 28 years after his death, his power of convocation and fascination has not diminished. For some badysts, it has increased.

Of all the records sold by Queen in the United States (over 32 million), half were shipped after Mercury's death. For many, with its disappearance, the fascination for the dead star was born, a phenomenon that raises an artist's sales in the stratosphere when he dies. The same thing happened to Michael Jackson, George Michael or Whitney Houston.

If Mary Austin, the woman Freddie Mercury considered his "wife", is immensely rich today, it is partly thanks to this never-ending power of fascination that translates into millions of dollars in royalties each year. But how did this story begin?

According to the documentary Freddie Mercury: The Untold Story (titled in Spain Freddie Mercury: the story is never told), Freddie and guitarist Brian May often went to the London boutique Biba in the 70s, official center of the London swinging movement. The sixties observed her saleswomen, famous in the city for their beauty (Anna Wintour, now director of Vogue USA and the most powerful woman in the world of fashion, was employed there in her youth).

It was Mary and Freddie often went to the store before starting to go out together.

They lived together for six years. They never married. Mercury revealed to Austin that he was gay in 1976, although Mary said she had noticed a strange behavior in him for two years. "I knew that he was not honest with himself," he said later.

When Mercury left the apartment they were sharing in West Kensington, London, who was already a world-renowned singer and millionaire, he bought a house in Austin nearby and he gave a job to title of personal badistant. He moved to a house in Stafford Terrace, where he lived before moving to what would be his last home, Garden Lodge. I was close to Marie. According to some, he could even see Mary's house from there.

Mercury began to have bad with men more often. Some with a more ambiguous character (like the one he had with DJ Kenny Everett) and other full-fledged romance (with Jim Hutton from 1985 until his death). But Mary would always be called "my wife".

"For me, it was a wedding.We believe one in the other.All my lovers asked me why they could not replace Mary.C & # 39; Is because it's just impossible, "said the singer.

Mary also had a new love life: she had two children with a contractor named Piers Cameron. Since the first of them, Richard, Freddie was the godfather. Then came another, Jamie, born after the death of the singer. But the life of Mary and her two children (which Piers would eventually separate) changed radically on November 24, 1991. That day, Freddie Mercury pbaded away. In her will, which would be made public in May 1992, it was common knowledge that Mary was leaving her Garden Lodge mansion, valued at 22.5 million euros at the time, and half of her fortune (and future revenues from copyright), initially valued at more than nine million euros.

But keep in mind that the living members of Queen continue to make successful tours and that there is an extremely successful musical on the band, We Will Rock You. In 2014 alone, for example, it is estimated that the group's copyright revenues exceeded 54 million euros. A lot of these annual benefits go to Mary.

Freddie, his partner, Jim Hutton, left 560,000 euros. The same goes for his personal badistant, Peter Freestone, and for his boss, Joe Fanelli. For his sister, the remaining 25% of his estate.

Mary Austin still lives at Garden Lodge, the home she lived in her last years, and Freddie Mercury died in London, just steps from Earl Court tube station. It is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of admirers. In the nineties, the walls surrounding her house became the largest rock sanctuary, still full of letters, messages and dedications (which, with great controversy, compelled Mary Austin to retire from the last year under the pressure of the inhabitants of this exclusive neighborhood.

This is a Georgian mansion of 28 rooms with a large garden.It is Mary herself who l & # 39; chose for Freddie But what would be a dream for every mortal was for Mary, she said in an interview in 2000, the worst stage of her life.

"The months following Freddie's death have been the most lonely and the most difficult of my life.I have had a hard time accepting it's gone and all that it had left me. " suddenly rich and caring for a mansion and all his staff was not his only problem: as expected, other relatives and friends of Fred They did not understand that she was taking so much.

His mother, Jer Bulsara, died in 2016, granted in 2012 – with 90 years – a call for tenders for the Daily Telegraph stating that, at least on his there was no resentment of his son's decision.

"Mary was adorable and used to eat at home," she told journalist Angela Levin.

"I would have liked them to get married and have a normal life, with children, but even when they separated, I knew I still loved my boy and that they were friends until the end, I have not seen it since his death, "he added, according to El País.

The journalist's next question is self-evident: "Did it seem good to Mrs. Bulsara to leave Mary the majority of her legacy? Millionaire?" "Why not? She was co. He is now 68 years old and One of the best kept rock secrets: the place where he scattered the ashes of singer Queen.

Theories are many: they are in the Japanese garden of their London hotel, which scattered them on a Swiss lake where Freddie sometimes went in search of peace, then returned to their homeland, Zanzibar (Freddie was born there because his father worked for the British secretary of the colonies) …

In this regard Mary is as silent as the walls surrounding the mansion she inherited from the great rock star.

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