The caption says that this portrait of Emperor Rudolf II depicts him “taking the cure,” which either means he was getting over a substance addiction (possibly), drinking what he believed to be healing waters (most likely, in the parlance of the time), or ridding himself of vampirism (unlikely, as The Vampire Diaries was a few hundred years away). Personally, I think the artist caught Empy here in a moment of thievery. Unsuble, to be sure, but who wears KNEE POUCHES in public if he isn’t hoping to fill them up with a little elixir and take it home for private use? “Oh but they match his groin bags,” his apologists will say, but frankly, those are pretty sus too. When he limps out of there with every last one of them inflated like a balloon, they’ll see it my way, and my God, they will take to the Twyttere and unleashe hellfyre.
