The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria
SynopsisPlot
Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known to her family as Sisi, belongs to a famous love story of European royalty - in 1853 the Emperor Franz Josef, the most eligible bachelor in Europe, fell in love with her at first sight when she was fifteen; they were married the next year. On the surface, it was a fairytale marriage, all the more poignant, with hindsight, because her death signalled the twilight years of the Habsburg Empire.
Story
About this book
Brigitte Hamann's biography follows Empress Elisabeth of Austria from her origins in the Bavarian nobility through decades at the centre of Habsburg court life. Elisabeth, called Sisi by her family, was fifteen when Emperor Franz Josef met her in 1853 and fell in love at once. They married the following year, and the match looked like a storybook union of European royalty.
Hamann, a historian based in Vienna, first published the book in 1988. She examines the pressures Elisabeth faced inside the rigid protocol of the imperial court, her difficult position beside her mother-in-law, and her growing restlessness as the years passed. Elisabeth travelled widely and pursued demanding physical exercise, and Hamann treats such choices as material for historical explanation rather than praise or blame.
The book also sets Elisabeth's private life against the politics of the Austro-Hungarian Empire during a period of considerable change. Her death in 1898 fell close to the final decades of Habsburg rule, and Hamann follows the links between an unhappy personal life and a shifting public order without reducing either one to the other.
