Biographical Article on "The Most Miserable Princess Ever"

Jezebel has a profile article "History Does Strange Things to Dead Women" on Empress Elisabeth of Austria

And just because I enjoy history.

Excerpts:

"In the English-speaking world, "Sisi" is admittedly a deep cut, as female royals go {...} [she] remains a byword for glamour, one that designers drop when they want to conjure opulence without the guillotines. {...}  Sisi was also one of the most famously miserable royals who ever drew a breath."

Apparently:

"She despised the snotty, formal Habsburg court {...} and her dutiful, plodding husband. Shy to a degree that was practically paralyzing, she loathed public appearances and dodged them whenever she could—far too often, critics said. She feuded endlessly with her adamantine-willed mother-in-law. She spent years drifting around Europe, writing maudlin poetry, bemoaning her (very, very privileged) life. She was a complicated, high-strung woman who emphatically refused to live by others' rules; unfortunately, she couldn't seem to hammer out her own code, either. {...} And now she's remembered, by and large, as a pretty lady with a tiara.

History does strange things to dead women."

The article can be amusingly snarky:

"Franz Joseph, the man who'd make Sisi an empress, was practically an animate sack..."

Franz's mother:

"...redefined the term formidable. Seemingly every account that mentions her claims that Sophie was for a time known as "the only man in the Hofburg." Apocryphal, maybe, but certainly telling. {...}  a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary, [Sophie] believed in the rituals and the ceremony and the formalities. She wasn't the type to give two shits whether a daughter-in-law felt stifled.{...} On one occasion, Sophie wrote that one should not believe "that individual personalities have any significance." She had always noticed that one person was replaced by another, without making the slightest difference in the world."

On top of being Franz Joseph's mom, Sophie was also Empress Sisi's aunt:

"...and for various personal and political reasons, she liked the idea of her son marrying one of her sister daughters (because that's the way you roll when you're European royalty, I guess)."

*Heh*

Sophie and Sis's relationship:

"...went from bad to worse when the empress began having children. Sophie took charge of their upbringing, parking the nursery closer to her apartments than Sisi's."  With Empress Sisi once writing: "[My] children were taken away from me at once. I was permitted to see the children only when Archduchess Sophie gave permission. {...} Finally I gave up the struggle and went upstairs only rarely."

"...slowly, surely, Sisi began to act out. She welcomed her brother's wife into the family—an actress who'd already borne him a daughter out of wedlock. She donated to help a Protestant congregation build a steeple {...} She threw balls but invited only young people, not their higher-ranking mothers."

*gasp!!!*

"By this point, [Her family's] domain was a cobbled-together jalopy rolling down the road of history, wheels rattling loudly, parts of varying importance flying off. They lost a province here, an ally there. Nationalism was an increasingly powerful force, eroding the bonds that held this polyglot empire together. (Ultimately a Serbian nationalist would shoot Franz Joseph's heir, Franz Ferdinand, and launch WWI which brought the whole thing crashing down around their ears.)"

And:

"It was around this time that Franz Joseph's younger brother Maximilian was killed, the culmination of his fucking fool attempt to become emperor of Mexico. (Yes, that really happened.)

One of Sisi's Lady's in Waiting wrote:

"The Empress is sweet and good, but she makes everything a burden for herself, and what to others is a source of happiness becomes for her a source of discontent. She seems to me like a child in a fairytale. The good fairies came, and each of them laid a splendid gift in her cradle, beauty, sweetness, grace… dignity, intelligence and wit. But then came the bad fairy and said 'I see that everything has been given you, but I will turn these qualities against you and they shall bring you no happiness. I will deprive you of {...} moderation in your actions, occupations, thoughts and sensibilities. Nothing will bring you happiness, everything will turn against you. Even your beauty will bring you nothing but sorrow and you will never find peace."

Her niece outlined a variety of outlandish beauty practices:

"nightly face masks with raw veal {...}, warm olive-oil baths to maintain the smoothness of her skin {...} 'damp cloths over her hips to maintain her slenderness, and for some reason, she drank "a dreadful mixture of five or six egg whites with salt.'"

Her daughter wrote of Sisi:

"She says that it is a torment to be alive, and she indicates that she wants to kill herself."

She also told her daughter:

"Marriage is an absurd arrangement. One is sold as a fifteen-year-old child and makes a vow one does not understand and then regrets for thirty years or more, and which one can never undo again."

*Nice thing to tell your daughter about her dad...!*

Then:

 Their son Rudolf died [...} as part of a suicide pact; he shot his young mistress then several hours later put a bullet through his own brain. He was their only son, and he died without an heir, which is the only reason Franz Ferdinand [was around to be assassinated thus beginning WWI].

Finally:

[On a trip to Geneva] she was stabbed on the street by an anarchist. Her corset was so tight nobody realized what had happened until she made it back to her ship, collapsed, and died.

Further:

Visit Vienna today, and it's obvious that Sisi is essentially the German-speaking Scarlett O'Hara. {...} Gone is the difficult woman who spent much of her life lurching unhappily from obsession to obsession, frantically working to maintain her beauty and avoid the public eye. Picture Rebecca of Schonbrunn Farm; Anne of Bavarian Gables. Their appeal is obvious. They offer the hoop skirts, sweeping soundtrack and breathless romance of Gone with the Wind, without Scarlett's bitchiness or, you know, the slavery.