Elisabeth of Austria (24 December 1837 – 10 September 1898) was the wife of Emperor Franz Joseph I. She was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. She was only 16 when she married Franz Joseph and was unexpectedly shoved into court life. Sisi was not only ill-prepared for this life but also had no interest in it. Franz Joseph’s mother, Princess Sophie, fought with Elisabeth over many things as Sophie saw Elisabeth as someone to benefit her son and nothing more. One of the things they struggled over was raising Elisabeth’s children, and unfortunately Elisabeth’s first child (Sophie) ended up dying in infancy. Her only son, Rudolf, was under much strain and often escaped to Hungary.
Unfortunately, when Rudolf and his mistress died in 1889 (murder-suicide), Elisabeth never recovered from her mourning. She ran away from her court duties and traveled frequently. Its worth commenting that although she felt like her life was out of her control, she exercised grand control over her beauty. Sisi was revered for her great beauty that she obbsessed over. Often times she would require being sewn into extremely tight corsets or binge eat, both extremely dangerous. Each day she spent two to three hours on her hair alone, but often took this time to learn languages. Then on the 10th of September in 1898, Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni stabbed her after missing his chance to assassinate Prince Philippe, Duke of Orléans and vowing to kill the next royalty he saw. Despite her extremely gloomy life, she always remained quite beautiful. A very interesting character to say the least!
