Heavy lies the crown: ‘The Reluctant Empress’ by Brigitte Hamann – Book Recommendation

I first learned a little about Sisi, the famous Empress Elisabeth of Austria, when I visited the Sisi Museum at the Hofburg in Vienna a few years ago. She was clearly someone around whom a certain mythos had developed, a woman of renowned beauty and a complex personality. I remember, having looked around the exhibition, feeling somewhat torn as to what to make of her. Brigitte Hamann’s excellent biography of the Empress has left me further intrigued by Sisi, yet ambivalent regarding her character.

Some sympathy must attach to the Empress Elisabeth (known affectionately as Sisi), since she was thrust at just sixteen years old into a position for which she was woefully unprepared and temperamentally entirely unsuited (i.e. being wife to the Austrian emperor). The Austrian imperial court was far larger and run with much more formality and rigidly strict protocol than Sisi had been used to in the Bavarian ducal court of her upbringing. She found it stifling. She also had to suffer a very domineering mother-in-law, whose greatest offence seems to have been taking over the upbringing of Sisi’s older children from the moment of their births, leaving Sisi feeling deprived of a maternal role. Moreover, whilst the Emperor undoubtedly deeply loved his wife and did his utmost to indulge her throughout their marriage (and Sisi certainly believed she loved him during the earlier part of their union at least), they were both products of their upbringing and unalike. He was dutiful and unimaginative, whilst she was prone to flights of fancy and interested in art, literature, and liberal ideas. They were ultimately not well matched. The pressures of life at court, three pregnancies in the first four years of marriage, her relationship with her mother-in-law, homesickness, and the loss of an infant child took their toll on the young empress.

However, despite these challenges and difficulties, it is impossible to ignore Sisi’s many unattractive qualities, which boil down to self-indulgence and self-absorption and a more or less total disregard for anyone other than those who accorded with her own whims and inclinations at any given time. Yielding to her own fantasies, Sisi largely ignored her obligations as an empress and as a mother to two of her children, whilst conversely almost smothering her favourite child. Lacking accountability, she possessed a huge victim mentality. Railing against the restrictions of life in the Viennese court, she cherished freedom, which for her seems to have meant the ability to do exactly what she wished, without constraint. Well, we’d all like that, wouldn’t we? Highly intelligent and literate, she flitted between interests, easily growing bored and not seemingly caring about the effects of her conduct on others. The Emperor’s love for her seems to have caused him to cave in to almost her every demand. Whilst the overbearing behaviour of Sisi’s mother-in-law was regrettable, it is perhaps equally unfortunate that her husband indulged her to the extent he did (although even he had to say no at times to her more extravagant requests). Maybe she was just too difficult to refuse. Her beauty as a young woman and ability to charm must have helped in this. In fact, she became obsessed with her appearance, practising gruelling exercise routines, punishing diets, and a daily hairdressing regimen that took three hours to complete, as well as refusing to be photographed as she aged, preserving for posterity an iconic, youthful image. Again, perhaps she is due some compassion, as she likely was suffering from what we would today recognise as an eating disorder and possibly Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. She seems to have been depressive, highly strung, demanding, and deeply unhappy for much of her life.

Sisi may be seen as spoilt and self-indulgent, someone who was content to enjoy the privileges of royal life but didn’t want to actually do any of the work that is supposed to be part of the bargain; a woman who was pandered to and idolised chiefly because of her beauty. She was clearly a deeply troubled individual, yet her self-absorption caused considerable problems for those close to her and, to some extent, in the wider political sphere. Equally, she could be seen (as she saw herself) as something of a victim, pushed, at a tender age, into a world incompatible with her personality and for which her upbringing had left her totally ill-equipped. Perhaps she simply wasn’t capable of doing what was required of her, and, given that it wasn’t really her fault that she had ended up in the position of being empress, and it was hardly something she could get out of in those days, maybe she deserves our sympathy.

Hamann is, I think, appropriately even-handed in her treatment of Sisi, and seems neither overly judgemental nor excessively biased for or against her subject. Sisi remains an enigmatic figure, inspiring powerful and polarised sentiments. The only thing one can say for certain about this complicated woman is that she was indeed a reluctant empress.

 

The Reluctant Empress by Brigitte Hamann ISBN: 9783548354798 or ISBN: 9780571271306

For more information: Feeling Sisi’s aura as a living experience | Sisi Museum