In the first episode of The Empress on Netflix, the emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph, and his mother, Sophie, receive a gift from the tsar of Russia: a massive taxidermied polar bear. This wasn’t just an ostentatious present — it was an opening salvo to conflict; the tsar was hoping to entice Austria to join him in a war against the Ottoman Empire, and wanted to demonstrate the scope of his ambition.
“Your people need a vision, a new objective,” he writes to the royal family, knowing that the Austrian people did need a vision, something to inspire and unite them. And it would come not in the brutal shape of a war, but in a more womanly form: an empress.
Elisabeth, empress of Austria and queen of Hungary — also known as “Sisi” — would captivate contemporary Europe, emerging as the icon of her day, a 19th-century “people’s princess,” celebrated for her beauty and kindness. And she’s continued to captivate more than a century after her death, growing into an icon who’s inspired fashion campaigns, films, novels and television shows.
If the idea of a princess for the people, whose life has loomed even larger after her death, sounds familiar, you’re not alone — the comparison between Sisi and Princess Diana is a common one. Both women were considered fashion icons in their day; both were understood to be vulnerable and empathetic. Their very human hearts threatened to break free from the constraints of the antiquated, suffocating rituals of the royal families they married into. They were also known to be complicated, moody, vain and all too aware of the sheer number of eyes on them at all times — as well as the pressure that came along with it. And both suffered tragic, untimely deaths that shocked the world.
History is strewn with countless princesses, queens and empresses renowned for their beauty. But there’s something special about women like Sisi and Diana, who’ve become icons in the public imagination. There’s a strange alchemy at work — beauty and violence, power and victimhood — and in the end, we continue to replay their stories, from beginning to heartbreaking end.
Sisi was never meant to be empress: She came to Austria from her childhood home in Bavaria to accompany her older sister, Helene — who was supposed to be the emperor’s bride. But, as the story goes, Franz Joseph caught sight of Elisabeth and was instantly besotted. Both sisters had been wearing black, in mourning for a distant aunt, and, apparently, the color suited the brunette Elisabeth far more than it did the fair-haired Helene. The 23-year-old emperor made his choice, much to the disdain of his domineering mother — the more easily controllable Helene was dismissed in favor of the willful but undeniably charismatic and beautiful Elisabeth, then 15. (This invites yet another Diana comparison: Charles first met Diana when she was a teenager because he was dating her sister.)
In fairy tales, being selected to be the bride of a monarch is the ultimate happy ending. For Elisabeth, though, becoming the empress would mean a life of sacrifice and scrutiny, despite her adoration of Franz Joseph.
The transition from her comparatively casual childhood spent romping around Possenhofen Castle to the rigorous and ritualistic atmosphere of the Austrian court was a challenging one for Elisabeth. “I love the emperor so much! If only he were not the emperor!” she lamented, according to her future mother-in-law. But what was there to do? There’d been a proposal from one of the most eligible men in Europe. Sisi accepted him — and all the unhappiness that was to follow.
While her husband was off running an empire, Sisi struggled through lonely days and was forbidden to walk or ride freely across the palace grounds. She wasn’t allowed to make any friends, and there was no one she could confide in. Her husband was occupied, and her mother-in-law either ignored her, berated her or treated her like a doll to be paraded out on cue.
With no one to speak to, Elisabeth turned to writing poetry in her diary. “Oh, had I but never left the path / That would have led me to freedom... I have awakened in a dungeon, / With chains on my hands.” Notably, those lines were penned just weeks after her wedding.
The royal family treated Elisabeth with indifference and cruelty. The Austrian court seemed to see Sisi as a childish inconvenience, simply a means to the end of providing an heir. After Sisi gave birth to her first child, her mother-in-law was the one who selected the daughter’s name and organized her nursery. Sisi wasn’t able to visit her infant daughter without her mother-in-law’s approval. She was not permitted to breastfeed.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Sisi sunk into a deep depression. Her husband had been raised in the restrictive court: He didn’t understand why his wife was unable to conform. “I beg you, for the love you bear me, pull yourself together, show yourself in the city sometimes, visit institutions. You have no idea what a great help you can be to me in this way. It will put heart into the people in Vienna and keep up the good spirit I require so urgently.”
With so little control over her life, Sisi turned inward and began to obsess over one thing she could control: her appearance. Sisi was fanatical about her long chestnut hair that reached past her waist (some say to her ankles). She was so concerned about it that she checked her brush to see how many strands fell out. (Her hairdresser learned to hide the hairs away under her apron.) To keep her skin youthful, Sisi used nightly skin masks of raw veal or strawberries, and she bathed in warm olive oil.
Sisi was also focused on her figure. She fastidiously restricted her calories to a dangerous degree, drinking egg whites with salt to sustain herself and exercising for hours every day. Today, she might be diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.
Princess Diana suffered from an eating disorder as well, a likely consequence of the pressure of constantly being stared at. It may also have been a desperate bid for control in a family that denied her the normal liberties of basic personhood. In her book Dead Girls, Alice Bolin writes, “Eating disorders are a kind of penance and a kind of fortification and a kind of disguise. It is a paradox of womanhood that women have been so long associated with the private sphere, the home and the family, while our bodies are considered public property.”
Our continued fascination with Sisi and Diana comes from empathizing with their inescapable vulnerability, the thought of them privately suffering behind their diamonds and designer gowns. Their lives also provide a rare and incredibly potent idea of wish fulfillment: We get to live vicariously through their wealth and fame, which are beyond our wildest dreams. And yet, at the same time, they’re relatable — or, as Hilary Mantel wrote in the London Review of Books, Diana’s “human awkwardness and emotional incontinence showed in her every gesture.” Diana and Elisabeth were fragile and in pain, cast aside by bullies and bossed around. They were desperate for escape and freedom. They’re ciphers for our own projections, just as we insert ourselves into a pop song.
Despite their psychological distress, both Elisabeth and Diana endeared themselves to the public with acts of genuine service and kindness. Elisabeth visited wounded soldiers in hospitals and donated to institutions for people with mental illness. She also advocated for Hungarian independence from Austria. (She wanted to rule an independent Hungary with Franz Joseph.) Sisi made a dedicated attempt to learn the language and culture of Hungary and had a Hungarian lady-in-waiting accompany her on her journey there. This effort endeared her to the people.
Unfortunately, like Diana, Elisabeth suffered a tragic and senseless end: At 60 years old, she was stabbed by an anarchist as she was heading to board a ship on Lake Geneva. In a gruesome twist, because the knife had penetrated her famously tight-laced corset, the wound was held together for several minutes. It wasn’t until she collapsed on the deck of the boat and her bodice unbuttoned that her lady companion realized she’d been stabbed. The anarchist hadn’t specifically targeted Elisabeth — he was opposed to the idea of the monarchy in general and recognized that she was someone important. But his motives didn’t prevent her demise.
Undeniably, there’s something about their dramatic deaths that only fuels our fascination with the beautiful, unknowable women of the past. There’s a macabre magnetism in the juxtaposition of glamour and violence. Both Diana and Empress Sisi lived spectacular lives; doesn’t it seem somehow inevitable that their deaths should also be spectacles?
Because they’re dead, they’re preserved forever in our collective memory as young and lovely — always full of promise and potential, never aging or ceasing to obey conventional beauty standards. “Diana was spared, at least, the prospect of growing old under the flashbulbs,” Mantel wrote. “A crime for which the media would have made her suffer.” It’s something Elisabeth was aware of even in her lifetime, the challenge of aging in the public eye. She refused to allow herself to be painted or photographed after her early 30s, so for most of the world, in an age before social media or digital photography, she’d always exist in what she believed to be her physical peak.
Glamour and fame have been appealing since time immemorial. But women like Diana and Sisi contain something else, something that only reveals itself in its full power in conversation with those who loved and admired them. It’s an inexplicable quality that begs to be known, a mystery waiting to be solved, a tragedy without an answer — except, perhaps, that some women are bigger than the world that seeks to contain them.
