Her years of wandering across Europe began. Elisabeth rode and recuperated but when she returned to Vienna, doctors diagnosed life-threatening pulmonary disease and so Sisi spent the winter in Madeira. But Franz Josef was delighted when Crown Prince Rudolf was born in 1858.Įlisabeth hated the rigid Court life in Vienna and fell ill and so in 1860 she took Gisela on a visit to her beloved childhood home at Possenhofen in Bavaria. Young Sophia died and Elisabeth was heartbroken.
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When the first-born Sophia was two, Sisi overruled her mother-in-law and took the child on a visit to Hungary. Unfortunately for Empress Elisabeth, after the honeymoon, Franz Josef returned to his routine of extremely-long days working and he virtually abandoned Sisi to the hostile Court and his domineering mother Sophia.Īrchduchess Sophia took complete control of raising Elisabeth’s first two daughters. Poor Sisi was overwhelmed by the formalities of entering Austria as the future empress, the rigid training on Court etiquette and the elaborate wedding. She could join in with the local children and enjoyed almost complete freedom.
Franz josef and elisabeth of austria free#
Elisabeth was free to ride, play and explore the countryside. Her father Duke Max had a newly-built palace in Munich, near to the king’s Residenz, but Ludovika preferred to bring up Sisi and her siblings at their summer palace in Possenhofen. But Franz Josef upset their plans and instead fell in love with 15-year-old Sisi, the freedom-loving, carefree daughter destined to marry minor royalty and live in happy obscurity.Įlisabeth was untrained and unsuited for the role of empress which she assumed after her marriage in 1854. Her mother Duchess Ludovika of Bavaria and her aunt Sophia, the mother of Emperor Franz Josef, had plotted for Sisi’s elder sister Helene to marry the young emperor. Sisi was never meant to become Empress Elisabeth of Austria Hungary, the largest empire in central and western Europe.
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