The Accidental Empress (76 page)

“
My Queen!”

“My Empress!”

“Long live Elisabeth!”

“Long live Franz Joseph!”

Sisi turned from the crowd back to Franz. He, too, appeared stunned and overwhelmed. He faced her and mouthed the words “good heavens.” She smiled, remembering how she had once looked at him and thought that he moved like a god among them. The imperial guards, sensing that the mood of the congregation grew ever more boisterous, pushed back against the crowd, stemming the tide of those people inching their way closer to the two monarchs.

Sisi’s eyes did not rest on the emperor for long. Desperately, she combed the scene once more, looking for another face. Where was Andrássy? she wondered. Surely he was there. After the two of them, he was the central figure of this entire day.

Finally, her eyes landed on him. He stood near the front, the welcome sight of his face almost entirely obscured by the ornate headpiece of a bishop in front of him. He was more dashing than she had ever seen him—his dark eyes aglow, his tall frame outfitted in a traditional coat. He had been watching her all this time. When they locked eyes she smiled. She did not care who saw.

And then as Andrássy approached the altar, she looked out once more at her adoring subjects. They cried out for her.
So this is what it feels like to be a queen
, she thought, feeling that, for the first time in her life, she was up to the task before her. She was in the kingdom she had been meant to rule.

“Sisi! Sisi!” The crowds were enraptured as she knelt beside Franz, tipping her head before Andrássy in preparation for the crown that would be placed atop her famous chestnut curls. When she lifted her gaze, staring out once more at the crowd, she flashed a coy, beguiling smile. They erupted in cheers.

Sisi stared out over the cathedral, absorbing the scene, willing her eyes to take in every drop of color, every smiling face; hearing the music that roared, composed especially for this day by Hungary’s own Franz Liszt. Would she be able to remember it all? Doubtful. But she’d remember, for the rest of her life, how she felt as she beheld it. Proud of Franz. Happy for Austria. And how, for the first time in years, she felt that she was home. At home among a people to whom she belonged. Beyond this congregation stretched the fields of Pest, where she would ride her horses; the mountain of Buda, where she would ramble, staring out over the blue ribbon of the Danube; the cheering people who called out for her in the street.

And with the sea of faces swelling around her, her gaze landed once more on the one face she longed to behold. The one man who knew her better than anyone else. The man who knew her and loved her, not because she was his queen, but because she was Sisi.

And here, on this altar, wearing the crown for which she had fought, Sisi made her decision. She hadn’t been ready, the first time a crown had been placed atop her head. She hadn’t understood, then, what it meant. Hadn’t even fought for it, really.

This time, it would be entirely different. This time, she stood ready. She lifted her palm to her belly, to where a baby grew inside. A child that, at last, might be hers.

God, for some inexplicable reason, had granted her a second chance, and she would seize it. She would be a good queen. A loving queen. A queen worthy of the adoration that these people—for some mystifying reason—now gifted to her.

She would be the ruler not only of this land, but of her own life.

A Conversation with the Author Allison Pataki

Q:
The Accidental Empress
is quite the dramatic story! What was it like, writing a novel about Sisi?

A:
Yes, it certainly is full of drama. Sisi, or Empress Elisabeth, was an incredibly complex individual who lived in a fascinating moment in history. And her story—in some ways very relatable, in some ways completely foreign—played out before such an epic backdrop, with all the accompanying glitz of the Habsburg Court and the tumult of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I was as enchanted by her as everyone else was.

Q:
What in this is true, and where does the “fiction” part of the “historical fiction” genre come in?

A:
I decided early on that I would be crazy
not
to rely heavily on the historical record for plot and character development in
The Accidental Empress
. The raw material itself was so good and intriguing that there were all of the fixings in there to make a compelling novel.

To begin with, Sisi was not supposed to be Empress of Austria. Hence, the title of this novel. Sisi was a free-spirited girl who left Possenhofen (and a wild, unstructured lifestyle like the one you see her living at the start of this book) at the age of fifteen. She traveled with her mother and sister to support Helene in her coming engagement to Emperor Franz Joseph.

Sisi did in fact inadvertently steal the spotlight when they arrived in Bad Ischl, and, in doing so, inadvertently stole her sister’s groom. Archduchess Sophie was not happy to see her plans derailed. Some of Sophie’s quotes in this novel lamenting the unsuitability of such a match are exact quotes.

The plot of
The Accidental Empress
begins with their arrival in Bad Ischl, the women dressed in black (after getting separated on the road from their clothing trunks), and that is in fact how it occurred. Subsequent events and details such as Franz Joseph’s unanticipated attraction to Sisi, the cotillion dance for his birthday, the preparations leading up to their marriage, the births of their children, and their periods of closeness and estrangement are based on historical fact.

Descriptions of the incredibly difficult hand Franz Joseph was dealt concerning Austria’s foreign policy, and the wars that ensued in and around the Austrian Empire, are also based on the facts. Sisi did accompany Franz Joseph on the trip to Hungary in 1857, much to Archduchess Sophie’s vexation. While it started out as a great trip for Sisi—one that began her lifelong love affair with Hungary and its people—it was during that time that both her little girls became sick and little Sophie died. The second trip to Hungary described in this book, at which time the dual monarchy was officially established in 1867, was also taken from history.

Many of the most deliciously awkward moments of this novel are plucked directly from the historical record. The
Morgengabe
, or morning gift, was given to Sisi the day after she lost her virginity. I also discovered that Sophie would advise the pregnant Sisi to parade before the palace gates to show off her belly to the public, while she would also warn Sisi not to look at the pet parrot, lest the empress have a baby that came out looking like a bird.

Some of the most overwhelming and august moments are true as well: Sisi undergoing a complete makeover in the months before her marriage (and Sophie’s insistence that the bride whiten her teeth and improve her conversational and dancing skills); catalogues of the endless stream of gifts lavished on Sisi by Franz Joseph and Sophie (most likely in an effort to get the “provincial” girl well-dressed enough before her introduction to the highly judgmental Viennese court); descriptions of the magnificent wedding ceremony and protocol-dictated reception; the moment in which Sisi flees in a panic during the Kissing of the Hand ceremony; and Sophie accompanying the newlyweds to Laxenburg on their honeymoon, where she spent entire days with a very unhappy Sisi while Franz Joseph returned to Vienna each day to work.

Descriptions of the court rituals are based largely on fact, such as the customs of wearing gloves while eating, and discarding slippers after only several uses. So, too, are the descriptions of the extreme lengths to which Sisi went with her beauty regimen. Putting slabs of raw meat on her face and washing her hair with egg-yolk solutions are two of my favorites. Sisi was also compulsively preoccupied with her legendary hair and all that went into its styling and upkeep.

Some of the most tragic and troubling moments in
The Accidental Empress
are also taken directly from the historical accounts. Sophie did in fact keep Sisi’s babies in a nursery right off of her own suite, largely restricting Sisi from interacting with them on the pretext that she herself was little more than a child. Sisi was not permitted to nurse or take the lead in raising her young children.

And the pressure to have a son? That’s historically accurate as well. A pamphlet was indeed left in Sisi’s rooms presenting the urgent need to produce a male heir, though historians cannot confirm who put it there. The fight over Rudy’s education—a militaristic education like the one to which Franz Joseph had been subjected versus the more well-rounded course for which Sisi advocated—was also a source of great conflict in the Habsburg household.

And, of course, the constant tug-of-war for Franz Joseph’s attention and affection was an ongoing struggle for Sisi as a young bride and mother.

Q:
Seeing all of these conflicts that Sisi faced, we can’t help but ask: Why doesn’t Sisi stand up for herself more?

A:
Time and again we are rooting for Sisi, and we want to see her stand up for herself. And she does try, throughout. But as twenty-first-century readers, we must resist the temptation to look at Sisi through our modern lens.

The mythology of Sisi that persists today is mostly concerned with the personal tragedies she faced as well as her iconic looks. But there’s obviously much more to the character of Sisi than just the beauty for which she is still remembered. She was a human rights activist, an avid traveler, a lifelong student, a devotee of Shakespeare and poetry and philosophy and foreign languages.

But Sisi’s was a gradual process of self-realization over many difficult years. It would be anachronistic to expect Sisi, a sixteen-year-old bride with almost no formal education and no idea of what marriage and court life entailed, to adapt effortlessly to her very demanding new role.

Sisi was completely ill prepared for the life into which she was so quickly thrust, and the consequences were as disastrous as you might expect them to be. Franz Joseph, due to both his personality and a lifetime of preparation and grooming, understood the role he was expected to play. He was dutiful and devoted to that role—to the point of coldness at times—for the entirety of his life. In his view, the happiness of the individual mattered very little when compared to one’s duties and obligations.

Sisi did not espouse that unwavering devotion to her role or to the many demands of life at the helm of the Habsburg Empire. Sisi was independent and romantic and sensitive and free-spirited. Besides her initial immaturity and inadequate preparation, Sisi appears also to have had precisely the wrong temperament for the job she landed.

In that way, Archduchess Sophie was, oddly enough, correct. You might even say she called that one.

Q:
What do you make of the character of Sophie? How influential was the archduchess in Sisi’s life and marriage?

A:
Other than Franz Joseph, that relationship is really the dominating one in Sisi’s early life at court. And as you can see, it was an extremely fractious one. One historian refers to Sisi’s “almost pathological dislike of the Archduchess” (Joan Haslip,
The Lonely Empress: Elizabeth of Austria
).

It’s a dynamic as old as time itself: the overbearing mother-in-law, the smothered and resentful daughter-in-law, and the hapless husband caught in the middle, clueless as to how to negotiate between the two. Throw in the internal and external pressures that this young couple faced, and you have the recipe for a disaster of epic proportions.

Sophie was a powerful figure, looming large over both the court and over most aspects of Sisi’s private life and marriage. Sophie did in fact take the children from their mother. Sophie did install her ally, Countess Esterházy, in Sisi’s apartments. She did exert influence over her son’s conservative foreign policy.

But, like any human relationship, Sisi’s and Sophie’s was clearly a very complex one with multiple layers and perspectives. Because this novel is written from the perspective of Sisi, I took up a view that casts Sophie in a less-than-flattering light. Sisi was not complimentary of Sophie in her letters and interviews, and those documents have given history a view of the many conflicts in which the two women engaged. Sisi described her mother-in-law in the following way: “I was completely
à la merci
of this completely malicious woman. Everything I did was bad. She passed disparaging judgments on anyone I loved. She found out everything because she never stopped prying.” That’s a scathing review!

Sisi was much harsher in her writing on Sophie than Sophie was on Sisi. In Sophie’s descriptions, you see a devoted—to the point of overbearing and meddling—mother who believes that nothing is too good for her son. What wife can’t help but fall short in those circumstances? But Sophie’s criticisms of Sisi are subtle and nuanced, what we might call passive-aggressive. Perhaps that speaks to the different personalities of the two women; while Sisi did not attempt to mask her moods and emotions, Sophie was controlled and shrewd and always aware of how things might appear.

Q:
And then the other colossal figure in Sisi’s life was Count Julius Andrássy. What do you make of him, both as a character of fiction, and as a real historical figure?

A:
Ah, yes, Andrássy. He makes me swoon, as he made the ladies of his own time swoon.

Multiple biographers refer to Andrássy as the great love of Sisi’s life. Brigitte Hamann is one such example. The sense I got from their own letters and writings was that Andrássy and Sisi shared a deep connection—emotional as well as intellectual—and a profound respect for and devotion to one another. Andrássy seemed to give Sisi the validation she had always craved from Franz Joseph. Andrássy’s letters to Sisi show that he valued her input and he sought her involvement in his political and personal affairs. He actively recruited her as a partner in negotiating the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867.