Her name was Isabel Amalia Eugenia. She was fifteen years old when her fate decided that Franz Joseph of Habsburg, 23, Emperor of Austria, would choose her as his wife. She was a member of the Bavarian nobility, a bad student, she was not born to be a queen. Prisoner of a failed marriage, Sissi loved freedom and she did not hesitate to encourage her husband to take an actress as his lover in order to escape her marital obligations.
Almost a hermit who loved travel, horses and poetry more than human treatment, immersed in probable anorexic melancholy, obsessed with preserving her beauty. After losing her daughter at the age of two, she managed with difficulty to conceive a son, Rudolf, who would commit suicide with her lover under strange circumstances.
On September 6, 1898, Luigi Luchini, a pro-anarchist, stabbed her. He wanted to be beheaded to draw attention to his political cause. The unfortunate Sissi, who hated attracting attention, would end up being a tourist attraction in Austrian imperial history.
