Tea at Trianon: The Tragedy of the Real Sisi

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, October 10, 2022

The Tragedy of the Real Sisi

From Tatler (the second picture in the article is not Elisabeth):

Born into the royal Bavarian House of Wittelsbach and nicknamed ‘Sissi’, Elisabeth enjoyed an informal upbringing, where her hands-on mother and father raised her to explore the countryside and enjoy creative musings. The young Sissi would go on to wed Emperor Franz Joseph I at the age of 16, a marriage that thrust her into formal Habsburg court life, for which she was unprepared and found unpleasant. Eccentric and educated in the values of creativity and adventure, the dullness of royal life was no match for Sissi. In an act of defiance, the empress took up smoking (ironic, considering her fear of ageing), riding and gymnastics during her marriage, which caused her to become a reluctant victim of gossip. Considered beautiful in her day, the royal’s good looks and elegant features were often credited with retaining a public interest in the Austrian court. Elisabeth's mother-in-law, the infamous Archduchess Sophie, once wrote of Sissi, ‘It is the Empress who attracts them all. For she is their joy, their idol’.

Indeed, so remembered was Elisabeth for her beauty, that in 1955, the Hollywood star Romy Schneider was chosen to play the empress in the beloved German film Sissi, which mostly centres around the royal's radiant good looks and offers a rose-tinted portrayal of her relationship with her husband, played by Karlheinz Böhm. (Read more.)