Royal shock: True story of DOOMED Empress and family tragedy that ‘sparked WW1’
EMPRESS Elisabeth of Austria led a life of tragedy wrought with heartache, death and gruesome links to the start of World War One.
Franz Ferdinand: Archive footage from the day of his death
Although little talked of today, Empress "Sissi" was a sensation in the press of her day. Affectionately known as Sissi, she was famed for her chestnut hair, which she wore down to her ankles, and her impossibly tiny corseted waist. She was so concerned with her perfect public image that she refused to sit for portraits or photographs past her 32nd year, so that she would always be remembered at the height of her beauty.
Although a popular ruler, she felt suffocated by the imperial court – one of the traits which have made some writers draw parallels between her and Princess Diana.
Alongside her beauty, she was a shy and melancholic young bride, brought into a court she did not feel at home in.
Like Diana, she often made visits to hospitals without a royal retinue, and was loved for her down-to-earth engagement with patients.
But her tragic life, brought to a violent end, also encompassed mental health issues and eating disorders.
It was her beloved son’s death in 1889, in what became known as the Mayerling incident, that prompted her decline and also saw the future of Europe change forever.
In the early morning of January 30, Crown Prince was found shot dead alongside his 17-year-old mistress in the Mayerling hunting lodge.
The official line at the time was that the Rudolph had died of heart failure. However, wild rumour quickly took hold, from tales of poisoning to a double murder posed as murder-suicide.
The mystery deepened over time, as a doctor who examined Vetsera’s remains in 1954 stated that he found no trace of a bullet in her body, meaning that she could not have been shot.
His theory was that Vetsera died accidentally, probably as the result of a botched abortion, and Rudolf then shot himself.
The mystery has only been cleared up recently with the discovery of the Crown Prince and Vetsera’s letters, released in in 2016. In them, Vetsera clearly outlines a suicide pact she made the Crown Prince as she says farewell to her mother.
The death of Rudolf, who had no male heir, meant that the crown passed from his father to his uncle Archduke Karl Ludwig. His son was Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo sparked the chain of events leading up to WWI.
For Sissi, the loss of her favourite son Rudolf sent her further over the precipice of despair.
Her astonishing mourning dress with a mask and incredibly long train shows the depth of her grief.
“Rudolf’s bullet killed my faith,” she wrote to her daughter Marie Valerie.
Her feelings of desolation prompted her to escape the Viennese court and wander Europe and North Africa more and more, often without a large entourage and refusing police protection.
It was one of these trips, which she made to Geneva incognito in 1898, that would see her meet her own violent end at the hands of an anarchist assassin.