Emperor seeks empress
As Archduchess Sophie found that it was high time for her son, the young Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria, to marry she began looking for a suitable bride. Eventually she chose Helene in Bavaria. ‘Nene’ as she was called, was the eldest daughter of her sister Ludovika. At the time, the younger Elisabeth was only fifteen, in the midst of puberty and lovesick for the first time, as well as having all the other problems associated with her age. To direct her thoughts elsewhere and to remind Franz Joseph’s younger brother of her existence, she was permitted to accompany her sister on her journey to the Imperial spa at Bad Ischl for the official betrothal.
Elisabeth’s spontaneous naturalness and her honest demeanour worked like magic on the twenty-three year old emperor. He ignored Helene and immediately fell in love with Sisi, as he was to call her later. Two days after their first encounter they were engaged to be married. Archduchess Sophie gave them the villa in Bad Ischl as a wedding gift. The young princess was overwhelmed by the course of events. She had fallen head-over-heals in love with her handsome young cousin and doubtless felt very flattered by his advanced. ‘If only he were a tailor’, she sighed, proving that she sincerely loved him for himself and that she saw the rank of Empress as more of a burden than something to striven for. There was no need to fret over making a decision. ‘One does not turn down an emperor’, her mother Ludovika told her. And with this, that last word on the matter had been spoken.
Sisi married Franz Joseph for love and had every intention of being a good wife and a faithful companion to him.
The wedding
In the months up to wedding the Emperor’s fiancée was intensively prepared for her duties in Vienna – tutors in French, Italian and History, dancing masters, specialists in protocol and courtly conversation rapidly succeeded one another, and the child was fitted for magnificent crinolines. However, Sisi was anything but a radiant imperial bride. She was afraid of Vienna, the foreign capital, of the imperial court and of her strict aunt and future mother-in-law Sophie, and the idea of leaving her family and her brothers and sisters made her very unhappy.
After an engagement lasting nine months, Elisabeth left her Bavarian homeland on 20th April 1854. The bridal party travelled to Vienna by ship along the Danube. All along the route people congregated wanting to see the bride, and at every stopping point grand celebrations were held. Three days later their ship docked at Nussdorf near Vienna.
Here Elisabeth was awaited by court protocol and a whole series of exhausting official ceremonies. The ducal family and Sisi’s own trusted lady’s maid did their best to raise the spirits of the frightened sixteen-year-old, who had to listen to endless loyal addresses while keeping a permanent smile on her face and repeating fitting phrases she had learnt by heart
At last, on 4th April , the wedding was held at the Augustinian Church in Vienna. It was a far from romantic experience for Elisabeth. She was always to remember the exhausting and highly formal celebrations with horror, having been defenceless before the staring masses and being compelled to reveal even the most intimate details of her life to the public. She may have learned ‘much and varied’ things during her period of engagement – conduct at court, how to make conversation, protocol – but the reality of it all was oppressive to her now. The young bride often broke into tears of despair over the course of these days.
For the wedding, the Augustinian Church was lit by 15,000 candles and draped in red velvet. The wedding service began at 7 p.m on 24th April, 1854. Accompanied by 70 senior members of the clergy the Archbishop of Vienna married Franz Joseph and Elisabeth. Nobody knows how Sisi’s wedding dress exactly looked like. But it was white. This led to the fashion of marrying in white. Only the veil of silk finely embroidered in gold has survived.
Shadows over the young marriage
As a shy young girl, Elisabeth now found herself subjected to perpetual scrutiny and – more than anything – exposed to constant harsh critique. Her lack of experience, the roots of which lay in her upbringing, meant that in the eyes of the court entourage she was no more than a pretty but foolish child. With severity Archduchess Sophie who’s her aunt but also her mother-in-law tried to redress what she saw as failings in the young woman’s education. Even during their honeymoon at Laxenburg castle, she inundated her daughter-in-law with commands, rules of conduct and harsh words. Sisi was entirely defenceless against her as Franz Joseph spent his daytime with the business of government at Court in Vienna. Elisabeth was not allowed to choose a lady-in-waiting she could really trust, instead Sophie chose her entire entourage and these had to deliver regular reports of every word uttered by the young Empress. Sophie did not even stop short of prying into Sisi’s diaries. She did not understand the accounts of loneliness and homesickness she found in these diaries as a cry for help, but as an unheard-of affront against her son and she reacted with acrimony.
Sisi turned to her husband, the sovereign, for help but he let her down. Sophie was known as ‘The only man at court’ and even Franz Joseph opted to take the path of least resistance by demanding that Elisabeth did whatever his other told her to do. The ability to express his feelings and act according to these had long been drilled out of him in the course of his upbringing. He had not learned anything except how to fulfil his divine calling as a monarch. His surroundings, too, had to conform to any demands this might make. Sisi was driven to despair, even within the first weeks of their marriage.
Sisi spent her honeymoon at the Blue Court of Laxenburg Castle south of Vienna. She spent most time in the company of her mother-in-law and ladies-in-waiting. Archduchess Sophie took the opportunity to begin with the young Empress’ education. Elisabeth bore her sadness to paper in poems. She wrote the following verse fourteen days after the wedding ( excerpt ) :
"Oh, had I but never left the path,
that would have lead to freedom.
Oh, that on the broad avenues
Of vanity I had never strayed!
I have awakened in a dungeon,
With chains on my hands,
And my longing ever stronger
And freedom. You turned from me !
I have awakened from a rapture,
Which held my spirit captive,
And vainly do I curse this exchange,
I which I gambled away you - Freedom - away"
Even on their honeymoon the young Empress only rarely saw her husband. Sisi suffered under hardly being able to spend any time alone with her husband. He always put court protocol and politics first. In the grand but stifling atmosphere of the royal palace in Vienna, Sisi felt lonely and abandoned. Schonbrunn Palace, the Imperial summer residence. For Sisi it was just another gilded prison in Vienna. The couple’s shared bedroom at Schonbrunn, the furniture of jacaranda wood was a gift from the Viennese guild of carpenters.
When she was young Elisabeth liked to wear white of light coloured clothes, in contrast to later years.
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