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Beskrivelse
We think of Diana, Princess of Wales, as a forerunner of the world-renowned, determined, rebellious, somewhat psychologically troubled Royal, but the end of the nineteenth century saw four women with similar characteristics who were Empresses of the four traditionally most powerful Empires in the world.
Three of them were exceptionally glamorous - Empress Eugénie of France, Queen-Empress Sisi (Elisabeth) of Austria-Hungary, and Empress Alexandra of Russia. Queen-Empress Victoria of Britain was maybe less so, but she was no less eccentric and wilful in her own way, disappearing from public view for twenty-five years after the death of her husband-consort. Like Empress Victoria, Empresses Sisi and Alexandra also detested the formal demands of day-to-day Royal life and became recluses. Empress Victoria was a constitutional monarch; Empresses Eugénie and Alexandra ended up by over the governments of their countries; and Empress Sisi split Hungary away from Austria by popular (Hungarian) demand.
In an age when women had very little formal or legal power, these were powerful women. In the end, though, rather like Henry VIII's wives, it was a case of assassinated, executed, deposed ... and survived.
This biography, by Count Corti, of Empress Sisi of Austria-Hungary, who was deplored by the Austrian Court, adored in Hungary, and swooned over by almost everybody for her beauty and her charm, is a miracle of intimacy and detail. It is almost as if Count Corti spent every day with her throughout her time as Empress. And if you think that all this detail might prove indigestible, you would be wrong - this book is an absolute page-turner from start to finish, and in the end you will know this astonishing, mercurial woman as few of her contemporaries ever did, and as many would have wished to.
