#sisi of austria

[kaiserinelisabethsposts]

Elisabeth with her Irish Wolfhound, Shadow.

The Irish Wolfhound was one of her favourite dog breeds. She named her first Irish Wolfhound puppy "Shadow", and the dog was aptly named as it followed her from room to room. This was the first dog to carry that name, and at least two others "inherited" it. - https://www.authorapiperburgi.com

[foreverinthepagesofhistory]

VERY rare photo of Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria smiling at the camera, 1870s (?) 🤍✨🥹

Source: Pinterest

[fromtheheather]

Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1865) - Franz Xaver Winterhalter

[catherinesboleyn]

Elisabeth of Austria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter / Romy Schneider as Elisabeth of Austria

[archduchessofnowhere]

Average Sisi portrayal in media:

[wardrobeoftime]

Sisi (2021) + Costumes

Elisabeth of Austria's yellow & white dress in Season 04, Episode 01.

// requested by anonymous

[emilydickinsonsghost]

It’s so funny to me when gay mentally ill nerds on the internet put more historical research into their fucked up homoerotic fanfiction than major networks do for their period dramas

[737-nicolibri]

Just some drawings from work I did this past December

[ms-cornucopia]

Romy Schneider, Sissi III (1957)

[awkward-sultana]

(Almost) Every Costume Per Episode + Sisi's wedding gown in 1x01,2,3

[kaiserinelisabethsposts]

Posthume portrait of Elisabeth by J. von Koppay. (1890s)

[xkarmilkax]

Quick meme

[obscurehistoricalinterests]

'Sisi' was a terrible empress. Her romanticization needs to STOP.

In more recent decades, Elisabeth has received a growing attention in pop culture: there are several series, films and even a musical paying tribute to her legend. Her beauty is admired, her trials and tribulations are pitied, her struggle to escape the chafing constraints of royal life is celebrated. There's a whiff of feminism surrounding her lately - a strong, intelligent woman, metaphorically, and if we take the film Corsage, even literally flipping off the patriarchy. She's galloping through forests barefoot, she's facing off her tyrannical mother in law, she's fighting for her freedom, for control over her own life. German writer Karen Duve goes as far as to call Elisabeth "an undiscovered feminist icon." 

But... was she? One of her ladies in waiting once said that Elisabeth will "live on in legend, not in history". And right she was. You see, Elisabeth has triumphed. When I look around, it seems as if we see her exactly as she would have wanted us to. A tragic heroine, a beautiful apparition, a nymph who somehow got trapped in the mortal realm, to her immense suffering. And for a modern woman,  there is much to empathize with in Elisabeth: her sublime sensitivity, her iron self-discipline, her headstrong character, her inborn thirst for freedom. But upon lifting the starry veil of this ethereal fairy-tale queen, one will find the face of a much more complex, flawed and ultimately human woman. Self-obsessed and narcissistic, monstrously selfish and possessive, cruelly indifferent to her empire (with one all-consuming exception), incessantly self-victimizing and deeply, deeply unhappy - overwhelmingly through her own fault.  

[la-cocotte-de-paris]

SISI & ICH (2023), dir. Frauke Finsterwalder

[odysscy]

went to the sisi museum in vienna today

[archduchessofnowhere]

Archduchess Sophie to her son Archduke Maximilian, February 5 of 1863: The ball was said to have been very beautiful, as always at Alphons Pallavicini’s, and Sisi looked delicious in a light white dress interwoven with stars in matte silver and the diamond stars in her hair that look so good on her... At the court ball, Sisi’s dress was pinned all round with diamonds and rubies. I say this later because you and your wives [Archuke Karl Ludwig and his wife Maria Annunziata were staying in Trieste with his brother and sister-in-law] might be interested in jewellery and toilets.

Praschl-Bichler, Gabriel (2008). Unsere liebe Sisi. Die Wahrheit über Erzherzogin Sophie und Kaiserin Elisabeth (Machine translation. Please keep in mind that a lot of nuance may/will be lost)

Sisi’s success was overwhelming. In 1864, for example, she went to Dresden for her brother Karl Theodor’s wedding. After the court ball. Archduke Ludwig Viktor reported to Vienna that Sisi was “stunningly beautiful, also the people here acted insane. I have never seen anyone having such an effect before.” Sisi wore a white dress embroidered with stars, her famous large diamond stars in her hair, on her breast a corsage of camellias. Her sister “Helene, a very pale copy of the Empress, in a star dress also,” wrote Ludwig Viktor. At the wedding, the main attraction was not the bride, but Elisabeth. This time she appeared in a lilac dress embroidered with silver clover leaves, with a cape of silver lace, a diamond tiara on her intricately dressed hair. Ludwig Viktor: “the people here are so flabbergasted at our lady sovereign!!! they’re right.”

Hamann, Brigitte (1986). The Reluctant Empress: A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria (translation by Ruth Hein)