Creative Content

I have recently become fascinated and intrigued by the life of the Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire named Empress Elisabeth who was married to Franz Joseph. This documentary covers her life in great detail.

From the documentary, you get the impression this woman was a selfish and vain woman who cared little for her children. Her life was full of tragedy. The documentary gives the impression she shirked her duties as Empress often and spent frivolously on traveling. Towards the end of her life, she was seen as perhaps a bit reclusive and delusional, leading to her statement that she was Titania reincarnated, the fae queen.

There is one thing though that makes me question this depiction of the woman…..she died in Switzerland from murder. She was killed by a revolutionary. Yet, this is the thing……

The woman died extremely rich and with many secret investments. She was depicted as frivolous and reckless with her spending and yet, she had more money safely deposited than anyone else within the royal empire. I often wonder about women of wealth that die of “accidental” deaths that are to the benefit of less thrifty relatives due to inherit from a will. There is a pattern in history of this type of greed.

This leads me to believe there was much more to Sisi, the Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire than what meets the eye. Also, throughout her story, she had repeatedly stepped in to protect others. It appeared to me that this woman was similar to Eva Braun, sorta trapped in a gilded cage with a horrible husband and in Elisabeth’s case, perhaps an even worse mother-in-law pulling all the strings for the family.

Elisabeth seemed to love to travel and create things and seemed to always want to be away from courtly life. I think she might have longed for a simpler life where she was not used as a royal birthing vessel and nothing more by a cruel husband and a plotting, manipulative mother-in-law.

Today, we see the word “sissy” as a very perjorative term or derogatory. Poor Sisi. Even her name has become maligned and associated with weakness and used with contempt that frankly, I believe this woman did not deserve at all.

Franz Joseph seems in the story to me to be cold, calculating, and cruel even to his offspring. And the grandmother in this story appears to be power hungry.

I think Sisi, the former Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was in a losing battle from the get go.

The interpretation of history always goes to the victor. To the victor goes the spoils. Obviously, all of Empress Sisi’s well-earned and saved money went to others who seemed to hardly value her worth in their lives other than for breeding purposes which frankly, is quite a despicable way to treat another human being and probably the reason why Sisi exhibited such reclusive and retreating behavior, always running away to remote regions away from court.

The way that Franz Joseph ordered his people not to mourn her funeral speaks volumes on his behavior towards his own wife. And through the years, the interpretation of historians towards Sisi has been….well, less than favorable which is disappointing.

He had a dark coldness to him similar to a Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights male protagonist. There is a bit of sadism there in that story of how he treated his own son, forcing the child to an eventual suicide.

I think there is much more to the story of Sisi, the former Empress of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, than meets the eye. Her story reminds me of the stories of other similar royal women in history that have met similar fates with doubtful misinterpretations of their character.

It is a sad story, a damsel in distress story that never culminated in anything positive. She was setup to fail from the launch….just like a female protagonist in Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Gone Girl, Bluebeard, and the like. She got dealt a bad hand and never really stood a chance.

Yes, upon introspection, I do quite understand the secret power of Sisi, the one who was denigrated to such a sad nickname. Sisi, the Empress, was in fact, the real power behind the throne just as a queen on a chessboard. She sustained the family line with her heirs and she also sustained the family income with her wise investments and inheritance after death passed on to others. Sisi was a quadruple threat….just like Titania or like Hera, the mythological queen mother and wife to Zeus.

See, Hera and Titania and these type of women with great achievement and potential with beauty, brains, talent, and riches…..these women are often maligned because they are perceived as a threat. They are often kept down, especially by the embarrassing actions of their own husbands and also, the derogatory statements regarding their character often made by lesser women, women of less capability that are incredibly envious and threatened by their potential. It is a sad state of affairs that these type of powerful women are often stripped of their dignity and respect not only by the shameful actions of their spouses but also by the rumor mills of gossipy lesser women that seek to put a lid on Titania’s and Hera’s and Persephone’s and yes, even Sisi’s shine.

It is a sad state of affairs that often the real demise of a beautiful, smart, talented, and powerful chess queen can occur within the ranks of its own group by intentional sabotage through secret alliances. Just look at how Hera is seen in mythology. She is not the regal queen of Olympus but often depicted as shrewd and crafty and overcome with jealousy and vengeance which I believe is not the true reality but rather a maligned perversion of the real truth distorted through rumor. Titania and Hera, after all, are both the queen mother….deserving of the true honor and dignity and respect of their title rather than being depicted as overly emotional feminine villains. Titania’s original title was to be queen mother of the fae, as a woman of substance and motherly protection, guidance, and overall goodness but that image got tainted and distorted over the centuries.

Just as the image of the queen mother has all over the world.

There was a time in ancient Sumeria where the queen mother was held to an equal level of prestige and reverence. But unfortunately, those days are long, long gone……..not just due to the oppression of patriarchy but also the contrived manipulations of alliances within the own ranks of femininity itself.

Betrayed by her own kind, the queen mother has been left to fend for herself in a two-pronged attack.

It is time to bring honor back to the depiction of the queen mother as she deserves, as a protector and guardian of truth and goodness and a progenitor to future generations.

Sisi was not the emotional and frivolous woman we are told. Sisi was much more. She was a mother. Like Titania, she tried to shield her son but in vain. Sisi was brave and courageous due to her love of travels. She was bold, often inciting the rumors of lesser quality threatened women in the court trying to diminish her shine. Sisi was smart too and knew to avoid the politics and viper rooms of the courts and to live a simpler life elsewhere. She was resourceful with her economics and when she died, she passed on her accumulated treasures of life, creative talent, and financial resources on to her loved ones. She was an admirable woman who deserved dignity and respect as do all human beings, regardless of gender identification or any other significant distinctions such as national origin, religion, race, creed, sexual orientation, etc. etc.

She gave life to others and for that alone……she deserved better treatment. It is a sad state of affairs in our contemporary society, how the life-giving and life-nurturing and life-affirming instinct of women is so denigrated, devalued, and deemed not worthy of respect anymore. Women are taught to be just like men. But they have amazing abilities and superpowers that are so undervalued and sadly, exploited. Women deserve better.

I think the people posthumously depicting this woman, Sisi, as awful and in such a vain and selfish way are quite unkind and full of their own pomposity and misguided misogny. After all, the dead cannot defend their own character and these people know that intentionally. The empress was way more than what meets the eye and they know it. They just don’t want to admit it to anyone out of ego and pride.