Empress Sisi and Emperor Franz Josef of Austria

She was truly the "Queen of Hearts": Empress Elisabeth of Austria, better known as Sisi or Sissi, ruled alongside Emperor Franz Josef over the Imperial & Royal Monarchy of Austro-Hungary. Her husband, Franz Josef, was not the only one to be captivated by beautiful young Sisi.

The tragic fate of the enchanting Empress Sisi still absorbs her admirers from around the world. Still unforgotten are the Sisi movies, in which the young Romy Schneider portrayed the sad empress.

The love between Empress Sisi and Franz Josef was initially like a modern fairy tale. When Sisi accompanied her mother to Bad Ischl, where preparations were to be made for the betrothal between her elder sister, Helene, and the emperor, the emperor fell in love with Sisi at first sight. Their engagement was celebrated just one day later!

But Sisi, who had undergone a very liberal upbringing, did not feel at all comfortable in the stiff setting of the imperial residence in Vienna. She suffered under the strict regimen of her mother-in-law, Sophie, who later even took the education of Sisi's three children, Sophie, Gisela and Rudolph, out of her hands. Sisi became visibly melancholy and suffered from a strange ailment - pulmonary consumption. Life placed numerous strokes of fate in her path. From the last of these, the suicide of her beloved son, Rudolph, she would never again recover. She travelled around the world, yet never found any peace. Her death, too, was terribly tragic. When anarchist, Luigi Lucheni, plunged a sharpened file into the heart of the Austrian Empress on September 10, 1898, he struck down a woman who had long since become disillusioned with life.