Surely many of us think that we can know Sissi enough due to the numerous film adaptations made about the life of the empress, however, Not everything that is reflected on the big screen happened. Likewise, there is information about Sissi that does not appear in the adaptations.
For all these reasons, today we want to get a little closer to the famous empress and know her through 20 facts interesting about her.
20 facts to know Sissi
We know what the story of the Empress is like, but I'm going to meet Sissi through 20 facts about her that you probably didn't know.
1. His birth was surrounded by bad omens
The Empress He was born with a missing tooth on December 24 1837 in Munich. Being born on Christmas Eve and with the tooth was considered a bad omen. The entire court thought that his life was marked. Some thought, however, that that bad luck could be counteracted because December 24, 1837 was Sunday, the day of the Lord and light.
2. His parents couldn't stand each other and lived separately
Neither of them loved the other, in fact They both loved other people. but their families did not welcome these links. Marriage it was a disaster. She is in love with the future king of Portugal and with a non-aristocratic woman. When the wedding was announced, Max, Sissi's father, confessed to Ludovika that he only accepted the wedding because he did not dare to confront her family.
He spent his life traveling, so he married couple lived practically separately and every two or three years they managed to have a child. Sissi had seven siblings in total. But she also had a few stepbrothers, children of her mother and her multiple lovers.
3. From time to time he went with his father to play and dance in front of the beer halls as if they were puppeteers.
Perhaps this is one of the most striking things the empress did. She was Of all her father's children, the one who was closest to him. They even had some adventures together.. They saw little of each other but when they did see each other they went hiking in the mountains, fishing, swimming or, from time to time, to a nearby town to play the zither and dance so that the locals would throw coins at them as if they were puppeteers.
4. She was considered an ugly girl when she was young
Of all the sisters she was the least beautiful or the ugliest. This his own governess assured him, Baroness Luisa Wulffen. It was said that his face was too rounded and flushed from the sun, something that at that time was at least synonymous with peasant or commoner. His nose was upturned and his color ranged from copper to straw blonde. Nothing about her seemed to ensure that she would become a beautiful lady.
Sissi's beauty was her charm and sensitive character that prevented her parents from punishing her for fear that he would fall into deep sorrow. This would give free rein to his free, spoiled, romantic and stubborn nature.
5. He loved his parents' summer residence
His parents bought Possenhoffen Castle in 1834, as a summer residence. It was about 30km from Munich and was considered small and primitive by royal standards. But the landscape was wooded with high mountains and the shore of a lake. The landscape was impressive and Sissi, a lover of nature and animals, loved that place.
6. His sister Néné was the one who was expected to succeed
Nene was beautiful since she was a child, intelligent and elegant, Everyone assumed that she would have a good wedding and put work and effort into ensuring that the young woman was trained and prepared for the moment.
Sissi, quite the opposite, he did not learn French, which was the language of royalty at that time, he expressed himself in the Bavarian German dialect, which was considered inelegant. He never played the piano well either.
7. She didn't actually snatch her sister's boyfriend
Néné had been selected by Archduchess Sofia to marry Franz Joseph. A trip was organized to make the engagement official, a trip in which Sissi was going. Things didn't go very well. Franz Joseph and Néné did not feel any attraction, but the emperor immediately noticed Sissi and he informed his mother that he preferred her as his wife. Sissi's mother would force her to accept.
8. Sissi was in love with another
She had been in love since she was fourteen with a count in her father's service. However, we have little information about him other than his name, Ricardo, and what It was not well considered for Sissi to marry him, so they sent him abroad for a while. Upon his return, he was sick and died quickly.
9. Her mother-in-law was not as bad as she has been portrayed on the big screen
As a young woman, Archduchess Sofia was considered a great beauty and the most intelligent of the daughters of the King of Bavaria. She was a quite interesting woman, ahead of her time, cultured and rather affectionate, not the sullen woman that is usually reflected in the movies.
10. He was a role model in the XNUMXth century
an influencer They are not from our days, there have always been them. Sissi, despite not being considered pretty when she was young, later developed great beauty, It was even said that she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Sissi was tall for her time, measuring 1,72m and slender.
Photography burst onto the scene at the time and fashion magazines began to emerge. The empress was already mentioned a lot in the pages of the coated paper, she was passionate about fashion and she was considered glamorous. She became the woman everyone wanted to imitate.
11. He had a great friendship with an ancestor of Kate Middleton
Perhaps this is impactful because it is related to our time. Sissi was a great horsewoman and began to travel a lot to Great Britain to participate in hunts. George Middleton would be one of his frequent companions.
12. He didn't like Vienna
He neither liked Vienna nor the protocol he had to follow there, which made him travel continuously. When he was young he told himself that he surely would suffer depression when feeling drowned in the royal palace of Austria.
In addition, he had a serious lung disease for which doctors advised him to be in a warm, dry climate. Sissi was in Madeira, in Corfu and from there He didn't stop traveling.
13. She encouraged her husband to find a lover
Perhaps as a way to compensate for her absences, she encouraged her husband to become lover of a theater actress with whom he had a real romance until his death in 1916.
14. Sissi played a great role in solving the problems with Hungary
The relationship with Hungary was never easy. In 1848 they began to protest the lack of rights and tried to seek independence. The tension was very great for several reasons, one of which was that the archduchess couldn't stand the Hungarians because one tried to murder her son when he was a child.
Sissi had a key role as mediator between Austria and Hungary, knew Hungarian because it was a country that he really liked and he also had ladies of that nationality. Thanks to her, her husband negotiated an agreement so that the empire would become "Austro-Hungarian." Sissi and Franz Joseph were crowned kings of Hungary in a ceremony in Budapest in 1867.
15. She is rumored to have had a Hungarian lover
Sissi spent many seasons in the palace they had in Hungary where he regularly visited the Prime Minister of Hungary, Count Gyula Andrássy. It is said that they were lovers and even that Maria Valeria, daughter of Sissi, was also the count's daughter. In reality it has not been possible to prove it. What is known is that he was in love with her.
16. He did not have a good relationship with his older children
Sissi was a very young mother and that, along with all the duties and obligations, made her Archduchess Sofia who will take care of the first children of marriage.
There was also an episode that would mark Sissi: the death of her daughter Sofia at the age of two. From then on, she was so hurt that she distanced herself from her family. It is said that With his daughter Maria Valeria, she would be the only one with whom he would have a very close relationship.
With his son Rodolfo, if he ever had something more of a relationship, he came to intercede when, during his military career, he began to have a really bad time. It's more, Rodolfo's suicide would be another thing that would deeply mark to Sissi. From that moment she would mourn until his own death.
17. He washed his hair once a month
Sissi had a long mane of hair, a beautiful copper color in adulthood. She was very proud of her hair and only let experts take care of it. It took several hours a day to style it due to its length and volume.ny to wash it one day. She washed her hair once every three weeks and used to wear it with elaborate hairstyles that her maids made for her. At one point she hired her own hairdresser (a theater actress) with whom she would become great friends.
18. It is said that you had anorexia, what is real about that?
The truth is that Sissi I didn't weigh 50kg and he was 1,72 meters tall, which is a very low weight for his height. We also know that she was on very strict diets and that she always wanted her corsets very, very tight, reaching a circumference of about fifty centimeters. It's known that Many days I "ate" only meat broth. He tried to play sports as much as possible: horseback riding, hours of walking, and even had a gym built in the palace.
Being thin was not her only obsession, she cared a lot about the cosmetic part. It was common for him to take steam baths that opened his pores and then olive oil baths to hydrate his skin. Her obsession with her aesthetics reached a point that she did not allow herself to continue being photographed after she turned 32. From that age she also used to Covering her face with a veil so that it would not be seen that she was no longer so young.
19. He was passionate about sweets and beer
Given his Bavarian origin, it should not surprise us that he liked beer. But he also really liked sweets, he had a predilection for some violet flavored candies. Sissi was on strict diets but from time to time she gave free rein to these pleasures that she enjoyed very much.
20. Sissi was murdered
It was 1898 and the Empress was spending a few days in Geneva when she decided to take a walk incognito with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Countess Irma Sztáray. Unfortunately, was recognized by an Italian anarchist, Luigi Lucheni who actually had the mission of assassinating the Duke of Orleans. The duke changed plans at the last minute and Lucheni changed his objective in turn. He would murder her with a knife moments before taking a ferry to Montreaux.
Thinking that the wound was shallow, she went to catch the ferry but fainted, revealing that the situation was much more serious. The ferry turned around and She was taken to the hotel where attempts to save her failed.. He died at the age of 60 years.
