The thought of the powerful Emperor falling in love at first sight with the beautiful Elisabeth captured the imagination of Europe. The long auburn locks, the classical face and the small waist all were part of the definition of beauty at that time. And even to modern standards Elisabeth was a very captivating young lady.

Whether Fransz Joseph truly fell in love with Elisabeth is still a matter of debate. A marriage between the Emperor and Elisabeth’s older sister Helene was under consideration under the direction of the powerful mother of Fransz Joseph, Sophia of the house of Wittelsbach. The young man, barely eighteen at the time, might simply have tried to assert his independence while maintaining all the benefits of such a marriage by choosing the younger daughter Elisabeth, who was sixteen at the time.

(As a footnote to this history it may be noted that Helene later married the prince Turn und Taxis, heir to a family that gained enormous wealth through selling their post monopoly to the German state. The current prince is still the largest propertyholder of Germany. In retrospect, it may have been Helene who got the better deal.)

The marriage a year after the engagement was widely publicized. After that momentous occasion the young bride made a tour of countries of the Habsburg Empire together with her husband, cheered by her subjects. Her beauty, accompanied by a certain charm and a knack for the right words at the right time, made her immensely popular, more so than the Emperor himself who often had to enforce harsh laws and tried to suppress the rising national feelings that existed in almost any non german country of the Habsburg Empire. Elisabeth had an especially wide following in Hungary and France (the neighboring country run by Emperor Napoleon II). In later life Elisabeth even became some sort of cult figure among the intellectual scene in France, representing the Romantic/Naturalist Era and the extreme feelings that were central in that movement.

Later developments showed that even if the couple were in love in their honeymoonperiod, that love gradually eased away into respect for each others position, as is quite common in arranged marriages. In later life Elisabeth wrote in her diary that the thought of sleeping with Fransz Joseph, or anybody else for that matter, filled her with disgust and she was glad to have that duty behind her. Still they had a total of four children between 1858 and 1868.

Fransz Joseph was a practical man, who enjoyed wholesome food, hunting and other simple pleasures. He had no patience for the intellectual pursuits of his more dreamy wife. In old age he found comfort with a beautiful actress of the Vienna theater Katherina Schratt, whom he seemed to love dearly. Elisabeth not only condoned this mistress, she actually helped the couple by inviting the woman to the palace or any summer retreats herself, thus providing cover and daring anybody to challenge the Emperor on his behavior.

Elisabeth carefully maintained her image of beauty throughout her reign, leaving nothing to chance. Not surprising as her beauty, more than her status as Empress, was the element that gave her a certain power in the political scene of Europe and thus over her own private life. Her position as an Empress was constantly undermined by the existence of a powerful archduchesse like Sophia who practically ran the Empire when her son was still in his twenties.