Empress Elisabeth, Part I

[Robert_Hall]

That was Titania, not Tatiania. Check Shakespeare

[Robert_Hall]

Sorry, I should have clarified. Titania was queen of the faeries in Shakespear's  Midsummers Night Dream.  Not Tatiana.

[Silja]

She felt MV had changed after she became a mother and wife. She was Tatiana, Queen of the fairie land. It just did not fit into her illusions. 

Always selfish, she probably simply couldn't accept the fact that her daughter now had a life of her own and wouldn't put her mother first any more. According to M. Valerie her mother once told her she would never be happy again to see her if she [M.V.] was going to get married. She was like some animals which abandon their young once they have been touched by somebody.

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

Wow! I haven't heard nothing like that! She acted like a little girl who was jealous of a new brother... she should understand that her daughter was going to have her own life and even after that she continued being her daughter 

[Carolath Habsburg]

I think that Elisabeth never had the change to fully grown up as a person. She always was like a teenager, despite the age, that why she behaved like that.

[Eric_Lowe]

Yes. However instead of guiding her towards maturity, both her husband and mother-in-law used that against her. I could sympathize her position as she was a very sensitive person.

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

But a teenager on the body of an adult woman... :-/

[Eric_Lowe]

She needed guidence not instructions. Both her husband and mother-in-law mistaken her shyness for weakness, and they later regret it.

[Yelena Aleksandrovna]

And her character didn't help her very much too...

[Eric_Lowe]

To be fair, Sisi was a willing pupil at first. She tried to please both her husband and mother-in-law. But once they began bullying her and act without consideration to her delicate feelings, Sisi began to retreat back into her shell. 

[Svetabel]

Once again, Eric and Kaiserin...please stop all the discussion about Elisabeth's character:

firstly, you discuss this at every topic about the Empress

secondly, DO look at the title of the topic.

[Svetabel]

Well..we are speaking about Empress Elizabeth and Emperor Franz Josef children...and the children are raised by their parents. So they topic had a little to do with Sisi and Franz Josef.

I tends to agree with Kaiserin about Elizabteh charater...

RealAnastasia.

There are enough discussions about Elisabeth character at the Habsburg Forum. Some posters are ready to discuss the same things endlessly and day by day and it's getting annoying.

[Lady_Aurora]

I recently read Notorious Royal Marriages by Leslie Carroll, and though  I know that books like that are not the most accurate it is a good book to get quick overviews of different royalty and the chapter about Sisi was very interesting.
In it Carroll seemed to think that Sisi was not particularly close to any of the children, except for Marie Valarie whom she seemed to never want to leave her side, Carroll questions her paternity as being other than Franz Joseph but I've heard otherwise before.
Also, Carroll blames Sisi's psychological problems and her mother-in-law's distrust/dislike of her for the reason she was not close to her older children.  An interesting bit about Carroll's reasoning for Sisi treating Gisela poorly is that she blamed her for little Sophie's death, something about Gisela being sick first, though she also states that Sisi took the children on the trip against her mother-in-law's wishes, so it might have been self blame.  Otherwise she only speaks of Rudolph's psychological problems and how they mirrored some of Sisi's, though Carroll also blames a tutor of Rudolph's for firing guns in the air to get him to focus on studying, thus leading him to an obsession with death and guns.

I would love to read actual books by scholars devoted to this family, so if anyone has any good recommendations, especially concerning the children, I would love to hear them!
I know this isn't the best source for the information but I thought I'd share one author's account on the family dynamics.  Also the books is pretty good and very quick read and has wet my appetite for reading more things about royal families I know so little about.

(I apologize for any name spelling errors, also any information I botched up as I do not have the book in front of me, loaned it to a friend, and the internet provides crazy variations of spellings)

[Pezzazz]

Thanks for the reference Lady_Aurora.  The more references for a good read on the Habsburgs the better.

One of the books I'm reading now is by Carl Lonyay, the nephew and heir of Crown Princess Stephanie's 2nd husband.  Mostly the book is about Rudolph, though he also has plenty to say about the state of his marriage.   He said Rudolph always spoke well and hoped for the best in his wife.  In a letter to Latour he was worried how anything he might do could reflect poorly on his wife which he didn't want since  Stephanie was: "intelligent, very observant and sensitive, full of ambition, the granddaughter of Louis Philippe and a Coburg!  I need say no more!  I am very much in love with her, and she is the only person who would have the power of leading me really astray!......................With kindest regards from Stephanie and myself............Rudolph"

Haha, from other things I've read about Stephanie, I wonder if she "edited" that letter for the sake of posterity.  However, this nephew by marriage of Stephanie does say that Rudolph was always kind and warm towards her, but then he saw this as a weakness in Rudolph since Lonyay had nothing kind to say about his Aunt Stephanie in any way.  For example he stated that Stephanie always felt best in her own apartments, "because this cold-natured, heartless person could fully satisfy her pompous arrogance.  Until her dying day, whenever lackeys in knee-breeches entered the room, they had to bow deeply and mumble the same set phrase: 'I prostrate myself at the feet of Your Royal Highness.'  It was this humiliation to which her fellow-beings were forced to submit, that she relished above all."

He went on to describe their marriage "like an attempt to play a madrigal as a duet for the contra-bassoon and violin".   

[Eric_Lowe]

You should read Brigitte Heyman's "Reluctant Empress" for more accurate information. It was Sisi who saved Rudolf from the boorish tutor appointed by Archduchess Sofie who frightened the boy into constant nighmares. Sisi for once took charge and wrote a threatening letter to her husband and demanded that the education of her son to be in her own hands from now on, otherwise she will leave Vienna "either he goes or I will". Rudolf never forgot in this critical period in his life she took his side against his father & grandmother.