One of the most fascinating of Europe's royalty in the mid-nineteenth century was the charming, undisciplined wife of the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria . . . the exquisitely beautiful Elisabeth.

At sixteen, Princess Sisi, daughter of Duke Maximilian in Bavaria and the ambitious, nagging Duchess Ludovika of the Wittelsbachs, was considered merely a hoydenish child. Her one interest was in horses and riding, her only love reserved for her adoring, unconventional father. It meant little to Sisi that her cousin Franzi had been crowned Emperor, or that her aunt, the powerful Archduchess Sophie, was scheming with the Duchess Ludovika to join the houses of Wittelsbach and Hapsburg. It seemed a fantastic idea to Sisis that these two contriving women expected to persuade the Emperor to marry her older sister, Helen. "Nene" hardly seemed the right choice for the handsome Franzi.

But then Sisi, untutored, and ill-prepared for the role she was forced to play, found herself inextricably involved in these schemes, when Franz Joseph fell violently in love with her and publicly rejected his mother's choice of a wife . . . choosing instead the wildling, Sisi.

Tempermentally unsuited to the rigid demands of Court life, constantly criticized and thwarted by her mother-in-law, who bitterly resented her son's choice, Elisabeth fled reality. Her genius for diplomacy, her lover for her husband and children, served to stay her flight only temporarily. After the tragic death of her cousin, Ludwig of Bavaria, and the even more tragic suicide of her only son, Crown Prince Rudolph, Elisabeth, convinced that she was cursed by the madness of the Wittelsbachs, could no longer escape her own wild destiny.

With sympathetic insight, Marguerite Vance tells the absorbing story of an enchantingly lovely young girl, forced by unrelenting circumstances and rigid custom into a life devoted to rebellious self-destruction.

Mrs. Pellicer's charming illustrations capture the atmosphere of regal grandeur that surrounded Elisabeth and played such an important part in the tragedy of her life.

From the dust jacket