Nancy Goldstone is the author of the new book The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe. Her other books include Daughters of the Winter Queen. She lives in Del Mar, California.
Q: What inspired you to write The Rebel Empresses?
A: I knew that I wanted to write about Empress Elisabeth of Austria (better known as Sisi) from the first time I encountered her image.
It was years ago, and I was in Prague researching Daughters of the Winter Queen, about Elizabeth Stuart, the 17th century queen of Bohemia, when I walked into a bookstore and saw a portrait of Sisi on a book jacket and literally stopped in my tracks, she was that beautiful. Who is that?? I thought.
I came to Eugénie because, after writing about Marie Antoinette in my last book, In the Shadow of the Empress, I couldn’t tear myself away from France. I really wanted to find a female ruler in Paris to follow in the 19th century.
I began poking around a little and Eugénie, also stunning, leapt out at me from the research. When I discovered that she and Sisi had each married and ascended their respective thrones within a year of each other, I knew there was a great book there.
Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I researched the book the way I always do, through primary sources like personal letters and recollections, memoirs from other eyewitness from the period, diplomatic reports, government accounts, etc.
With this book, though, I got a bonus: because the telegraph had just been invented, foreign correspondents suddenly became prevalent and news traveled quickly through telegrams, so I was able to follow events in real time in a way you couldn’t in earlier centuries.
What surprised me most was that, towards the end of her life, the famously reclusive Sisi revealed to Eugénie what her son, Crown Prince Rudolf (who, together with his 17-year-old mistress, was found dead under highly suspicious circumstances in the bedroom of the imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling), had written privately to her in the hours before his death, a secret that otherwise went with her to her grave.
Q: What do Elisabeth and Eugénie’s lives say about the role of women in European royal circles of the time?
A: Elisabeth and Eugénie lived at a time when women were just beginning to really push back against long-held assumptions that limited female rights, employment, and political participation. Both empresses, each in her own way, were at the forefront of this movement.
Eugénie openly advocated for women’s equality and did everything she could think of to empower women by supporting educational and workplace initiatives. She also insisted that female writers and artists be recognized and awarded the same prizes as their male counterparts.
Sisi’s contribution was on a more personal level. She chafed at the traditional duties of a wife and empress and broke away to follow her own path. In doing so, she anticipated Kate Chopin’s groundbreaking feminist novel The Awakening by a quarter century.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: That’s easy. Both Sisi and Eugénie rebelled against the restrictions on women in their position. And both used the popularity and renown that came with glamour to achieve their private and political goals.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m not ready to talk about that yet. One book at a time!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Just how hugely dramatic—and entertaining!—the lives of these two courageous and spirited empresses were.
This was the time of beautiful courtesans and scandalous adventuresses; of cursed diamonds and gorgeous Charles Worth evening gowns; of the remaking of Paris into the romantic city we know today; of Victor Hugo, Stendhal, and the haunting poetry of the great German poet Heinrich Heine. A fabulous backdrop to a wild ride of a century!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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