Doomed Queens (42 page)

Elisabeth in braids.

Accepting Franz Joseph as her husband propelled the princess out of her quiet Bavarian childhood into the overwrought world of imperial Vienna. Sisi reacted to the pressure by locking herself in her room, where she wept and refused to eat. When forced to appear in public, the teenaged empress hid her face behind a fan. Soon after her nuptials, she wrote a poem:

I am awake and I am in my cell.

I see the chains that bind my hands too well.

On the sexual front, the emperor immediately initiated Sisi into the wonders of the flesh, an accomplishment trumpeted to the royal family the morning after the wedding. Four children arrived in 1855, 1856, 1858, and 1868. Another less happy product of their union was syphilis—the emperor had been infected by women of light virtue and brought the joy home to his wife.

As the years passed, Sisi responded to the strain of her situation with increasingly erratic behavior. When her eldest child, Sophie, died of typhoid, Sisi threatened suicide. To gain distance from the royal life she found so oppressive, she rode her horse wildly for hours, risking her neck on dangerous jumps. Sisi’s obsession with death extended to a neurotic fear of aging. Her Rapunzel-like hair, which fell like a gossamer veil to her legs, was regularly washed with egg yolks and French cognac. Any hairs that fell out during brushing were counted. To preserve her whip-thin figure, she exercised to the point of collapse and sipped only meat juice.

Syphilis

Any examination of royal fatalities would be incomplete without acknowledging the insidious influence of syphilis, aka the pox. It was estimated that 15 percent of fin de siècle Vienna suffered from it. Upper-crust men were usually infected after sowing their wild oats with prostitutes or actresses. They then carried the disease home to their wives, just as Franz Joseph did to Elisabeth.

After the initial sores healed, syphilis was difficult to diagnose; its symptoms often mimicked other diseases before finally flowering into insanity and death. It was often diagnosed as nervous exhaustion or hypochondria, especially in women, and caused infertility. In Elisabeth’s case, it is unclear whether her risk-seeking behavior was a product of disposition or syphilis—perhaps both.

Pre-antibiotics, syphilis was usually treated with mercury supplied in the form of little blue pills or rubs; a popular saying was “one night under Venus, a lifetime under Mercury.” Mercury acted as an early form of chemotherapy, slowing the disease by poisoning the victim. Husbands seeking to hide their indiscretions dosed their unsuspecting wives with chocolates laced with mercury.

The emperor’s guilt over infecting Sisi left him unable to refuse her anything. He once asked her what she wanted for her birthday; she replied that she wanted a Bengal tiger or a lunatic asylum. It is unknown which gift was ultimately given. As the years passed, Sisi partook of mercury and other therapies to limit her disease’s progress. However, the only cure she really responded to was travel. The empress abandoned her royal responsibilities to visit sun-filled locales, swooning over the beauty of nature. To preserve her illusion of freedom, she refused bodyguards and wore heavy veils to disguise her identity.

Family tragedies followed Sisi, despite the miles she put between herself and her life in Vienna. If the empress was to have a soul mate, she found one in her cousin King Ludwig II of Bavaria, whose morbidly romantic nature mirrored her own. Ludwig and Sisi spent hours together riding in idyllic forests, bonding over their shared love of Wagner’s music and aesthetics. In 1886, Ludwig was declared insane and drowned under mysterious circumstances. Three years later, Sisi’s only son, Rudolf, died with his female lover in what was most likely a suicide pact. For the rest of her life, the empress wore black.

The weight of sorrow and ill health prompted Sisi to ramp up her wanderlust. It was during one of these frenzied pilgrimages that she finally encountered the grim reaper, a suitor she had long courted.

In 1898, Sisi was visiting Lake Geneva with a friend; as usual, she was without protection. A young anarchist approached the empress on the promenade and stabbed her in the heart with a sharpened file. Sisi’s corset initially acted as a tourniquet; once it was unlaced to treat the wound, she bled to death. Sisi’s last bewildered words were “What has happened?”

A BRIEF DIGRESSION

Luigi Lucheni, the anarchist who murdered Empress Elisabeth, did not have anything against her personally. He admitted, “I struck at the first crowned head that crossed my way. I didn’t care.” Elisabeth was an easy target—she had few bodyguards because she yearned for freedom of movement. She was also recognizable because she always dressed in black. Lucheni hoped his deed would inspire the masses to revolt against the ruling class. It didn’t. Twelve years later, Lucheni hung himself in prison.

CAUTIONARY MORAL

You can’t run away from destiny.

1918

nlike Empress Elisabeth, Alexandra Romanov should have had a more fortunate life. Besides possessing enough wealth and beauty to live happily ever after, she was gifted with an unusually loving royal marriage unmarred by venereal disease. But like a fairy tale princess born with a terrible curse, Alexandra bore a legacy that would eventually destroy herself, her family, and an empire.

Alexandra was born in 1872 to Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and the daughter of Queen Victoria. As a small child, Alexandra was nicknamed Sunny because of her happy temperament. However, the little German princess was transformed into a somber six-year-old after her mother’s sudden death from diphtheria. Cupid made up for this in 1894 when she wed Nicholas II, the tsar of Russia, after a long courtship; though they loved each other madly, Alexandra’s religious beliefs made her a reluctant convert to the Russian Orthodox Church. The new tsarina’s generous dowry included hemophilia—a curse that became apparent only at the birth of her fifth child and only son, Alexei, heir to the Russian throne.

Though hemophilia occurred as a spontaneous mutation in Queen Victoria’s family, inbreeding made the disease rife among the royals. This incurable blood disorder was particularly cruel because it was carried by females, who would remain blissfully unaware of their genetic predilection until a son was born suffering from the disease; most hemophiliacs were male. In those pre–DNA test days, there was no way to know who carried the mutation. Its effects were also unpredictable—a simple bruise could bring on a near-fatal hemorrhage.

Three days after Alexei’s birth, what remained of his umbilical cord began to seep blood. This was the first of many near-death episodes for the young tsarevich. His disease transformed the Romanov family into a closely knit unit whose defining modus operandi was to protect Alexei from harm. They surrounded him with a cushy blanket of secrecy—no one wanted the world to know that the next tsar of Russia was a hemophiliac.

It was Alexandra’s desperate search for a cure that led her to Rasputin, the Elmer Gantry on steroids of tsarist Russia.