The Empress Season 1 is marketed as an opulent retelling of the life of Elisabeth of Bavaria, sometimes known as Sissi, a German princess who became an Austrian empress in the 19th century and struggled against the constraints of the Habsburg court.
Elisabeth, a daughter of a Bavarian duke, never aspired to a position in the Habsburg court and instead cherished the freedom of her existence in the Munich area’s countryside. To see her cousin, Emperor Franz Joseph, whom the family thought would propose to Helene,
Sissi traveled to Bad Ischl, Austria, in the summer of 1853 with her mother Ludovika and stunning older sister Helene. Instead, the 15-year-old Sissi captured the Emperor’s heart, and the two later got married the following spring.
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Despite claims that Elisabeth and Franz fell in love as soon as they met, she immediately found it difficult to fit in at the Habsburg court. Sissi was escorted through Vienna in a state carriage during her wedding festivities, and the tens of thousands of onlookers who lined the streets could see her sobbing.
At her reception, she further embroiled herself in controversy by hugging her beloved cousins instead of kissing them on the hand as is customary, much to the chagrin of her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie.
The following 40 years of Elisabeth’s life were marked by adoring adulation (“It is the Empress who attracts them all,” Sophie remarked of her daughter-in-well-known law’s beauty around the world). Worlds away from her Bavarian youth, she experienced moments of defiance against the rules of court (“For she is their joy, their idol.”)
Making matters worse was Franz’s wayward younger brother Maximilian, who was not satisfied to be Franz’s heir’s spare, and Elisabeth’s tense relationship with Archduchess Sophie, who had previously been the highest-ranking female member of the Vienna court before Sissi’s marriage.
A teaser in German released earlier this year hinted that The Empress would be available on Netflix on September 29.
