The future Empress of Austria was born to Duke Max in Bavaria and his Duchess, Ludovika, Princess of Bavaria  in Munich on December 24, 1837 and baptized Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie;   her intimates would call the spritely yet often melancholy and shy young duchess Sisi.  In 1853 the fifteen year old Sisi accompanied her mother and older sister Helene to the spa at Bad Ischel where the family hoped Helene would attract the attention of their mother's nephew, the young  Emperor of Austria, Franz Joseph.  Franz Joseph was so immediately taken with the young Sisi that he soon overwhelmed her and convinced her to marry him.  Their ten-month engagement was filled with lengthy lessons in court protocol and injunctions to learn quickly and behave by her ambitious mother, but even these methods did not adequately prepare Sisi for the rigors of the Hapsburg court.  Soon after their marriage in April 1854, the sixteen-year old Empress faced weighty imperial duties and a stern mother-in-law, her mother's elder sister, Sophia of Bavaria, Archduchess of Austria.  The imperial couple had three children (Archduchess Sophie, b.1855 d.1858, Archduchess Gisela b. 1856,  and Archduke Rudolf b. 1857) before the marriage broke down in the early 1860s.  Elisabeth spent the next decades restlessly traveling throughout Europe with rare stops in Vienna.  She and Franz Joseph had a last daughter, Marie-Valerie, in 1868, but the birth of this favorite child did not bring the couple any closer together.  After the mid 1870s, Sisi believed that her legendary beauty was fading and so she stopped having portraits painted and photographs taken of her.  The few images of her from the last decades of the 19th century were either taken clandestinely by lucky photographers, or were the products of artistic license.  She became even more of a recluse after her son, Crown Prince Rudolf, committed suicide with his sixteen year old lover Maria Vetsera in January 1889.

While on vacation in Geneva Switzerland, at midday on September 10, 1898, Elisabeth, Empress Consort of Austria, was stabbed to death.
 

  
Early photograph taken just before her marriage at age 16             Franz Josef & Sisi at the time of their wedding
 
Photographs of Elisabeth at the height of her beauty--taken  on the day of her coronation as Queen of Hungary in 1867

  
Three photographs taken of Elisabeth in the Early, Mid, and Late 1860s
  
Photographs of Elisabeth taken in the mid 1860s:
Group photo with her favorite brother Karl Theodor & his wife Maria Braganza, Princess of Portugal
Detail shot showcasing her famous mane of hair
Rare photograph showing Elisabeth smiling

  
Photographs of Elisabeth & Franz Josef's three surviving children:
Archduchess Gisela
Crown Prince Rudolf
Archduchess Marie-Valerie

Sisi while hunting in the 1880s or 1890s.  She carried fans and other accoutrements to protect herself from prying eyes.

Still from a movie made in the 1920s depicting the Empress on her deathbed after she was stabbed in Geneva, Switzerland on September 10, 1898.
 

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