11. Sisi Married Her First Cousin
The Hapsburg dynasty long ruled the Austrian Empire, and the family engaged in inbreeding and incest in order to retain the purity of the noble bloodline. Princess Sophie of Bavaria, the sister of Max and aunt of Sisi, wanted a niece to marry her son rather than a stranger. Sisi’s mother wanted her to marry someone noble and influential. When Sophie’s son, the 23-year-old Franz Joseph, the heir to the Austrian throne, first laid eyes on his cousin, the 15-year-old Sisi, he immediately fell in love with her and her exquisite beauty. The wedding was only eight months after their initial meeting.
They married when she was only 16 years old, and Sisi entered the royal court in Austria. He was passionately in love with her, and while some Sisi experts today believe that the feelings were mutual and the marriage was happy, many believe that she did not love him. Her new life in Austria was markedly different from her free-spirited childhood in the Bavarian countryside, and possibly, for this reason, she never felt much affection for her husband. She found her new life to be stifling and repressive, and though she became a powerful monarch that the people loved, she never was truly happy in Austria.