She was at one time the most beautiful woman in Europe, and at the age of sixteen she became Empress of Austria when Emperor Franz Joseph married her. But Elizabeth Emily lived a life of torment trying to maintain her beauty and brilliance. I started following a boring diet. Her first feature was long golden hair that “wrapped her like a cloak” and she spent three hours a day caring for it.
The Empress forbade anyone except her lady-in-waiting from touching her hair, even going so far as not to appear at official events if her lady-in-waiting was not with her. Fanny was appointed “imperial hairdresser”, a salaried position. It is approximately equivalent to the salary of a university professor.
She was on a constant and often unhealthy diet. Breakfast was usually very simple. Some evening meals consist of little more than a thin broth.
Elizabeth viewed hairdressing sessions as a “sacred ritual.” She used the morning hours when Fanny was combing and styling her hair to read, write letters, and study Greek and Hungarian.
“Every three weeks her hair was washed with raw eggs and brandy, a procedure that took an entire day, including drying. After washing her hair, the Empress would wear a long, waterproof silk dress and walk back and forth until her hair was dry.”
On September 10, 1898, while walking to the landing platform of a steamship in Geneva, Switzerland, the then 60-year-old Empress of Austria was stabbed in the heart with a thin, needle-like metal file by the Italian anarchist Luigi Luchini. After being stabbed, she falls to the ground, but amazingly manages to get back up and walk all the way to the ship’s landing bridge before her body collapses and, eventually, she faints. She was taken to her cabin where her companion noticed a small spot of blood on her chest. When she failed to regain consciousness, she was transferred from the ship to a nearby hotel where she died on arrival.
At the hotel, her companions realized that she had been stabbed. Later, doctors were amazed that a woman who had been assaulted with a weapon that broke her fourth rib, punctured her lungs and heart membrane, and pierced her heart “from top to bottom, and finally emerged from the lower part of the left ventricle.” She was able to get up from where she fell and walk all the way to the ship. Bukhari. Did her incredibly tight corset prevent her from bleeding to death at the scene? Some certainly think so.
