There's a goodreads review that I think puts it succinctly enough: If the author's goal was to portray Sisi as selfish, then mission accomplished. Sisi spends about half the book crying about how the press sees her as this selfish woman and a terrible mother, and she does literally nothing about it and has zero self-reflection that maybe she IS selfish and a terrible mother. It's only towards the end after the tragic death of the son who has been troubled for 20 years that she thinks maybe just MAYBE she might have something to do with it... but she mostly just blames her mother-in-law who's been dead for literally half of her son's life for the way he turned out.

Sisi's a very passive person in this book, worse than in the first one. Things happen to her and she complains about them.

Ultimately at the end I found only Franz Joseph and Rudolf to be actually sympathetic characters as presented by the narrative. Rudolf is a clearly troubled man who's obviously been yearning for the love of his parents his entire life, and has not gotten it. Franz Joseph is an extremely overly patient husband who indulges in his wife's extremely costly whims and goes out of his way to defend her to the press and to parliament even though she hasn't cared for him in decades.

This book suffers the same weird problem as the first one in that the narrative flatout never mentions several people it seems like it ought to mention. Ludwig's younger brother who's also mentally ill gets mentioned once. Franz Joseph's father and two brothers are NEVER mentioned although his nephew does get mentioned once, which should be confusing if you aren't familiar with this family. If you aren't familiar with them, there's no way to know how on earth Franz Ferdinand is related to Franz Joseph and Sisi beyond "nephew". The book also refers to Marie Larisch as "a relation" of Sisi's, failing to mention that she's the daughter of Sisi's older brother - possibly because not once has the narrative ever mentioned Sisi even HAS an older brother.

I know there's only so much room to include things in the narrative, but it's weird the stuff that got left out. Like that Marie Larisch's marriage to the husband she hates was apparently arranged by Sisi herself, and that Marie was pregnant 4 times while in Sisi's service. It's also odd, after the Mayerling Incident Marie just doesn't get mentioned again. You can obviously infer she was dismissed from service, but it seems like it would be much more interesting to hear about what on earth happened with her after the incident than to hear about Sisi pining after Bay Middleton for the 5th chapter in a row, if space was an issue.

Overall it's an extremely disappointing book. We get no insight into anyone's feelings beyond really repetitive explanations that Sisi wants to be "free", because apparently living wherever she wants to for 90% of the year isn't "free" enough for her. Ms. Pataki is really wonderful at describing things, though. Her character portrayals are weak but she has a very poetic way of describing buildings. ( )

I have always enjoyed reading historical fiction especially about women rulers and this book did not disappoint. It was well written and felt well researched. ( )

Sisi: Empress on Her Own; a novel tells the story of Empress Elisabeth of Austria's second half of life. She was a very self centered woman who seemed more impressed with her own feelings and comfort than with her family's. At every chance she had, she ran away to another country. She seemed to blame other people for her need to leave. Whatever it was, Empress Sisi was not there for anyone except herself. A tragic life and a tragic ending. The book was well researched. The story was well written and therefore received four stars in this rating. ( )

The author recreates the life of Empress Elisabeth [Sisi] of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from her reign as empress to her death. Ms. Pataki [daughter of a former NY State governor and of Hungarian descent herself] has fashioned an interesting tale of the later 19th century and the imperial family dynamics. The beautiful and complex Sisi struck me as a sympathetic person in one way--she was thrust into her role at a naïve young age--but in others also self-absorbed and escapist. She was neglectful of certain of her children, most notably Crown Prince Rudolf, who bore a tormented childhood, and suffered trauma all his life, ending in the sad Mayerling episode. The book contained ill-starred romance. ( )

I read this book after I listened to Stuff You Missed in History's episode "Sisi: The Empress of Austria and Her Cult of Beauty" (link at the end) so I already had an idea of what I would be reading about. Historical fiction, especially about royalty, has always been something I enjoyed (especially all of Phillipa Gregory's books) and this was in the same vein--humanizing people we think of only in a historical context, even if it's not 100% accurate. "Sisi" was an easy, smooth read for me.

https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/the-empress-of-austria-and-her-cult-of-... ( )