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| Final Rating: 4.2/5 |
“Not Titania but a seagull that has been caught and cowers in its cage.”
No matter how the potential reader has found their way to The Reluctant Empress, I don’t think you could pick up a more elegant biography concerning a truly multifaceted figure that continues to captivate and mystify historians and armchair enthusiasts of European royalty. I know I couldn’t have stumbled on to a better selection; perhaps a little slow in the beginning and final chapters but overall this was a pleasure to read and presented a well balanced realistic portrait of a misunderstood afflicted figure and name that is usually draped only in romantic legend and fancy embellishments of history. The straightforward chapters of the life and times of Empress Elisabeth of Austria kept me coming up with all sorts of reasons to slip away from other waiting books on different subjects and by the final page I not only accomplished what I set out to learn in terms of basic facts about the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary but I also fell in step with a respectful guide that extended passages with perfect narrative styling allowing such descriptive images to take me back to the timeline of Sisi’s life. That was wonderful to experience and its fair assessments and displays of intimate quotes, snippets from diaries and correspondences along with significant photographs shaded in many delicate areas of debate for this reader but still allowed just enough of the alluring enigma of Empress Elisabeth of Austria to live on.
-purchased and read paperback version
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