Elizabeth, 1837–98, empress of Austria and queen of Hungary. A Bavarian princess, she was married (1854) to her cousin, Emperor Francis Joseph. Despite her exceptional beauty, intelligence, and kindness she led an unhappy domestic life, which was marred, moreover, by family tragedies (notably the death of her only son, Archduke Rudolf, and the death of one of her sisters in the charity bazaar fire in Paris, 1897). Independent and unconventional, she avoided the stiff etiquette of the Viennese court and spent much of her time abroad, chiefly on Corfu. She was assassinated by the Italian anarchist Luccheni in Geneva, Switzerland.
See biography J. Haslip (1965).
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