While Victoria of Great Britain is the most well-known of the empresses who reigned in Europe in the 19th century, she is by no means the only one. While Eugenie of France and Elizabeth of Austria-Hungary did not rule in their own right, they left their own marks on the lands and people over which they reigned too.
I read omnivorously, but sometimes one wants to come back to the basics, and for me books about royalty count among the basics. I’m quite familiar with the glamorously tragic Empress Sisi, but less with Empress Eugenie, so I was pretty excited to explore both of their lives in the broader context of 19th century continental Europe.
Goldstone’s writing is a smooth read, informative but amusing arch, and she has a knack for characterizing the multitude of personages peopling Eugenie and Sisi’s lives with all their different foibles and ambitions. She switches neatly between the two women’s stories, bringing out the similarities in their stories as well as how differently they often reacted to similar circumstances. I especially enjoyed learning about how both women cultivated and employed soft power to forward their goals, sometimes successfully and sometimes to no avail. This is a real doorstopper at 640 pages, but I found myself flying through without hardly noticing it.
I found myself less interested in the sections of the book dealing with the many military campaigns their husbands fought though, especially when Eugenie and Sisi didn’t have much to do with it. The flimsy pretexts for some of these battles really boggle the mind though, as well as the complete hash of the plan to conquer Mexico which I intend to read more about in the future. I did also wish we didn’t fast forward through the remainder of Eugenie’s life after the death of Sisi – even in exile I’m sure there was plenty more she was up to.
Disclaimer: I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.