Duchess Sophie Charlotte in Bavaria

Sophie Charlotte Auguste was born into Bavaria's ducal house on 22 February 1847, the youngest sister in a family that would place one daughter on Austria's throne. She became engaged to her cousin, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, but he called it off — a rupture that left her on the edge of a story everyone remembers but she never lived. She later married into French royalty as a granddaughter-in-law of King Louis Philippe. She died on 4 May 1897, forty-nine years old, a figure defined by proximity: to an empress sister, to a king who wouldn't marry her, to the high theatrics of 19th-century Europ…