Empress Elisabeth of Austria

Elisabeth of Bavaria married her first cousin Franz Joseph I at 16 in 1854 and found herself suffocated by Habsburg formality she'd never been raised for. Her mother-in-law seized control of her four children; only the birth of her son Rudolf gave her leverage at court, but the strain broke her health. She escaped often to Hungary, fell deeply for the place, and helped negotiate the dual monarchy in 1867. Rudolf's murder-suicide with his mistress at Mayerling in 1889 finished her. She withdrew entirely, travelled the continent without family, built herself a Greek palace named for Achilles on…