My two-cents (based on what we know):
No Sisi in Vienna. It's likely a good thing. The woman was- and this is putting it politely- a walking disaster. Not only did the court hate her- this had nothing to do with Sopherl, actually- but her contempt for the court was well known to the public. While this
seems like a good thing (show yourself as being on the public's side), as Louis XVI's aunts showed, it's corrosive for the monarchy when the criticism of the monarchy as out of touch comes "from inside the house". Why? Because the public - who you've got on side - starts thinking "shit, if it's really
so bad that even our
empress is criticizing it", it undermines the authority of the crown and the ability of the crown to quell dissent.
Now, let's look at the
cause of Sisi's complaints (i.e. why the court hated her- in addition to her not being educated for the role).
The main thing- at first- that was held against Sisi was her birth. She was pretty far down the totem pole for an empress. "Not the right stuffs" as one courtier huffed according to Brigitte Hamann(?)'s bio. Not only was her maternal grandmother a Protestant- not sure why this became a stick to hit a dog with in the 1850s when FJ had the
same grandmother. Unless it was a way of voicing disapproval of the emperor without openly attacking the emperor. -but her other ancestry was rather less distinguished. Her paternal grandmother was an Arenberg. While that doesn't sound like a big thing to us, it comes back to the whole "uradel" and "briefadel" snobbery. The Arenbergs had only been noble since the 16th century, firstly, and secondly, there were
several Arenberg relatives of the empress at court. These relatives now had to bow and curtsey and think in silence two steps behind a cousin so elevated. To them, that was always going to be a bitter pill to have to swallow. As one said "how can we be expected to respect someone [Sisi] who is one of us?" For all intents and purposes, I think FJ could've married the daughter of a Halbkreisingenieur* and it would've caused fewer problems at court.
Sticking with the court, Sopherl is a convenient pantomime villainess but she's far from the only one. Again, the "call is coming from inside the house". One of Sisi's biggest foes was Wilhelm Albrecht, Count of Montenuovo. Half-brother of the late duke of Reichstadt and morganatic son of Empress Marie Louise. He would've resented Nene as well, since after his mom died and the dust settled after FJ succeeded to the throne, he was dismayed to find that his cousin, the new emperor, had
no desire to allow
him to inherit his half-brother's estates (the duchy of Reichstadt) in Bohemia (on the grounds of his "morganatic" birth). Things became even worse when FJ settled the duchy of Reichstadt on Sisi to provide for her income (but that was later). So Montenuovo already had one knife out for the Habsburgs. Then he took out another knife because the emperor had married "so low" (he actually used this as a justification for why he
should be allowed to inherit Reichstadt, after all, no one would be challenging the rights of FJ's kids for marrying "down") and refused to extend Montenuovo the same courtesy (and honouring the inheritance**).
This feeling of resentment made Montenuovo the lightning rod for opposition to the new empress. IIRC Sopherl only seems to have come onto the scene later.
Sopherl, for her part, FWIG,
did try to "help" Sisi "fit into her role" and "find her feet". However, being a "wilful" teenager, Sisi, for the most part ignored her mother-in-law. She trampled on court etiquette, refused to give the "customary" gifts to her ladies-in-waiting that they viewed as their "right", etc etc. The oft-cited complaint that Sopherl took Sisi's children away and called her a "silly young mother"? Let's think about this. Sisi had a role to play at court (i.e. a "career"), she couldn't just "hide in her apartments playing with her children" (as good as that might sound). Is Sopherl really the wicked witch of the west because she stepped in- as many grandparents (including my own) have done because mom and dad both have jobs?- to raise kids? Or is Sopherl trying to help Sisi? But no, Sisi, ever melodramatic (her sister-in-law, Charlotte, in a letter suspected that Sisi may have suffered from what would now be diagnosed as post-partum depression***), threw a tantrum over the matter. The further arguments (basing this on the wiki article) "she [Sopherl] took complete charge of the baby, refusing to allow Elisabeth to breastfeed or otherwise care for her own child." To which I would point out that a decade later, Queen Victoria was
horrified to find out that her daughter's were breastfeeding "like a cow" and named one of the cows on the homefarm "Alice" as a withering indication of her opinion of her wayward daughter. Maria Theresia was another horrified opponent of breastfeeding. Not to mention that until- not sure when, but I know my grandmother still passed on the "advice" to my mom in the 1980s- breastfeeding was regarded as a "contraceptive". Which means Sopherl refusing to allow Sisi to do this isn't so much "cruelty" as it is a case of firstly, trying to ensure that there's no hindrances to further childbearing (and birth of an heir), secondly, comes back to the fact that Sisi had a job to do (first lady of the court). To hold that office was, as Antonia Fraser writes "a
métier. She has a role to play" that isn't solely decorative.
On the last of the "evil Sopherl" accusations (per wikipedia) let's look at the evil note:
..The natural destiny of a Queen is to give an heir to the throne. If the Queen is so fortunate as to provide the State with a Crown-Prince this should be the end of her ambition – she should by no means meddle with the government of an Empire, the care of which is not a task for women... If the Queen bears no sons, she is merely a foreigner in the State, and a very dangerous foreigner, too. For as she can never hope to be looked on kindly here, and must always expect to be sent back whence she came, so will she always seek to win the King by other than natural means; she will struggle for position and power by intrigue and the sowing of discord, to the mischief of the King, the nation, and the Empire.
If Sopherl truly was the authoress of this note, although no evidence is provided either for/against, is she being malicious? This is a woman who had endured six years of "childless" marriage**** to a man not many were fond of (even Empress Karoline was no saint, remarking that "every so often I need to remind myself or I would slap him [Franz Karl]"), then endure
further accusations of infidelity and speculations about the paternity of her eldest sons (Prince Vasa for Franz Joseph, Reichstadt for Maximilian). Those words sound like they
may have been taken - almost verbatim - from accusations levelled at Sopherl herself until her first child was born. Is it her being evil or is it her sharing the benefit of her experience?
Yes, maybe Sopherl really was the mother-in-law from Hell, but to any Sisi-defenders, I would point out that there are
three sides to the story: Sisi, Sopherl and the truth. History has liked Sisi more than Sopherl, for reasons best known to them, but perhaps we should consider that Sisi's outliving her mother-in-law has allowed her to "skew" the narrative in her favour.
Now, the effect of this "alienation" from the court. Sisi came to despise the court and the courtiers as much as they had loathed her. Difference was, while many made no secret of their contempt, they still bowed and curtsied in the requisite places and treated her with (albeit grudging) respect. There is no record of anyone at court ever being cruel to her. It wasn't as though everyone was pulling her hair and refusing to stand up when she walked into a room. The guards saluted her, the courtiers bowed, if she said something, unless there was a standing order (due to etiquette) to the contrary, it was done. Even - and this was a stunt the French Second Empire court pulled on Eugènie to indicate their contempt- that when she arrived somewhere, she was never
not given a chair with arms.
Sisi's whole "problems" with the court and her "love of Hungary, of the freedom, of the liberalism" of the people, were problematic. Sisi was no political genius- and I doubt even an education could've given her a passing grade- and as much as she leaned into that "love", and came to champion Hungary (to the dismay of the court) and Hungarian language, she was sowing the dragon's teeth. I don't say that sans Sisi, the matter of Hungary wouldn't be resolved, but I do think there were several less-than-scrupulous persons both for and against the Hungarians who used her "love affair" to their own advantage. And she became a pawn (how unwitting she was, I have no idea) in the chess game between her husband and the Hungarians.
So...how would Anna do by comparison? Well, considering she had six children with a man that "never got over his first wife", was described as "intelligent" and "artistic" by Brahms, Clara Schumann, even Queen Victoria and Bismarck, and she had the looks in her corner*****, like Sisi did.
I'll leave the jury to decide on an Empress Anna vs Sisi
*a street-sweeper
**Montenuovo actually had
no right to the duchy. It was granted to Marie Louise at the Congress of Vienna, although in 1819 when Frankie was deprived of his rights to inherit Parma, she ceded a duchy she had never visited to the son she seldom saw. Then, when Frankie died OTL, the duchy reverted to his mom. Marie Louise married Neipperg
morganatically which means that even if she had the right to dispose of the duchy, he had no claim, either as a
legitimized bastard or as the child of a
morganatic marriage. Unfortunately, he believed that he did (for some reason), and was disappointed when FJ refused to allow him to inherit the duchy, which was instead, granted to retired Emperor Ferdinand.
***no date is given on the letter when its cited, so we have no idea
which pregnancy this was. Also, take it with a grain of salt because Sisi
hated Charlotte, who, herself, seems to have resented Sisi. Not because Sisi had married the emperor/Charlotte the spare, but because she regarded Sisi as "undignified" and her already frequent "illnesses" and "absences" from court - usually timed with "not getting her way" - meant that Charlotte had to regularly sub for her. Sisi's main reason for hating Charlotte (a hatred she later transferred to the innocent Stéphanie) was "because she was better at it" and because she took Sisi's "darling Maxi" away.
****The dates for Sophie of Bavaria (FJ's mom)'s miscarriages of the 1820s so frequently listed: July 1826 and June 1827. Gerd Holler's bio of Sophie from the 1990s and Gabriele Praschl-Bichler include a further THREE between 1825-1829. The "proof" of the 1827 miscarriage comes in a letter Sophie wrote to her sister, Elisabeth, who had LIKEWISE recently miscarried
*****except her teeth. Her teeth were apparently bad, according to a critiquing of her by Queen Victoria. Josephine de Beauharnais had bad teeth, didn't stop her from marrying Napoleon. Her intelligence was why Victoria rejected her as "not at all Bertie's type" [i.e. smart. Alix of Denmark was certainly not overburdened with intelligence]
