“I started off writing about Sisi, but found myself feeling rather restricted by that.” So Goodwin has given the novel a threefold structure – equal page space for Sisi, Bay, and Bay’s fiancée, Charlotte. Goodwin notes that “rumor at the time was that they were having an affair,” and her novel centers upon this incident. It is the fox hunt which provides an entrée to the Empress for George “Bay” Middleton, a dashing young cavalry officer selected to be her pilot (guide). It is clear from the literature that hunting at that time was about the thrill of the chase, in every sense.” Unusually, hunting was a pastime where men and women were on equal terms. It was a way for royalty and aristocracy to let off steam and escape the formality of their lives. She refused to sit for photographs from the age of thirty-two.” Sisi also possessed a great passion for hunting, and it is one of the novel’s predominant themes: “Hunting was the extreme sport of the nineteenth century.
“She found the aging process very painful. “But her image came at a price,” says Goodwin. She was known for wearing masks of raw veal to aid her complexion. Her obsession with tiny waist size resulted in a brutal exercise regimen, tight-lacing, and frequent fasting. Sisi developed what Goodwin calls a “cult of beauty.” It took two hours every morning to dress her ankle-length hair, which had to be tied to hooks at night to relieve its weight so the Empress could sleep comfortably.
“Thirty years later, when I started casting around for a new subject for a novel, she came into my head.”
“I was given a jigsaw puzzle featuring the famous Winterhalter portrait of Elizabeth when I was a child, and I suppose the image must have imprinted itself on my imagination,” says Goodwin. It is one such journey, to England in 1875 to participate in the Quorn Hunt, which forms the basis for Daisy Goodwin’s novel, The Fortune Hunter. Oppressed by both court ceremony and a pathologically overbearing mother-in-law, Sisi sought refuge abroad. Sisi’s upbringing had afforded a great deal of freedom, a commodity in short supply at the Hapsburg court. She seemed to have everything life could offer: wealth, a doting husband, the love of the people, an heir for the throne, and matchless beauty. Known to those closest to her as “Sisi,” the Empress was born into the Bavarian royal family and, in 1854, married at age 16 to her cousin, Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria. Such was the burden of Elisabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary during the Victorian period.
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