Filed under: art, class, TV, writing | Tags: Elisabeth of Austria, Hamilton, International TV, mythologization, Royals, shoes, The Poor, TV
It was the shoes that made me suspicious. It was either the kind of story that was true and became the central story of this woman’s history OR it was entirely invented. So I went looking for some historical context for The Empress, a German TV show about Elisabeth of Austria. I learned a lot, though found nothing about the shoes. I’ll come back to them later.
The show is delightful; I’m not going to lie. It is a fun romantic period drama full of court intrigue and historical detail. I am enjoying it very much. But I have learned that it has very little to do with this woman’s actual life and I’m curious about the motivation for the differences. In essence, the writers have made a beautiful historical fantasy. What if Old Time Europeans were like we WANT to be, but in prettier costumes? It’s an intriguing mythologization, really.
What if The Empress were a headstrong iconoclast way ahead of her time who speaks her mind and shoots guns and doesn’t do what she’s told? What if she’s a poet and doesn’t care about her appearance like everyone expects her to? What if she’s loads of fun and really nice and her only flaw is that she doesn’t know how to suppress her true self? What if she marries the emperor out of love not because she wants to marry up? Of course we love her! These are our values!
But – it turns out – while she was really smart and did read a lot of books and she did write poems, she was VERY much concerned with her appearance. She spent two hours having her hair brushed every day. To wash it (every 3 weeks) took the entire day. She was obsessed with “tight-lacing” her corset, such that many people were worried about what she was doing to herself. (Unlike the show, where she is apparently shocked to be laced into a corset and would prefer to go without.) All historical accounts suggest that she was unusually concerned about her appearance – even for an empress. She was apparently so fat-phobic that she made her daughter afraid of Queen Victoria when she met her.
This is not someone who might suggest rolling around in a muddy stream with her beloved. I mean, it’s an enjoyable scene in the TV show – but wildly improbable. And the central premise of Emperor Franz Josepf and Princess Elisabeth just falling in love with each other because of their personalities is very fun in the show but not at all what happened. Yes, her older sister was supposed to be the one to marry him (like in the show) but he spotted the fifteen year old Elisabeth and insisted on her instead. So he looked at the 18 year old sister and went….”Ah, no. I’ll have the child, please!”
I can see why all these choices were made. We want a love story, not a problematic age gap! We want a ballsy heroine not a vain clotheshorse! We want a woman ahead of her time not one who embodied many of the complications of her own moment. These choices are made for the TV show to please us, to give us a heroine we’ll really root for.
Which brings me to the shoes.
In the fifth episode, they take the Empress out to see the people and she breaks protocol and goes into the foundry to see a little urchin she saw disappear there. The Empress sees the state of the child’s feet and gives the child her own shoes.
What a saint! This rich lady really cares about the poor! If only anyone would listen to her instead of just admiring her beauty! It’s just what we want in a leader! Someone who’d give away the very shoes upon her feet! Wow!
But I cannot find even the barest mention of Elisabeth giving even the smallest shit about the poor. This is not to say it wasn’t so. I haven’t read any of the books about her and I have seen no primary resources – so maybe in those, she cares nothing for her possessions and really sees poor people. There ARE stories about her caring for veterans and people with mental illness later in her life, and there’s one kind of performative Christmas ritual for poor children. But that’s all I could find. I think this collection of extra-historical things in the show are best read as a contemporary fantasy – one in which a wealthy princess is really a compassionate hero of the people, one who really gets it and would forsake her own comfort for the needs of the poor. She’s an Austrian Princess Diana but even more generous!
She’s so ahead of her times she’s even ahead of ours in her treatment of the poor! She’s a hella compassionate royal!
But of course – the actual Elisabeth was raised as royalty. She was a princess. She would have been fed on the same view of the poor as everyone else in her class. She wouldn’t necessarily have had an especially common touch. If she did, nothing I read about her suggested it.
I think this is a contemporary fantasy as well – that all it takes to change things is one nice rich lady who sees that the poor are people too. And I’m not saying there aren’t nice rich ladies like this – I know some personally, in fact. But they rarely manage to move the needle in the way that shows like this imagine they would. In the end, this show would seem to have very little in common with the actual lives of these people. Instead, they are transformed into a comforting myth, a revised history where someone somewhere once had an enlightened leader, sort of, or would have, if they’d let a woman lead.
We do this all the time. Shakespeare did it in the history plays, turning actual historical figures into heroes and villains – with hints of truth. Hamilton is the myth created by a musical theatre nerd based on a financial writer fan boy’s mythologization of an American founder. It is normal to do this, for our entertainment. I’ve done it myself in writing about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for president. I mythologized her so hard, I gave her an apotheosis.
But I just feel like I’m ready for a much more complicated relationship with historical figures. The way Elisabeth actually was probably isn’t like-able – but it is interesting! It is complex and weird. (While she had her hair combed for two hours a day, she learned to speak Greek! That is some multi-tasking!) I also feel like it’s important to track what story a work is trying to tell through their mythologization of an historical person. I think, perhaps, creating a fantasy of a compassionate, forthright, rebellious, adventurous Empress gives us hope for a world where such women could find leadership now. It is serving a purpose. It’s why the whole enterprise is enjoyable even if it’s hilariously inaccurate. Maybe we’re all just longing to watch our leaders give away their shoes.
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