vienna061 The 15-year old Bavarian princess named Elisabeth -- called Sissi by her family -- became Kaiserin when she married the 23-year old Emperor Franz Joseph. But not having been raised in a formal court setting, she felt extremely constrained and on display in the formal etiquette of the Hapsburg court. She became reclusive, dieted and exercised obsessively to keep her hourglass figure, and spent more and more time in Schönbrunn and away from Vienna. She only made two demands from her husband, both of which she got. First, she championed the national cause of the Hungarians for autonomy and eventually Franz Joseph and she were crowned Emperor and Empress of Hungary in St Matthias Church in 1867. Second, that he allow her to travel. After the suicide of her son Prince Rudolf, she became even more reclusive and spent extended periods away from the palace. On one of these trips to Geneva, on 10 Sept 1898, an Italian anarchist named Luigi Lucccheni, stabbed her in the chest with a file. When the Emperor Franz Joseph heard about the assassination of Sissi all he said was, "You have no idea how much I have loved this woman".