The Reluctant Empress : A Biography of Empress Elisabeth of Austria

by Brigitte Hamann

Archduchess Sophie was still entirely caught up in eighteenth-century thinking. She had no high opinion of individualism, let alone emotion, as an element in court politics—in contrast to her daughter-in-law-to-be. On one occasion, Sophie wrote to Princess Metternich that one should not believe “that individual personalities have any significance.” She had always noticed that one person was replaced by another, without making the slightest difference in the world.18 Now, whether the future Empress was named Helene or Elisabeth made little difference, according to this view. Both came from the same family, were equal in rank, were both Catholic and Sophie’s nieces—and that last was all that mattered in the end.