Sisi gave birth to two daughters. But she was unmoved by the stolid emperor, stifled by the pompous court and harassed by her strident mother-in-law, who commandeered the babies and mocked Sisi as a ‘silly young mother’. When a daughter died of typhus aged two, Sisi sank into depression, refusing to eat. Setting up gyms in her palaces, she exercised, dieted and binged obsessionally.
