What an experience this was, diving into the imagined world of an enchanting, elusive, and mercurial empress, one who happens to be beloved the world over. Add to that the company Sisi kept: a dynamic and captivating cast that included the stoic, devoted, and indefatigable emper∨ an idealistic and passionate Hungarian count; a tragic, willful, and drug--addicted crown prince; and a tortured dreamer who reigned from atop his Bavarian cliffs amid otherworldly splendor. And that doesn''t even begin to touch on the cast of supporting characters. I''ve said it so often as a writer of historical fiction: one truly cannot make this stuff up. One need search no further than the pages of history to find the most extraordinary, most inspiring, most delicious and dramatic story material out of which to mold a narrative. With Sisi and her Habsburg world, I felt that that was the case one hundred times over. Writing this book was an incredibly humbling experience, for many reasons, but particularly because these characters and the events unfolding around them felt so very big. This was the stuff of epic: World War I and Strauss waltzes and Disneyesque castles and the golden age of imperial Vienna and an empress who raced horses and grew her legendary hair to the floor---this was a fairy tale meets a Shakespearean tragedy meets a family soap opera meets an international saga.

What cannot be overstated amid all of this drama and grandeur is the impact that these individuals had not only during their own time periods but on the entire course of history. All history books on the Habsburgs should come with the disclaimer "Handle with care." This is heavy, significant, and astonishing material. And it actually happened! Not one of us can truly know what any of these moments must have felt like, for Sisi or for any of the other characters involved. For over a century now, meticulous and expert (and copious) historians have studied these individuals and events and have stitched together a complex and multipronged narrative, culled from the innumerable sources and perspectives made available throughout the years---letters, diaries, eyewitness accounts, newspaper reports, government documents, and more. As a writer of historical fiction, it''s my great good fortune to be the beneficiary of all of this research and work. The blueprint is there; this history and these individuals become the rich and colorful threads with which to weave my story. With the historical facts and figures as the inspiriting wind at my back, I''ve charted one imagined course through this material, offering one fictionalized view of how it might have looked and felt to inhabit these scenes.

How it might have felt to walk through these rooms with Sisi and experience these moments, scenes simultaneously so grand and so poignantly intimate. Sisi was an individual who loomed larger than life. Even during her own time, the beloved and controversial empress inspired mythology and legend. Printers spilled incalculable amounts of ink chronicling her comings and goings, her very real trials and her overblown scandals. Crowds turned out by the thousands merely to catch a glimpse of her. Women aspired to dress and fashion their hair à la Sisi. She is one of the rare titans to pass through this world as a relatable and sympathetic mortal while also landing a place alongside the select few whose fates have been forever immortalized in the pantheon of the brightest, most undefinable immortals. How lucky are we, then, as devotees of historical fiction, to get to spend hundreds of pages with her! I could not have asked for a more fascinating, more intriguing, more beguiling leading lady to look to for inspiration.

As this is a work of historical fiction, and as Sisi was a figure who inspired tales of both fact and fable, there were times when, for the purposes of plot and pacing, I fictionalized historical details, utilizing the creative license that is afforded to us lucky novelists. Each instance was the result of much deliberation. Determining when and how to take the liberty that the fiction label allows is probably the biggest challenge for me as a writer of historical fiction and one that I must negotiate anew with each topic and novel and scene I tackle. That said, I would have been foolish not to rely heavily on the historical facts in building this narrative of Sisi and her incredible life among the Habsburgs. All of the raw material to produce (what I hope is) a most compelling novel is already right there in the history books. Take the character of Crown Prince Rudolf as an example. There, the history constitutes a tragic and true story of a lost soul and a grisly family disaster. Yes, Sisi did in fact intervene when she learned of her young son''s abuse by the sadistic military tutor, Count Leo-pold Gondrecourt.

All of the horrifying methods I mention in the novel---Gondrecourt''s efforts to "strengthen" the crown prince''s "delicate constitution"---were plucked from the history, and so, too, was the wording of Sisi''s ultimatum to Franz Joseph: "Gondrecourt goes, or I go." Franz Joseph and Archduchess Sophie saw Gondrecourt''s measures as necessary and appropriate, but when Sisi learned from palace aides and staffers about the harsh methods being employed and the boy''s resulting health crisis, she intervened and did in fact replace Gondrecourt with Colonel Joseph Latour. The most troubling moments pertaining to Rudolf throughout this novel are true. He did shoot the wildcat from the zoo in cold blood. Rudolf did fire at and narrowly miss his father while the men were out hunting. Details of the crown prince''s opium and alcohol abuse, as well as his notorious philandering, come directly from the historical accounts. So, too, do the details regarding the tension that simmered between father and son, made so much worse by Rudolf printing harsh criticisms of his father in the newspaper. Franz Joseph did have his secret police trail his heir, and he was reported to have erupted at his son at times, apparently overheard by others in the palace as shouting, "You are not worthy to be my successor!" When Rudolf took his own life and the life of his lover Mary Vetsera, he left suicide notes for his mother and sister but not his father.

Also troubling---as well as incredibly frustrating and confounding---was Sisi''s apparent refusal to get involved when it became clear just how disturbed her son truly was. After intervening in the young Rudolf''s early educational crisis, the empress appears to have remained alarmingly aloof on future matters relating to the prince. She also had virtually no intimate relationship with her elder daughter, Gisela. Whether it was the result of a belief in her own ineffectiveness, a lingering wound from her mother--in--law''s initial seizure of the children, her selfishness, her depression, or something else, I cannot know, but I found this aspect of Sisi''s character tragic and frustrating. She saw the unhappiness of Rudolf''s marriage to Stéphanie, and while she had no shortage of criticisms for her son''s bride--some of her statements on that topic in the novel are exact quotes---Sisi never tried to help either of them. She maintained that, unlike her mother--in--law, she would not interfere in their domestic sphere. The heartrending irony of this is that Sisi, more similar to Rudolf than any of the other Habsburgs in her sensitive nature and highly complicated temperament, was perhaps the one person who could have understood, and might have helped, her lost son. Unfortunately, the scene involving Sisi''s callous disregard for Rudolf''s gift of Heine letters on her birthday is plucked directly from the history.

That night, Sisi was so consumed by the news of her beloved Valerie''s engagement to Archduke Franz Salvator that she barely acknowledged her son''s extremely thoughtful gesture. Rudolf did in fact break into tears that night, the last Christmas Eve he would spend on this earth. Marie Larisch''s character is hewn directly from the history. Loyal and longtime attendants Ida Ferenczy and Marie Festetics disliked the young woman and bemoaned her presence in the empress''s household---a mistrust that would prove tragically prescient when it was discovered that Countess Larisch served as the go--between for Rudolf and Mary Vetsera in their ill--fated trip out to Mayerling to enact their suicide pact. Details of that horrid event are drawn directly from the sources. So, too, are the circumstances after the crown prince''s death, such as the initial confusion over what exactly had happened, the efforts by the palace to conceal the news that it had in fact been a suicide, and the proliferation of slanderous reports of Sisi as a deranged mother cradling a pillow and cooing to it as if it were a baby. While Sisi was too bereft to join Valerie and Franz Joseph at the crown prince''s state funeral, she did make a solitary midnight pilgrimage to the Imperial Crypt to visit his tomb, as outlined in this novel. And Franz Joseph did stand by his wife, giving her his staunch support when the press and the court criticized the empress during those dark days of mourning.

Sisi was never the same after Rudolf died; in a life filled with much sorrow, this was the blow from which the empress never fully recovered. The son whose troubles Sisi had so often avoided in life became a ghost who remained with her until her own tragic death. I can''t help but wonder: How might history have been different if Rudolf had been a more functional and effective member of the Habsburg regime? If he had enjoyed harmonious relationships with his parents and grown into his role in the family? He, who advocated for closeness to England rather than Germany and spoke out for enhanced freedoms and modern reforms and a more liberal society---could.