The Rebel Empresses

In THE REBEL EMPRESSES, beloved historian Nancy Goldstone chronicles the wild rollercoaster ride that was Europe in the nineteenth century through the lives of Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France. It's a story that has everything: passion, romance, scandal, intrigue, tragedy, danger, comedy (and one seriously controlling mother-in-law).

Elisabeth, known as Sisi, was Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary by way of her marriage to Emperor Franz Joseph I - the man considered by many to be the greatest Habsburg ruler. Beautiful and glamorous, Sisi's life was filled with tragedy, including the suicide of her son and the death of her sister in a fire. Yet she was famously spirited and constantly at odds with her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie.

Born to Spanish nobility, Empress Eugénie of France was married to Napoleon III. A fashion icon and patron of the arts, she lived a glamorous life in Paris until the dramatic fall of the empire. For the rest of the life Eugénie lived as an exile in England, eventually becoming close friends with Queen Victoria herself.

THE REBEL EMPRESSES combines the stories of these two larger-than-life women to paint a vivid, insightful and vastly entertaining portrait of this tumultuous period in European history.