The French History Podcast · Evergreen Podcasts

Rival Empresses: Eugénie and Elisabeth with Nancy Goldstone

·39 min·2 clips

Nancy Goldstone says she writes about the women in European history “nobody has ever heard of.”

1. The French History Podcast episode centers on Nancy Goldstone’s book, The Rebel Empresses, Elizabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe. 2. Host and historian Nancy Goldstone is the guest, and her book list includes The Rival Queens, Four Queens, The Maid and the Queen, and The Secret History of Joan of Arc. 3. The episode asks why Elizabeth of Austria, called Sisi, and Eugénie of France mattered to 19th-century Europe. 4. Goldstone says she started by reading a medieval chronicle and finding the four daughters of the Count of Provence, who became queens of France, England, Germany, and Sicily. 5. She says that search led her to Joanna I of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily, and then to other women in each later century. 6. Goldstone argues that those women were “completely necessary to understanding what was going on” in their periods. 7. She says Napoleon affected “everyone who lived in Europe during this century,” and she links that to Sisi’s Bavarian background. 8. Goldstone describes Bavaria as a kingdom with an elected assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion after Napoleon’s influence. 9. She contrasts that with the Habsburg family in Austria, which she describes as military, autocratic, and conservative. 10. She explains that Eugénie was born in Spain in 1826 and that Napoleon’s rule there shaped her father’s politics and her admiration for Napoleon III. 11. Goldstone says Sisi was only 15 when Franz Joseph chose her instead of her older sister Helene, who was 19. 12. She says Eugénie was only older than her sister by a year and a half, but her mother pushed her toward a different marriage than the one she first wanted. 13. Goldstone contrasts Sisi’s early powerlessness at the Austrian court with Eugénie’s quicker rise inside the French Second Empire. 14. She says Sisi spent her first 10 years as an empress “in name only,” while Eugenie helped shape Paris, fashion, and the world’s fairs. 15. Goldstone describes Archduchess Sophia as the key opponent in Austria, and she calls her “a barracuda” who helped install Franz Joseph and martial law. 16. She says Sisi eventually helped arrange the Austria-Hungary compromise, which she presents as a rare nonviolent power-sharing solution in the century. 17. Goldstone describes the episode’s tone as conversational and comparative, with long answers that move between biography, politics, and court life. 18. She also uses vivid character labels such as “Johnny Appleseed, only with constitutions” and “the Spanish woman” to frame political memory. 19. Listeners interested in 19th-century Europe, royal women, and Austria-Hungary will likely want this episode. 20. Listeners looking for a fast, purely chronological royal biography may skip it.

As heard by us

Glamour, court life, and power in a brisk look at two empresses.

An interview with Nancy Goldstone gives The French History Podcast a clear, brisk look at The Rebel Empresses, with Elizabeth of Austria and Eugenie of France at the center.

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Why you'd press play

If you want court politics, fashion, and state power braided together in 19th-century Europe, start here.

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