Sisi The Empress.

Elizabeth of Bavaria was born on the 24th of December 1837 and died on the 10th of september 1898.

She was the Empress of Austria and the Queen of Hungry. She was married to Franz Joseph I at the age of 17 in 1854.

Her coronation as queen was on the 8th of June 1867.

She bore 3 children, but when the first one died it haunted her and created a permanent rift between her and her husband which only grew stronger as her marriage slowly collapsed.

The Empress 1.72m tall, which was rather tall for that era, her shoe size was a European size 40, however she only weighed 55 kilos which is extremely underweight for a woman of that size. I do believe that due to her 'circumstances' she was anorexic. Most anorexics get so thin that their hormones get unbalanced and their period stops.

Also, in her artifacts a cocaine syringe was found. Which was nothing unusual for that time, but it is also a way to stay thin and still have energy.

She was obsessed with her physical appearance, particularly in maintaining a perfect figure. In the royal apartments she had her own work-out room. For decades she followed draconian hunger diets that bordered on anorexia.

She became famed for her influential fashion sense and her beauty, diet, and exercise regimes.

She wanted to keep her 20-inch (50 cm) waistline, wasting away to near emaciation at times. This was years before such symptoms could be classified as a classic case of Anorexia nervosa.

We can compare Sisi to another well known royal in more recent years Princess Diana of Wales who was Bulimic:

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)

We can say that Diana's eating disorder was due to an unfulfilling marriage.

Some historians consider Diana to be Sisi’s "spiritual descendant" as they are both very similar but in many ways there are many vast differences between them, their individual situations, and the way that their mania for dieting manifested itself.

Sisi, an anorexic, starved herself. Diana, who by all accounts adored to eat, was a bulimic who binged then purged. Sissi’s husband adored her; Diana’s ignored her. Sisi wanted as little to do with her children as possible; Diana was an exceptional hands-on mother.

These two women give us evidence that anorexia has existed for a very long time an can happen to anyone even royalty...

Links to websites :

http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=8580.45

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_of_Bavaria

http://divainternational.ch/spip.php?article97

http://historyhoydens.blogspot.com/2008/09/too-rich-or-too-thin-slim-history-of.html