Princess Sophie of Bavaria (Sophie Friederike Dorothea Wilhelmine; ; 27 January 1805 â 28 May 1872) was the daughter of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and his second wife, Caroline of Baden. The identical twin sister of Queen Maria Anna of Saxony, Sophie became Archduchess of Austria by marriage to Archduke Franz Karl of Austria. Her eldest son, Franz Joseph, reigned as Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary; her second son, Maximilian, briefly reigned as Emperor of Mexico.
The fourth child of King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria and Princess Caroline of Baden, Princess Sophie Friederike Dorothea Wilhelmine was born on 27 January 1805 in Nymphenburg Palace, Munich. She was said to be her fatherâÂÂs favorite daughter although she was more attached to her mother, whom she loved dearly. Sophie adored her twin sister Maria Anna and was very close to all her sisters.
On 4 November 1824, she married Archduke Franz Karl of Austria. Her paternal half-sister, Caroline Augusta of Bavaria, had married the groom's widowed father, Francis II, in 1816. Sophie and Franz Karl had six children. Emperor Francis II was truly fond of Sophie. Although Sophie had little in common with her husband, she was a caring and devoted wife to Franz Karl who loved and respected her.
Unlike her husband, Sophie was attached to all of her children, especially Franz Joseph, as well as Ferdinand Maximilian, who was her favorite son. She had a reputation for being strong-willed and authoritarian by nature but she was also known as a familiar and sociable person devoted to her family and the Habsburg empire she married into. She enjoyed court life, dance, art, and literature as well as horse riding.
Her ambition to place her eldest son on the Austrian throne was a constant theme in Austrian politics. At the time she was called "the only man at court". During the Revolution of 1848, she persuaded her somewhat feeble-minded husband to give up his rights to the throne in favour of their son Franz Joseph.
After Franz Joseph's accession, Sophie became the power behind the throne. Historically, Sophie is remembered for her extremely adversarial relationship with Franz Joseph's wife Elisabeth "Sisi", who was also her niece. Elisabeth hated Sophie for being demanding and controlling the upbringing of her children, but there is no evidence that the Archduchess had the same feelings, as Elisabeth is usually described quite pleasantly in Sophie's diary and letters. Nonetheless, she had better relationships with her other daughters-in-law and was a caring mother-in-law to Archduchess Maria Annunziata.
Sophie kept a detailed diary most of her life, which reveals much about Austrian court life. She was deeply affected in 1867 by the execution in Mexico of her second son Maximilian. She never recovered from that shock, and withdrew from public life. She died from pneumonia in 1872.
She was also noted for her close relationship with her nephew-by-marriage the Duke of Reichstadt, the former Napoleon II. There were rumors of a sexual affair between them. There was even suspicion that her son Maximilian, born two weeks before Reichstadt's death in 1832, was actually his child. These claims were never verified, but it is certain that they were very good friends and that his death affected her very much. She is said to have turned into the hard, ambitious woman described in fiction after he died.
In her travel narrative Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West contrasts Sophie's alleged stupidity and cruelty with the virtues of her daughter-in-law, Empress Elisabeth of Austria: "She was the kind of woman whom men respect for no other reason than that she is lethal, whom a male committee will appoint to the post of hospital matron. She had none of the womanly virtues. Especially did she lack tenderness. [...] She was always thrusting the blunt muzzle of her stupidity into conclaves of state, treading down intelligent debate as a beast treads down the grass at a gate into mud, undermining the foundations of the Empire by insisting that everybody possible should be opposed and hurt. She was personally responsible for some very ugly persecutions: one of her victims was the peasant philosopher Konrad Deubler. She was also a great slut. She had done nothing to reform the medievalism of the Austrian Palaces. [...] The Archduchess Sophie saw to it that the evil she did should live after her by snatching ElizabethâÂÂs children away from her and allowing her no part in their upbringing. One little girl died in her care, attended by a doctor whom Elizabeth thought old-fashioned and incompetent; and the unhappy character of the Crown Prince Rudolf, restless, undisciplined, tactless, and insatiable, bears witness to her inability to look after their minds."