Empty Theatre (5*)

History is rarely a romp but Jac Jemc turns the lives of Elisabeth, the Austrian Empress, and Ludwig, the Mad King of Bavaria into just that with wit, insight and humor in a fictionalized narrative that gallops from beginning to end.  I've never been much of a royalist, but then again I've always looked at kings and queens as being born with silver spoons in their mouths (and seeing Sissi's collection at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna only strengthened that notion) rather than self-suppressing obligations.

Franz Josef, the Emperor, plucks Sissi, a wild teenage equestrienne from relative obscurity.  As his new, bewildered bride, she enters Vienna in a coach whose panels have been painted by Peter Paul Rubens.  While her beauty induces raptures in an adoring public, her mother-in-law--who learns of her pregnancy before Sissi does because the court doctor reports to her--snatches Sissi's infant daughter to ensure that she is raised properly.  Franz also infects her with syphilis, but finally giving birth to a boy leaves her feeling more nonplussed than maternal.

. . . . At twenty-one, Sisi has now completed her primary function in life:  she has produced an heir.  

Sisi’s hand searches for her deflated abdomen.  She is essentially a door, a portal to be passed through, an entryway for the next generation.

Sissi turns to Ludwig, her cousin younger by a decade for companionship.  He's had his own share of royal problems and privileges.  When he grows too attached to a pet turtle, his mother turns it into soup without telling him what's for dinner to toughen him up.  Ludwig, exercising his royal prerogative, decrees that all servants admitted to his chambers be attractive and spends hours alone staring at the portraits of Bavarian queens who preceded him.  You get the picture.

Ludwig asks Sissi why she never smiles.  The Empress opens her mouth to reveal a jumble of crooked teeth.  Where is Ken Russell when you need him?  But Sissi is luckier than Ludwig in one major respect:  she can wield influence with her husband to separate Hungary from Austria.

Sissi writes to Ludwig about the handsome revolutionary who has further convinced her of his cause.  She tries on Ludwig’s style of flowery description, hoping he appreciates the artfulness of her response and will not read too much desire into it.  Her cousin, she has come to understand, values the concept of chaste, aesthetic devotion.  Passion need not play a part.

Ludwig, who worships Richard Wagner, couldn't care less about politics and Catholicism inhibits his carnality.

When the prime minister, Pfordten, arrives to inform Ludwig that Prussia has declared war on Austria, he interrupts Ludwig & Paul von Thurn und Taxis dressed as Barbarossa and Lohengrin, reciting poetry to one another, Paul in canary-yellow tights and Ludwig in apricot.

“This is what’s more important than the fact that your countrymen are giving their lives?”

Ludwig points to the door.  “If we’re at war, I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to do about it.”  He is telling the truth.

It's hard not to sympathize with these semi-ridiculous figures who just want to be left alone to do their own things.  It's even easier to giggle at Jemc's hot take and keep turning the pages.