In February 1821, a ten-year-old girl lay dying in the Bavarian royal court. The physicians called it mucous fever, a vague diagnosis that offered no comfort and no cure. Her name was Maximiliane Josepha Karoline, and in the family she was known simply as Nene. On the fourth of that month, she died, and the loss struck her mother Caroline with a force that would not soon fade, for Nene had been her favorite child.

The girl’s grieving sisters had not even reached adulthood. Elizabeth and Amalie were nineteen-year-old twins, Marie and Sophie were sixteen, and the youngest, Ludovika, was only twelve. That summer, when a warm day brought them together, the shadow of Nene’s death still hung over them, though they tried to carry on as sisters always do. The five were so different in temperament that it was hard to believe they shared a mother.

Elizabeth was quiet and inward, happiest with a book in her hands. Sophie, despite her youth, already showed a sharp intelligence and a will of iron. Amalie found her greatest joy in the stillness of family life and in the closeness of her sisters. And Ludovika, the youngest, was drawn constantly to the outdoors, especially to the world of plants, a passion she shared with her father.

Their mother, Queen Caroline, had insisted from the start that her daughters never grow vain because of their royal standing. Ludovika, as the youngest, was granted no special treatment. The family liked to think of itself as a picture of contentment, but the image had already cracked. On Nene’s gravestone, the family would later have inscribed the words: “Loved dearly, mourned by her parents and siblings.

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Within a year, death in another royal house set in motion a marriage that would take one of the sisters far from Bavaria. Prince Johann of Saxony was on an educational tour of Italy when he learned that his elder brother Clemens had died suddenly. Hurrying home to Dresden, he passed through Munich on the thirteenth of March 1822, and there he met Amalie. Johann would later describe that day as one of the most important of his life.

The meeting went well enough that negotiations for a marriage between the Bavarian and Saxon courts began at once. In November 1822, Amalie married Johann in Munich. She was the first of the sisters to leave Bavaria, and the parting nearly broke her. Before she even left, she wrote: “I cannot think of my departure without feeling deep sorrow.

” She missed her family terribly. Elizabeth, too, was preparing to leave. In 1823 she married the Crown Prince of Prussia, Frederick William. This was no cold arrangement of state.

Frederick William had met Elizabeth years earlier and had praised the young princess openly, her lovely face, her clear eyes, her dark hair. Elizabeth, for her part, told her mother that she would find the happiness of her life only at his side. Their marriage would indeed last for a lifetime. Sophie, meanwhile, had plans of a very different sort.

At the Viennese court, she was being considered as a bride for Archduke Franz Karl of Austria. She was unenthusiastic from the start. Franz Karl, for all his good heart, could not match her intellect or her temperament. After their first meeting, Sophie was said to have remarked that he bored her dreadfully.

When the marriage was arranged, she reportedly burst into tears. But she was a woman who understood her position, and she resolved to make the best of it. In November 1824, she married Franz Karl in Vienna. Fifteen-year-old Ludovika traveled to Vienna for the wedding.

There, in the Austrian capital, Ludovika met Miguel, Prince of Portugal, who was living in exile. A deep love quickly grew between them. Ludovika would later say of Miguel: “I was his first true love. ” Her mother Caroline saw how serious the attachment had become.

While they were still in Vienna, Miguel asked for Ludovika’s hand. But her father, King Maximilian I Joseph, refused him as a son-in-law, judging the Portuguese prince politically untrustworthy. The decision was bitter for Ludovika, and she carried the wound for years. Miguel, for his part, never forgot her.

Then, suddenly, his fortunes changed. He became king of Portugal, and he sent an envoy to Bavaria with a letter asking for Ludovika’s hand a second time. The messenger reached Lake Tegernsee on the fourteenth of September 1828. He was too late.

Ludovika had been married to Duke Max in Bavaria for just five days, a man she did not love. Her family kept the news of Miguel’s proposal secret, fearing that the old love might rekindle. Ludovika learned only later that Miguel had never forgotten her. Those years brought another heavy loss to the family.

In 1825, King Maximilian I Joseph died, and Caroline became a widow. Her daughter Marie still lived with her in Bavaria. Then, in 1832, came sad news from Saxony. Friedrich August, the brother of Amalie’s husband Johann, had lost his wife.

Under pressure to remarry, Friedrich August knew exactly whom he wanted. He chose Marie. On the twenty-fourth of April 1833, they married in Dresden. Marie was the last of the sisters to leave Bavaria.

In Saxony, she would live close to her sister Amalie, and the two could share their new lives together. All five sisters were now married, scattered across Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, and Austria, each beginning a family of her own. But not every marriage was harmonious. The relationship between Ludovika and Duke Max remained especially difficult.

They could hardly have been more different. Ludovika was dutiful and devoted to her family; Max adored his freedom, was constantly traveling, and always sought to escape family life. Ludovika’s life as a mother began with devastating loss. In 1833, her infant son Wilhelm died of whooping cough after only a few weeks.

The death of her child crushed her and filled her heart with deep grief. Still, her family continued to grow. Helen, whom Ludovika called Lenze, was born. Then Elizabeth, whom she called Sisi.

Then Karl Theodor, called Gackel. Then Marie, then Mathilde, whom she called Sparrow, then Sophie Charlotte, and finally Maximilian Emanuel, whom she called Mapel. When Sisi was only a few weeks old, Max set off on a long journey. On the twentieth of January 1838, he left Munich and traveled east.

He visited Alexandria and Cairo, then went south along the Nile. His travels later took him to the Holy Land. He was gone for nearly eight months, and did not return to his family until September. The marital problems continued.

Max was unfaithful to his wife again and again, and Ludovika could not accept his betrayals. She suffered deeply and stopped speaking to him. It was an irony she could hardly have missed: her own sister Sophie criticized her for this, advising her to ignore her husband’s behavior. Sophie herself was sharply critical of Max, writing in 1834 that he displayed unbelievable despotic traits.

Sophie, by then, was building her own family. After years of waiting, she had finally given birth to her first son, Franz Joseph, in 1830, the future emperor of Austria. The lives of the twins Elizabeth and Amalie could not have diverged more. Elizabeth enjoyed a happy marriage with Frederick William, who would become king of Prussia, but her wish for a child went unfulfilled.

In 1828 she became pregnant, then miscarried, a loss she felt deeply. She and Frederick William would have no other children. Elizabeth adored children anyway, and when Ludovika’s daughter Elizabeth, their own little Sisi, was born in 1837, Elizabeth Ludovika became her godmother. Amalie’s life took a different course entirely.

Children’s voices echoed through Weesenstein Castle, where she often retreated with her husband Johann of Saxony and their children, living a quiet, happy family life away from the bustle of the Dresden court. Her family grew large: six daughters and three sons, nine children in all. Among them were Albert and George, who would both become kings of Saxony. Then, in 1847, the family was struck a brutal blow.

Amalie’s son Ernst, sixteen years old, fell ill. At first it seemed a minor sickness, a general feeling of being unwell, and soon he appeared to recover. The family traveled to Weesenstein Castle. Ernst looked forward to riding again and spending time in nature, but he had not fully recovered.

Suddenly, his gums began to bleed, and shortly afterward, visible bruises appeared across his body. The doctors were baffled. No one could say exactly what was wrong with him. Finally, the famous physician Carl Gustav Carus was summoned from Dresden to Weesenstein, where he spoke of a condition he called blood-spot disease.

Ernst’s condition continued to worsen. That very morning, he had still been in the castle gardens, enjoying the peace and quiet. A few hours later, the doctors nearly gave up hope, and Ernst lost consciousness. In the early hours of the twelfth of May 1847, he died at Weesenstein Castle.

He was sixteen years old. Amalie was overcome with grief. Johann, too, was profoundly shaken, and later wrote that Ernst’s death was the first hard blow to his happy family life. In Vienna, Sophie was occupied with worries of a different kind.

Her eldest son, Franz Joseph, had become emperor of Austria, but finding him a suitable wife proved difficult. In the summer of 1853, Sophie invited her sister Ludovika and Ludovika’s two eldest daughters, Helen and Elizabeth, to Bad Ischl. Franz Joseph was planning to celebrate his twenty-third birthday there. When Ludovika and her daughters finally arrived in Bad Ischl, all three were dressed in black.

Ludovika was suffering from a severe migraine and wanted only to go to the hotel with the girls. Sophie had other plans. That very evening, Helen and Elizabeth were presented to Franz Joseph, and the meeting changed everything. To everyone’s surprise, Franz Joseph did not choose Helen.

He chose fifteen-year-old Elizabeth, called Sisi. Ludovika regarded the match with mixed feelings. Her daughter was still so young, unprepared for life at the Viennese imperial court. But Franz Joseph was convinced that he wanted to marry Sisi.

The course was set. In Vienna, on the twenty-fourth of April 1854, Elizabeth married Emperor Franz Joseph. Within months, the sixteen-year-old duchess of Bavaria became empress of Austria. Sisi had to leave her beloved homeland, and from then on she lived at the Viennese court under the care of her aunt and mother-in-law, Sophie.

Their relationship would soon face a harsh test. Just a few months after the wedding, Ludovika visited her sister Marie at Possenhofen. Marie had traveled to Bavaria with her husband, Friedrich August. After a few days, Friedrich August continued on his journey to Tyrol, while Marie stayed with Ludovika at Possenhofen.

Neither sister could have anticipated the blow that would come within days. It was the morning of the ninth of August 1854. Friedrich August was traveling in his carriage through the Tyrolean mountains. The road descended steeply, and the track became increasingly narrow.

A sharp right-hand bend loomed ahead. The driver saw the danger and set an additional brake on one of the rear wheels. The carriage crept slowly down the slope, barely moving. Inside sat Friedrich August, holding a map.

Suddenly, the carriage lurched, and the next moment it overturned. Friedrich August suffered severe head injuries and was carried to a nearby inn, but he never regained consciousness. He died later that day. Late that night, the news reached Marie and Ludovika at Possenhofen.

Only days before, they had spent pleasant hours there with Friedrich August. Now Marie was suddenly a widow. In Vienna, Sisi was about to give birth to her first child. In March 1855, she delivered a daughter, named Sophie, a name her mother-in-law had chosen.

Sophie’s influence only grew from that point. She interfered increasingly in the child’s upbringing, convinced that Sisi was too young and too inexperienced. Besides, the young empress was constantly required to perform her official duties and accompany her husband on his travels. Sophie was certain that the children should be raised largely under her own supervision.

But Sisi wanted control over her children. A sharp conflict quickly developed between the young empress and her mother-in-law. The strain wore Sisi down. Eventually, she turned to her mother for help.

In September 1856, Ludovika wrote a letter to her sister, asking Sophie to be understanding of Sisi and trying to mediate between them. Ludovika wrote that her daughter was a jealous mother, but at the same time a devoted wife and mother. Sisi also asked her to assure Sophie that she did not intend to take the children away from her. A year later, in 1857, grief came to Elizabeth, Ludovika’s sister, when her husband Frederick William fell gravely ill.

Several strokes weakened the king of Prussia. Elizabeth stayed by his side and cared for him. In the early hours of the second of January, he died at Sanssouci Palace. From that day on, Elizabeth dressed in black, and she never took off her mourning clothes until her own death.

While Elizabeth mourned in Prussia, Possenhofen had become Ludovika’s favored refuge. She retreated to Lake Starnberg whenever she could. She loved long walks and the quiet of the countryside; even snow and cold did not bother her. But the peace of Possenhofen was repeatedly overshadowed by the sorrows of her family.

Only a few years passed before another tragedy struck her sister Sophie. Sophie’s son Maximilian had left Europe, and in 1864 he became emperor of Mexico. His reign quickly slipped into a deep crisis. In Vienna, Sophie waited for news of her son, but letters from Mexico took weeks to arrive.

Eventually, Maximilian’s empire collapsed, and he was taken prisoner. On the nineteenth of June 1867, he was shot in Querétaro. For Sophie, this may have been the most painful loss of her life. After his death, she gradually withdrew from politics, and the energetic, strong-willed woman slowly lost her strength.

In May 1872, Sophie fell ill after a visit to the Burgtheater in Vienna, and eventually developed severe pneumonia. Sisi accompanied her mother-in-law to her bedside and stayed with her for two days, attending her in her suffering. On the twenty-eighth of May 1872, Sophie died in Vienna at the age of sixty-seven. For Ludovika, this marked the beginning of a period in which she lost one sister after another.

Only one year after Sophie’s death, Elizabeth’s health declined. At that time, she was staying in Dresden with her sister Amalie. On the fourteenth of December 1873, Elizabeth died in Dresden. Four years later, in September 1877, Marie died.

And a few weeks after that, on the eighth of November, Amalie also passed away. Of the sisters who had grown up together in Bavaria, only Ludovika remained. But even she was not spared further tragedy. She outlived her husband, her eldest daughter Helen, and many of her grandchildren.

On the twenty-sixth of January 1892, Ludovika died at the age of eighty-three in the Herzog-Max-Palais in Munich, surrounded by her family. The girls who had grown up together in Bavaria became queens, an archduchess, and the mother of an empress. Their paths led them to some of the most important courts in Europe, and yet they remained connected to one another throughout their lives.