The Empress (A)

The castle is Schloss Weissenstein located in Pommersfelden, a small town about 45 km northwest of Nuremberg.

The actor playing Franz Joseph is taller than the actress playing Elisabeth. In reality it was the opposite: Elisabeth was 172 centimetres tall (5'7), while Franz Joseph was only 168 centimetres (5'5).

Some historical differences shown in season one are: Elisabeth (Sisi) had brown eyesElisabeth and Franz Joseph's first meeting at Bad Ischl wasn't outdoors, but during tea with more family members present than shown.The show indicates that Sisi and Franz mutually fell in love. In reality, Franz was more in love with Sisi than she was with him. Sisi was equally shocked at Franz's proposal.Franz didn't propose publicly, but had Archduchess Sophie request Ludovika's permission.Franz Joseph second younger brother, Karl Ludwig, was in love with Elisabeth, not Maximilian as shown. During childhood, Karl Ludwig and Elisabeth exchanged letters and gifts.While Sophie was reluctant over Franz and Elisabeth's marriage and was strict over Elisabeth's behavior at court, there is no evidence to support she actually hated Sisi. In reality, Sophie's letters and diaries positively describe her daughter in law.There is no evidence to support that Maximilian tried to overthrow Franz Joseph as Emperor.

This is one of five Austrian-German productions about Empress Elisabeth of Austria to be released between 2021-2023. The others were Sisi (2021), The Empress (2022), Corsage (2022), and Sisi & I (2023). 'The Empress', 'Sisi & I', and 'Corsage' were all filmed in the same year, 2021. Films, series and documentaries about Elisabeth of Austria are produced and released nearly every year by Austria and Germany since 1921, the first was Kaiserin Elisabeth von Österreich (1921).

'The Empress' was a huge hit on Netflix, becoming the most successful German original since 2020's war drama 'Barbarians'. It was in the first place in the weekly charts in the first week of its original release, with 47.2 million hours watched in four days (September 29 to October 2, 2022). The series was on Netflix's top 10 in almost 90 countries, occupying the top slot as Netflix's most-watched non-English language series for over a week. It was streamed for 59.4 million hours between October 3 and October 9, 2022. In total, this is almost 107 million hours. Within 11 days, the series was already running in approximately 18.7 million homes and was the second most-watched series (behind 'Dahmer: Monster') in the USA, Canada, Australia, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands, Brazil, Norway, Greece, Hungary, Israel and Ukraine. Within 18 days, it was streamed for nearly 135 million hours in around 23.6 million homes worldwide. It was the seventh most popular non-English series of 2022, with 5 weeks in the global top 10 and 159,800,000 million hours watched between September 25 to October 30, 2022. Therefore, 'The Empress' became the most successful biopic about Empress Elisabeth of Austria since the "Sissi" trilogy from the 1950s starring Romy Schneider in the title role, which was seen by more than 20 million cinema-goers when it was first released in Germany and made the Empress famous worldwide.