Infamously beautiful, a mother of four, and wife of Emperor Franz Joseph-- whom she unintentionally stole away from her sister-- Sisi's reign was anything but simple. In mid-nineteenth-century Vienna, the halls of the Hofburg Palace buzz not only with imperial waltzes and champagne but with temptations, rivals, and cutthroat intrigue. Through love affairs and loss, dedication and defiance, Sisi struggles against conflicting desires: to keep her family together, or to flee amid the collapse of her suffocating marriage and the gathering tumult of the First World War.