She arrived in France at sixteen unable to speak French. Two years later she learned that the man she had married had ordered the massacre of thousands of his own subjects. She asked for her book of hours and prayed for him.

Élisabeth d'Autriche was born on the fifth of July 1554 in Vienna, the daughter of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, and Maria of Spain, and her father's favourite from the beginning. She grew up pale, blonde, quick, and devoutly Catholic inside the Hofburg, taught German, Spanish, Latin, and Italian by tutors who prepared her for a marriage no one had yet arranged. Nobody taught her French.

When a French delegation arrived in 1562 to consider her as a possible bride for the French king, she was eight years old, and the Maréchal de Vieilleville looked at her and told the assembled court, your majesty, this is the Queen of France. She still could not speak the language of the country he had just named her queen of.

Catherine de Medici had wanted Elisabeth's sister Anna for her son, but Philip II of Spain took Anna first, and Elisabeth became the second choice by default. A proxy marriage was held at Speyer Cathedral in October 1570. Charles IX, curious about the girl he had been given, disguised himself as a soldier and travelled to Sedan to watch her incognito before their formal meeting, and came away delighted by what he saw.

The real wedding followed at Mézières, and her coronation took place at Saint-Denis in March 1571, in a cloak of royal ermine studded with gems, under a gold crown set with large pearls. She stood at the center of the French court in that crown, surrounded by nobles speaking a language she could barely follow, and her lady of honour stayed beside her throughout her reign, translating everything that mattered.

On the night of 23 August 1572, the killing began. Catherine de Medici had ordered the massacre of French Protestants across the country, with her son's knowledge, and thousands died in the days that followed. Elisabeth asked whether her husband had known. She was told he had ordered it himself. Her recorded response survives word for word. "Oh my God. What is this. Who are these counselors who gave him such advice. My God, I ask of you to forgive him." She asked for her book of hours. She prayed. Two months later, in the Louvre, she gave birth to her only child, a daughter named Marie Elisabeth, with Elizabeth I of England standing as godmother by proxy. The court had wanted a son.

Charles never recovered from what that night had cost him. His health broke under the weight of it, and tuberculosis finished what the massacre had started. He spent his final weeks coughing blood. He died on 30 May 1574 with Elisabeth beside him. She wept so quietly throughout that he turned to comfort her, calling her ma femme, ma mie. Catherine was already managing the succession before he was cold. His mistress had given him a son. Elisabeth had given him a daughter. He was dead at twenty-three. Elisabeth was widowed at twenty.

She left France in December 1575, leaving her daughter behind in the care of the court that had crowned her. Her father died the following October. Her daughter died in April 1578, aged five, of an infection that took her quickly and without warning. Husband, father, child, gone inside four years. In 1580 she bought land in Vienna and founded a convent of the Order of Saint Clare. Philip II of Spain, her own uncle, offered to marry her. She refused him, and every other offer that followed.

She died on 22 January 1592, aged thirty-seven, and asked to be buried under a plain marble slab inside the convent she had built. Her mother, hearing the news in Spain, said only, "el mejor de nosotros es muerto. - The best of us is dead".

She had been Queen of France for four years. She spent the eighteen after that building a life small enough to belong entirely to her.