On 5 March 1855, the 17-year-old Empress of Austria delivered a daughter who was christened the same day, without Elisabeth's knowledge, Sophie Friederike Dorothea Maria Josepha, after Franz Joseph's mother.

[1] On both her mother and her father's side, Sophie descended from King Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria, as her parents were first cousins.

[1] Empress Elisabeth adored Hungary and its people and proposed to her husband that they take a trip to her favourite country, perhaps even tour it.

[citation needed] Sophie's body was brought back to Vienna and buried in the Imperial Crypt, in Ferdinand's Vault within the southwest pier.

One of Elisabeth's ladies-in-waiting, Marie Festetics, commented in her diary that the Empress did not even take the time to attend Gisela's wedding preparations.

[1] For the rest of her remaining days, Elisabeth would wear a bracelet with a likeness of her dead daughter[3] and kept a portrait of her in her apartments.