Born as the seventeenth child of the dispossessed Robert I, Duke of Parma, and Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal, Zita married the then Archduke Charles of Austria in 1911.

After the end of World War I in 1918, the Habsburgs were deposed and the former empire became home to the states of Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, while other parts were annexed to or joined the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Italy, Romania, and a reconstituted independent Poland.

My father thought of himself first and foremost as a Frenchman, and spent a few weeks every year with the elder children at Chambord, his main property on the Loire.

[1]: 2 At the age of ten, Zita was sent to a boarding school at Zanberg in Upper Bavaria, where there was a strict regime of study and religious instruction.

[3]: 15 In the close vicinity of Schwarzau castle was the Villa Wartholz, residence of Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria, Zita's maternal aunt.

He seemed to have made his mind up much more quickly, however, and became even more keen when, in the autumn of 1910, rumours spread about that I had got engaged to a distant Spanish relative, Don Jaime, the Duke of Madrid.

On hearing this, the Archduke came down post haste from his regiment at Brandýs and sought out his grandmother, Archduchess Maria Theresa, who was also my aunt and the natural confidante in such matters.

"[1]: 8 Archduke Charles traveled to Villa Pianore and asked for Zita's hand and, on 13 June 1911, their engagement was announced at the Austrian court.

"[3]: 36 At Franz Joseph's request, Zita and her children left their residence at Schloss Hetzendorf and moved into a suite of rooms at Schönbrunn Palace.

"I remember the dear plump figure of Prince Lobkowitz going up to my husband," Zita later recounted, "and, with tears in his eyes, making the sign of the cross on Charles's forehead.

[3]: 60  Zita had some influence on her husband and would discreetly attend audiences with the Prime Minister or military briefings,[3]: 50  and she had a special interest in social policy.

Energetic and strong-willed, Zita accompanied her husband to the provinces and to the front, as well as occupying herself with charitable works and hospital visits to the war-wounded.

[1]: 21 By the spring of 1917, the War was dragging on towards its fourth year, and Zita's brother Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, a serving officer in the Belgian Army, was a main mover behind a plan for Austria-Hungary to make a separate peace with France.

[3]: 61  Charles agreed, in principle, to the first three points and wrote a letter to Sixtus dated 25 March 1917 which sent "the secret and unofficial message" to the President of France that "I will use all means and all my personal influence".

[3]: 78  Zita managed a personal achievement during this time by stopping the German plans to send airplanes to bomb the home of the King and Queen of Belgium on their name days.

"[3]: 111  On 16 October, the Emperor issued a "People's Manifesto" proposing the empire be restructured on federal lines with each nationality gaining its own state.

[3]: 130 Charles gave his permission for the document to be published, and he, his family and the remnants of his Court departed for the Royal shooting lodge at Eckartsau, close to the borders with Hungary and Slovakia.

"[3]: 137 Several British Army officers were sent to help Charles, most notably Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Lisle Strutt, who was a grandson of Lord Belper and a former student at the University of Innsbruck.

Charles, Zita, their children and their household left Eckartsau on 24 March escorted by a detachment of British soldiers from the Honourable Artillery Company under the command of Strutt.

However, the Swiss authorities, worried about the implication of the Habsburgs living near the Austrian border, compelled them to move to the western part of the country.

[3]: 192 Charles and Zita temporarily resided at Tata Castle, the home of Count Esterházy,[3]: 195  until a suitable permanent exile could be found.

[3]: 200–207  Their children were being looked after at Wartegg Castle in Switzerland by Charles's step-grandmother Maria Theresa, although Zita managed to see them in Zürich when her son Robert needed an operation for appendicitis.

[3]: 233–236  There was even a possibility of a Habsburg restoration under the Austrian Chancellors Engelbert Dollfuss and Kurt Schuschnigg, with Crown Prince Otto visiting Austria numerous times.

This way the daughter of Maria Antónia, Zita of Bourbon-Parma, and her son Otto von Habsburg got their visas because they were descendants of a Portuguese citizen.

The Austrian imperial refugees eventually settled in Quebec, which had the advantage of being French-speaking (the younger children were not yet fluent in English)[3]: 283  and continued their studies in French at Université Laval.

Otto promoted the dynasty's role in a post-war Europe and met regularly with Franklin Roosevelt;[3]: 270–271  Robert was the Habsburg representative in London;[3]: 285  Carl Ludwig and Felix joined the United States Army, serving with several American-raised relatives of the Mauerer line;[3]: 290  Rudolf smuggled himself into Austria in the final days of the war to help organise the resistance.

The bishop of Chur proposed to Zita that she move into a residence that he administered (formerly a castle of the Counts de Salis) at Zizers, Graubünden in Switzerland.

[3]: 322–323  In a series of interviews with the Viennese tabloid newspaper Kronen Zeitung, Zita expressed her belief that the deaths of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his mistress Baroness Mary Vetsera, at Mayerling, in 1889, were not a double suicide but rather murder by French or Austrian agents.

[1]: 38 When the procession of mourners arrived at the gates of the Imperial Crypt, the herald who knocked on the door during the traditional "admission ceremony" introduced her as Zita, Her Majesty the Empress and Queen.

[11] Zita was in the habit of spending several months each year in the diocese of Le Mans at St. Cecilia's Abbey, Solesmes, where three of her sisters were nuns.