Empress Zita of Bourbon-Parma, wife of Charles I of Austria, passed away on 14 March 1989. Their reign, lasting ten days less than two years between 1916 and 1918, made them the shortest-reigning Imperial couple in the history of the dynasty.
The newly proclaimed Republic of Austria legally banned the Habsburgs from entering the country, and the deposed Imperial couple first went into exile in Switzerland, then on Madeira, where Charles died at the age of thirty-four in 1922. Widowed Zita wore black in memory of her husband for the rest of her life and dedicated herself to the upbringing and education of their eight children.
Due to strained finances and political complications, this proved a challenging task, as revealed by the family’s extended geography of exile: from Madeira they moved to Spain, then to Belgium; during the Second World War, they continued on to the United States and Canada. It was not until the 1950s that Zita was able to return to Europe to live closer to her relatives, and only in 1982, after Austria relaxed the law, was she allowed to visit her former realm.
The former Empress died at the age of ninety-six, having survived her husband by sixty-seven years. By that time she had thirty-three grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren. She was buried in the Imperial Crypt, the traditional resting place of the Habsburgs since the seventeenth century.
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