Zita of Bourbon-Parma, the last Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, was born on 9 May 1892. She was the daughter of Robert I, Duke of Parma, who had lost his duchy during the unification of Italy in 1859. Thereafter, the family lived mainly in Switzerland and Bavaria, where Zita and her siblings were educated in convent schools by nuns. The young princes and princesses were multilingual and connected by blood to the royal houses of Spain, Portugal, France, and Austria. In her youth, Zita had already met her future husband, Charles I of Austria, then a distant heir to the Austrian throne, but it was only a few years later that affection blossomed between them.
It is interesting to wonder whether Zita’s family history may have caused some anxiety among the ministers and senior courtiers in Vienna. From his two marriages, Duke Robert was extraordinarily blessed with children — twenty-four in all — so that the age gap between his eldest and youngest child was a remarkable thirty-five years. Yet six of the twelve children born to his first wife suffered from severe disabilities, while another three died in infancy. If that was not enough to alarm dynastic matchmakers, what could have been?
Fortunately, Duke Robert’s second marriage to Maria Antonia of Portugal proved much happier in that respect. All twelve of the children born from this union — including Princess Zita — reached adulthood and enjoyed long lives.
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