Trivia

Sissi was sick with tuberculosis. She insisted on being send to Madera to recover. After noticing some improvements in her condition she was send back to Vienna where she became a lot worst and then was send to Corfu to recover. She would only come back two years later.

When Sissi got very sick, Helene, then pregnant with her second child, followed Sissi to Madera to stay by her side. The two sisters were very close. This was never shown in the movie.

Director Ernst Marischka was originally going to make a fourth installation to the trilogy, but actress Romy Schneider refused to play the title character any longer.

The line that Greek flower girl is telling to Oberst Böckl when he is trying to flirt with her is "Den katalavaíno", which is Greek for "I don't understand".

There are no exact attendance records for the screening of the Sissi trilogy in movie theaters, since those were not officially kept at the time, but it is estimated that between 20 and 25 million tickets were sold. It is one of the most successful German-language movies and it made both Empress Elisabeth of Austria and actress Romy Schneider famous worldwide. Decades after its original release, the trilogy still is a popular Christmas television special, and is shown on channels in German-speaking countries, Hungary, and Italy. The Sissi trilogy was the most successful biopic about Empress Elisabeth until the 2022 Netflix series The Empress (2022), which was watched by over 20 million homes worldwide within 2 weeks of its release and was streamed for over 160 million hours in 2022.