For Sissi, this palace was happiness itself – A novel about the history of Gödöllő Royal Palace

Palace for a gift 

Summer of 1866... Sissi, Empress of Austria, is forced to flee with her children to Pest-Buda in Hungary to escape the Prussian armies approaching Vienna. Her husband, Franz Joseph, tries to save the empire on his own, unaware that this time, despite his best efforts, the saviour will not be the army or the diplomatic corps, but the Empress, who disregards court etiquette.  

Sissi spends almost all her free time with a charming Hungarian count, Gyula Andrássy, in Buda, who is feverishly trying to convince the beautiful Empress that the Emperor must come to an agreement with the Hungarians, who were defeated in the 1848/49 War of Independence, or the whole empire will fall apart. 

On a hot August day, Count Andrássy and Sissi – accompanied by the always present lady-in-waiting Ida Ferenczy – visit the Gödöllő castle, where a military hospital is currently operating in the riding stables. Even in its deteriorating state, the castle wins Sissi's favour. The Empress does not yet suspect that, after their solemn coronation, she will receive it as a wedding gift from the Hungarian Parliament, at Andrássy's intercession. 

This is the beginning of Sisi's happiest time. In Gödöllő, she is finally free, close to her beloved Hungarians and far from the intrigues of the Viennese court. And close to Count Andrássy...  

Masters come and go, the staff stays

Mór Bán's historical epic is a chronicle of a hundred years of the royal palace in Gödöllő, which is also an unusual family novel. The heroes of the Palace series are the owners and the staff of the palace. Some of the actual protagonists – the respective lords of the castle – change from age to age: Governor Kossuth, a Belgian bank, Sisi, the beloved Queen of the Hungarians, her husband Franz Joseph, Charles IV, the last Hungarian king, Béla Kun's warlike Red Army soldiers, generals of the occupying Romanian army, Miklós Horthy and his family, officers of the Wehrmacht and later the Soviet army. Kings, dukes, counts, foreign invaders, generals, communists and Nazis - the palace has embodied every turn in Hungarian history for a hundred years. 

But the staff are almost the same, or at least very similar, for a hundred years – fathers give their places to their sons, mothers to their daughters – the maids, butlers, gardeners, and stewards always remain, while the lords of the palace change through the storms of history. The pages of this series tell the realistic and poignant story of the masters and staff of Gödöllő.

The first volume of the Palace series, Palace for a Gift, was published by Hitel Publishing at the end of May 2024, and the second volume, The Only One, will be published next year. The cover of the book, which has around 300 pages, features Tímea Dutka, the castle's guide in costume. A short novel, Red Storm, was published at the same time as the first volume, and was available in a limited edition, bound together with the Palace for a gift.  

The protagonist of the series is not Queen Elizabeth, but a fictional character, Dénes Monostory, a footman who later becomes butler and then butler-in-chief, is born in 1848 and lives for about a hundred years. He has seen and experienced many things. His life, his loves and his struggles, spanning a century, are brought to life on the pages of the book. 
"As a baby, he sees Kossuth, Görgey, Windisch-Grätze, the invading Austrian and Tsarist Russian troops in his mother's arms. As a young man, he joins the staff of the palace when, at the time of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, the Hungarian nation presents the Gödöllő palace as a coronation gift to Franz Joseph and Sissi. He then lived through the happy times of peace and then the First World War. Charles IV, then Béla Kun's Red Army soldiers, then the generals of the invading Romanian army, and then another long period of peace, when the castle becomes the summer residence of the Horthy family. Then came the Second World War, and German and then Soviet troops settled in the castle. The staff stayed the same all along. (...)  

The Palace depicts Hungarian history on a small scale – Gödöllő, like a revolving stage, displays everything and everyone.  

(...) Only in the meantime, history raced over their heads with the speed of an express train" – says writer Mór Bán in the book's background material.  

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"Are you happy here, Your Majesty?" 

After studying the sources, the author came to the conclusion that Queen Elizabeth always represented the interests of the Hungarians in Vienna with stubbornness and determination, in defiance of her environment. She fully identified herself with the goals of the defeated freedom struggle, so it was no coincidence that the Hungarians were grateful to her for the rest of her life and even long afterwards. 

The first volume of the series, Palace for a Gift, also highlights Sissi's relationship with Count Andrássy. Was it love? Or "just" infatuation? If love, could it have been fulfilled? But anyone who expects the book to reveal this clearly will be disappointed.  

Excerpt from the novel:  
– Are you happy here, Your Majesty?  – The Count asked.  
Sissi looked at him.  
– You know I am. This palace embodies everything I've ever wanted.  
– Everything?  
– I can be free here. Here I can be myself. I love this place, I love the air, I love the silence, I love this building, I love my room... Thank you, Count. I know I owe it all to you.

People have many different images of Sissi, from the 1955 Austro-German film Sissi and its leading actress, the glamorous Romy Schneider, to the Netflix series The Empress, released in 2022, to the myth-busting Corsage by Austrian director Marie Kreutzer.  

"Is it possible to portray this era and the character of Queen Elizabeth in a new way without repeating familiar phrases or – sufficiently departing from clichés – without making Sisi fans shake their heads in disbelief?" – Mór Bán asked at the book launch. Meanwhile, Tamás Ujvári, director of the Royal Palace of Gödöllő, stressed that there has not been many novels, films, musicals, plays or any other light-hearted style of adaptation in which the royal palace of Gödöllő and the Hungarian aspect through it is prominently featured.
„A gödöllői kastély közel háromszáz esztendős történetében szinte végig »csúcsidőszakot« élt meg. Színes, feledhetetlen történetek zajlanak ezen háromszáz év alatt az épületben, történelmi karakterek sokasága bukkan fel itt, néha csak néhány napra, néha évtizedekre” – fogalmazott az igazgató.  

The place has become the main stage not only of Hungarian but also of European and sometimes even world history.  

For example, Antal Grassalkovich, the builder of the palace, is an important historical figure, yet people know almost nothing about him. 

A new Downton Abbey?

"Back in the day, the English comedy series "You rang, M'Lord?" was a big hit in Hungary, starring, as we all know, a London aristocratic family and their staff. The dynamics of the series were primarily the relationships, conflicts, and dialogues between characters of different ranks and status. This line was continued by the also highly successful Downton Abbey, which also included historical events in its plot – but the story itself was basically based on fiction", recalled Gábor Csaba Kárpáti, Managing Director of Hitel Publishing.  

Mór Bán is a fan of Downton Abbey himself, and ten years ago he told a friend how much he loved the British series. This friend told him he had recently read an article about the palace in Gödöllő. It was then that the idea and the main setting for the Palace book series was born. A century of our history can be traced in broad outline - and with some poetic exaggeration - through the history of the palace. According to the publisher, it would even be worth turning it into a television series, like Hunyadi.