The Austro-Hungarian monarchy came to an end in 1918 when it was abolished. While the empire did not ban the succession of women, this would only happen if there were no male dynasts left. Thus, the empresses mentioned are consorts and not reigning empresses. Any titles following the end of the monarch are titular. So who would be the current (titular) Empress of Austria?
The last Emperor of Austria was Emperor Charles I. He had succeeded his great-uncle, Emperor Franz Joseph I, upon his death in 1916. Emperor Charles reigned for just two years before the end of the monarchy. He had married Zita of Bourbon-Parma, who was thus the last Empress of Austria. Charles died not long after the end of the monarchy. He died on 1 April 1922 at the age of 34, leaving behind a pregnant widow with seven young children. From 1918 until her husband’s death, Zita was the first titular Empress of Austria.
The titular title of Emperor of Austria passed to Charles and Zita’s eldest son, Otto, who had been Crown Prince of Austria from 1916 to 1918. At the time, he was still quite young. In 1951, he married Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen, a Princess from another abolished monarchy. This made Regina the second titular Empress of Austria.
Otto and Regina went on to have seven children together: five daughters and two sons. Meanwhile, Otto was the titular Emperor of Austria for almost 85 years, which would have made him the longest reigning monarch in history, if the empire had still existed. He resigned as Head of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine in 2007 and died on 4 July 2011 at the age of 98.
The headship of the house thus passed to his eldest son, Karl, in 2007. He had married Francesca von Thyssen-Bornemisza in 1993 and they had two daughters and a son before divorcing in 2017. This means that Francesca was the third titular Empress of Austria from 2007 until 2017. Karl remarried in 2022 to Christian Nicolau de Almeida Reid, which makes her the fourth and so far last titular Empress of Austria.
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