The marriage was short and unhappy. Elizabeth was of frail health, experiencing epileptic seizures , and died at age Elizabeth was the first born child of Anna and Ferdinand, the couple had been married for five years before giving birth. Elizabeth spent most of her childhood in the Hofburg, Innsbruck. As both of Elizabeth's parents had a love of learning, she and her siblings received a strict and thorough education from the humanist Kaspar Ursinus Velius.
Ferdinand, on one occasion threatened to have anyone who exposed his children to Lutheranism executed after he discovered that a tutor of Elizabeth's had Lutheran sympathies and had joked about cardinals.
Elizabeth and her sisters were also taught to play keyboard instruments [ 4 ] and to dance. Elizabeth was not taught the Polish language despite her early arranged marriage to Sigismund II Augustus. Louis, King of Hungary and Bohemia , died in August without leaving an heir. In February , ten-year-old Sigismund II Augustus was co-crowned vivente rege as King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania his father was still alive and in good health to secure his inheritance in Poland.
Her dowry was , ducats. Sigismund Augustus and Elizabeth were first cousins once removed. The betrothal ceremony took place on 17 July in Innsbruck. In October the same year, Elizabeth and her younger siblings Maximilian, Ferdinand and Anna traveled with their father to Linz before traveling on to Vienna. This so that they could gain some experience in handling themselves in a formal court environment and also prepare for being confirmed in the Catholic faith.
The confirmation took place in October in the royal chapel, with a Venetian envoy acting as Elizabeth's godfather. The cardinal Girolamo Aleandro , who conducted the ceremony, thought the young archdukes and archduchesses resembled "a chorus of angels".
