A yeti makes a pact with the devil to kidnap the most beautiful girl in the world. This turns out to be the Princess Lissi, who is clearly the Austrian Princess and later Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and much of the film is taken up with subplots related to the court and to the romantic relationship between Elisabeth and her husband. The wild emperor of the title is thus Franz Joseph I of Austria, though it is also a play on the Wilder Kaiser, a ridge in the Austrian Kaiser Mountains.