The rules were more relaxed outside of Vienna. Sophie was also denied her husband’s rank, title, and privileges, meaning that in most circumstances she would not be allowed to appear in public with her husband. On June 28, 1900, Franz Ferdinand signed an oath of renunciation denying any children of his marriage with Sophie the right to ascend to the throne. But he exacted a stiff price for his concession. It took five years, and repeated urgings from the pope and European royalty, before Emperor Franz Joseph relented. And his uncle the emperor had no intention of letting him marry Sophie. But with his cousin’s suicide and his own father’s death, Franz Ferdinand went from a mere member of the royal family to the heir apparent. Sophie’s lineage might have mattered less if Franz Ferdinand’s cousin, the son of Emperor Franz Joseph and the first in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne, had not killed himself years earlier. And royal blood was required to marry the heir to the Habsburg throne. She came from an aristocratic Czech family, but she was not royalty. She had some of the former and none of the latter. Franz Ferdinand had married Sophie for love, not money or dynastic connections. June 28 also had special significance for the archduke and his wife, Sophie. Despite the historic defeat, the day symbolized for Serbians inside and out of Serbia their determination to fight off foreign domination. Vitus Day, which marked the day the Ottoman Empire defeated the Serbs in 1389, opening the Balkans to centuries of Ottoman rule. June 28 was a particularly inauspicious day for the archduke’s visit. The move enraged Serbia, which had its own designs on the former Ottoman province. But Ottoman power in the Balkans had rapidly declined in the late nineteenth century, and in 1908 the Austro-Hungarian Empire annexed Bosnia. For centuries, Bosnia had been part of the Ottoman Empire. All triggered by an event that almost didn’t happen.Īrchduke Franz Ferdinand visited Sarajevo despite warnings that anti-Austrian sentiment seethed among Serbs in the city. Directly or indirectly more than fifteen million people would die in the fighting, the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian empires would all be swept from the scene, and the course of the twentieth century would be fundamentally changed.
Archduke franz ferdinand of austria series#
The archduke’s death set off a series of events that culminated in World War I. They are instead the basic facts of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Sarajevo, Bosnia on June 28, 1914. These may sound like plot points in a Hollywood summer action movie. A chance mistake that puts a victim in the crosshairs of an assassin.
Bravery that in retrospect looks like recklessness. Warnings of imminent danger that go unheeded or are never passed along. Security officials indifferent to their responsibilities.
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