He humorlessly insisted that the guards on duty at the Imperial Palace present arms every time a carriage bearing a baby Archduke with a nursemaid entered or left the grounds. He tried to forbid Francis Ferdinand’s morganatic marriage as he had forbidden Rudolph’s divorce, and when the marriage eventually did take place, he permitted his courtiers to snub and humiliate the wife of the heir to the throne, even after he had reluctantly conferred the title of Duchess of Hohenberg on her. For a Habsburg to marry a commoner was a sin against the dynasty in the old Emperor’s eyes, and the wages of
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