The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

From the Habsburg viewpoint she might as well have been a chambermaid. “Love makes people lose all sense of dignity,” Francis Joseph exclaimed when he heard the news. The old Emperor had never quite forgiven his heir for this misalliance; it had taken a whole year of stubborn negotiations to win his consent to the marriage. But even Francis Joseph could not have softened the iron writ of Habsburg House Law, the supreme code of the dynasty. At a solemn assembly of the Court and the Privy Council in the ancient Hofburg Palace in Vienna, Francis Ferdinand had been obliged to renounce all rights of rank and succession for his children before taking Sophie as his morganatic wife. He had never forgotten the humiliation.

Archduke ferdinands wife. Married for love not for a treaty