Status Updates From The Assassination of the Ar...

"Belgrade had friendly relations with Vienna, thanks in large part to the pro-Habsburg policies of its ruling Obrenović dynasty [...]. This changed in the early morning hours of June 11, 1903, when a group of officers led by Captain Dragutin Dimitrijević, stormed the royal palace in Belgrade. King Alexander was deeply unpopular, and his marriage to his mistress Draga Masin [...led] to a swirl of scandalous rumors..."

"On October 6, 1908, when Austria-Hungary annexed the neighboring provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was the culmination of a long and unhappy struggle for European primacy in the Balkans. Things had begun thirty years earlier, when Tsar Alexander II had gone to war with the Ottoman Empire. The Treaty of Berlin [...established the] Kingdom of Serbia but also granted semiautomony to [...] Bosnia and Herzegovina."

"This became known as the 'Pact of Konopischt.' During the meeting, [journalist Henry Wickham Steed] insisted, kaiser and archduke had agreed to carve up much of the European continent into spheres of influence between hem. According to this story, the end of their planned war would see Franz Ferdinand's son Max crowned as king of an independent Poland, and Ernst crowned as king of Hungary, Bohemia, and Serbia."

"Franz Ferdinand's most public political alliance also became the most controversial. He greatly admired Karl Lueger, Vienna's popular mayor, whose calls to nationalism and overt anti-Semitism found favor among many in the city, including a young Adolf Hitler."

"On September 10, an Italian anarchist stabbed the reclusive Empress Elizabeth to death as she strolled the shores of Lake Geneva. 'No one,' Franz Josef cried in anguish, ' will ever know how much I lover her.'"

"Medical exile soon gave way to familial expediency in May 1896. While traveling with his family in Palestine after their visit to Franz Ferdinand in Egypt, Karl Ludwig was apparently overcome by religious ecstasy. Ignoring warnings, he drank polluted water from the River Jordan; by the time he had returned to Vienna, typhoid had set in."

"The tour left Franz Ferdinand convinced of two things. First, Austria [..] needed a stronger navy. Great Britain had conquered much of the globe through their naval power; [..he] thought that a modern fleet would at least help Austria combat any foreign intervention in its remaining coastal provinces. Second, [..] Franz Ferdinand saw in the [U.S.] and its disparate population a model for his own future empire."

"The exiled Duke Franz V of Moderna, archduke of Austria-Este, died without heirs. In his five-hundred page will, the duke left all of his considerable fortune and numerous estates to whichever male Habsburg would couple the Este title to his own and continue the line. [...] To receive the inheritance, Franz Ferdinand had to gain a working knowledge of Italian within a year."

"When he finally won permission to wed his countess, the victory came at a terrible price. Sophie was forever condemned as [...] unequal to her husband. She could never share her husband's titles or his throne; their children would be barred from the imperial succession. She couldn't even be buried next to him, viewed as unfit, even in death, to share eternity with any Habsburg in their crowded Viennese crypt." (xxx)