Status Updates From The Assassination of the Ar...

"Delivered to the Austrian Embassy in Belgrade shortly before the 6:00 PM deadline on July 25, the Serbian reply was a masterpiece of equivocations. History has usually portrayed it as a near-capitulation, asserting that Serbia agreed to all but two points. In fact, as Fromkin points out, 'historians no longer believe that.'"

"The trio shared remarkably similar backgrounds and ideas. Born Bosnian Serbs, they had all unwillingly become Austrian citizens after the 1908 annexation. All were nineteen; though born Orthodox, none practiced their faith — indeed, Principe was an avowed atheist. They were not members of Dimitrijević's organization but rather identified themselves as part of Mlada Bosna [...] an offshoot of the Black Hand..."

"Potoriek pointedly neglected to mention the significance of this particular date, though he certainly knew what it would mean in the disaffected population in Sarajevo. June 28 was St. Vitus's Day, or Vidovdan, the Serb national holiday marking the 1389 battle of Kosovo, when the Turkish army had reduced Serbia to vassals of the Ottoman Empire."

"....One Croat tried to kill Archduke Leopold Salvator during a spring 1914 visit to Zagreb; another student armed with a revolver was arrested boarding a train to Vienna. His target was Franz Ferdinand, 'the enemy of all South Slavs,' he said, 'and I wished to eliminate this garbage which is hampering our national aspirations."

"Franz Ferdinand had reason to avoid Bosnian crowds. In 1910, a student named Bogdan Žerajić had tried to kill the Austrian governor general of Bosnia and Herzegovina. [...] Two years later, an assassin with ties to the Black Hand in Serbia killed the Croatian secretary of education, and in August 1913 the governor general of Croatia was shot and wounded as he left a church..."

"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)

به پدربزرگ مادری فرانتز فردیناند می‌گفتن لا بُمبا چون تظاهرات رعیت‌ها رو بمبارون کرده بوده. :[

اول کار تو مقدمه: بابابزرگم‌اینا (بچه‌های فرانتز فردیناند) اولین سری آریستوکرات‌هایی بودن که فرستادنشون داخائو و داروندارمونو گرفتن، هنوز که هنوزه نتونستیم حتی خرده‌ریزای یادگار خانوادگی‌مونو پس بگیریم.

بماند که یادگار خانوادگی احتمالاً جواهر و نقاشی و مانند آن بوده، ولی کلاً بخت آدم رو اگه با لجن هم زده باشن، گویا فرق چندانی نداره بچه‌ی وارث تاج‌وتخت باشی یا مثلاً همین ما.

AND I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE IN BAKHT MAKHT.

Wow, their Emperor and aristocracy were disrespectful beyond belief even after they died smh

This was a wonderful read, knowing the couple does not survive made it bitter sweet to read. Their love for one another was so strong. Highly recommend this work by King.

What would have happened had the archduke come to the throne?

The tragic lives of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's children.

The sons of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie spend time in Dachau because they're both anti-Nazi during the rise of Hitler.

The saddened lives of Franz Ferdinand's and Sophie's orphaned children.

Montenuovo keeps trying to interfer with the burial of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie. Shameful.

Controversy over the burial of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie. Jeez will it never end?!

Varied reactions to the assassinations of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie. SMH.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie are assassinated in Sarajevo. But why?

On the fateful day Franz Ferdinand and Sophie arrive in Sarajevo.

Vienna would receive a vague warning about possible danger to the archduke in Bosnia.

Franz Ferndinand has a premonition that he will be murdered in Sarajevo.

Problems with the security for Franz Ferdinand's visit to Sarajevo. Who was really at fault?