The Last Habsburgs: A Dynasty Shattered by the First World War

The Habsburg house of cards was an impressive and fragile thing. They ruled in Europe for nearly 500 years, but by the mid-nineteenth century their throne was in danger, not from invasion, but from riotous unrest in the streets of their own empire. Their ancient imperial right to rule was being thrown into question by the very people they were meant to govern; a people who were increasingly unwilling to accept absolute monarchy.

In this fantastical world of kings and queens, dukes, duchesses and emperors, it is easy to forget that those who ruled were still human, and their personal stories were as turbulent and touching as those of the people they governed. There was Emperor Franz Joseph, who came to the throne in 1848 as a result of a palace revolution, and whose long reign was shadowed by personal tragedies; his eventual heir, the ill-fated Franz Ferdinand, whose bloody end sparked a war that would change history; and the woman who died beside him, his wife Sophia, whom history too often ignores. Their union was one of love, not arrangement, and it started a civil war within the Habsburg family itself. Caught between two worlds – one which would not accept their marriage, and the other which would not accept their rule – they remained loving and loyal to one another until their tragic end.

In this fascinating book, Martin Levy explores the imperial world of the final Habsburg rulers and the lives they forged in an increasingly archaic world of arranged marriages and royal alliances, political intrigue and the undisputed rule of the monarchy; a way of life that was soon to be shattered by the firing of two fateful bullets on the streets of Sarajevo.