Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was a Habsburg prince and, after 1896, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. His political views did not fit neatly into the empire’s existing structures: he was associated with proposals to alter the balance between its nationalities while remaining a conservative dynastic figure and senior military inspector.

His assassination became the immediate trigger for the July Crisis and the outbreak of World War I. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria also held the offices or ranks of Archduke of Austria. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria belonged to the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and operated within Austria-Hungary. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was born in Graz and died in Sarajevo.

Alan Bardos’s The Assassins builds its plot around Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s visit to Sarajevo in June 1914. A fictional British clerk infiltrates the Young Bosnian conspirators preparing to attack the archduke, placing Franz Ferdinand and Sophie at the centre of the real sequence of failed attempts, wrong turns and improvisations that ends with Gavrilo Princip’s shots and the diplomatic crisis that follows.