The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance that Changed the World by Greg King and Sue Woolmans

 

Summary (from the publisher): Drawing on unpublished letters and rare primary sources, King and Woolmans tell the true story behind the tragic romance and brutal assassination that sparked World War I.

In the summer of 1914, three great empires dominated Europe: Germany, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. Four years later all had vanished in the chaos of World War I. One event precipitated the conflict, and at its heart was a tragic love story. When Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand married for love against the wishes of the emperor, he and his wife Sophie were humiliated and shunned, yet they remained devoted to each other and to their children. The two bullets fired in Sarajevo not only ended their love story but also led to war and a century of conflict.

Set against a backdrop of glittering privilege, The Assassination of the Archduke combines royal history, touching romance, and political murder in a moving portrait of the end of an era. One hundred years after the event, it offers the startling truth behind the Sarajevo assassinations, including Serbian complicity and examines rumors of conspiracy and official negligence. Events in Sarajevo also doomed the couple’s children to lives of loss, exile, and the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, their plight echoing the horrors unleashed by their parents’ deaths. Challenging a century of myth, The Assassination of the Archduke resonates as a very human story of love destroyed by murder, revolution, and war.

Review: I have been on a personal mission this year to read books that I requested on NetGalley years and years ago. This title has been sitting on my NetGalley shelf since 2013. I'm honestly not sure why I never read it because it was surprisingly interesting! 

This book is a joint biography of Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, whose assassination sparked the start of WWI and who are generally considered the first victims of the war. I do think the title of this book is a bit of a misnomer because this is a biography of their whole lives, including their deaths but the title suggests that it is purely an account of his demise. 

My biggest takeaway from this book was to feel sympathy for his wife Sophie. Franz and Sophie married for love and against the express wishes of the emperor who considered Sophie as beneath Franz both in title and otherwise. As a result, they were humiliated and shunned. Sophie was not given equal status and was not welcome at many royal events, and even if she was welcome, was often walked in or seated at a much lower station than her husband. It sounds like navigating the social world under these circumstances was exceedingly hard. However, the two had three children together and remained deeply devoted to one another until the day they died. I do wish the author had given a better explanation of what a morganatic marriage is to help explain the social shunning. 

I also felt deeply sorry for the couple's three children, whose lives were thrown into upheaval after their deaths. They became orphans, were kicked out of their home since they could not inherit as morganatic offspring and had to leave their home country. Later, they were sent to concentration camps, although the book is not super clear on why this occurred. I do wish we had learned more about each of the children, although the final chapter does give an overview on their marriages and families. 

This book was heavily researched and based on letters and firsthand accounts. The authors spoke to great-grandchildren of the couple. However, letters between the pair no longer exist and sadly much of this book still feels distant from them. We learn so much about their private lives and social events, but little about their thoughts or feelings about much of it. 

My one other complaint is that I don't think this book presented a fully account of Franz Ferdinand. It largely brushes over his faults or complaints about him. He largely has a negative reputation, yet the book presents him as devoted husband and father. While that seems to be true, I would have liked a deeper dive into why he was so negatively viewed politically at the time and the deeper rationales for why he was sought out to be murdered. 

I did listen to this on audio, and the narration was pretty good. I typically have a harder time staying focused with non-fiction, but I actually stayed engaged with this. It wasn't too long or too dull or dense and kept me engaged, although the narrator did read out the exceedingly long list of historical characters at the beginning of the book and I was panicking that I would need to remember them all at first. 

Stars: 4