June 28, 2014 marks the centenary of the fateful assassination of Austrian heir Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, Bosnia. This event, long considered to be the flash point that triggered the horrific violence of World War I, did not actually generate as much initial attention as the events that followed in July 1914. After all, tragic as the event was, it was for some at the time yet another assassination, one that removed a troublesome heir and this removal could potentially reap benefits for the Austrian crown. For others, with their deaths, the hope for a federalization of the Habsburg-Lorraine realms crashed with the report of Gavrilo Princip’s bullets. For most of the past century, historians have focused more on the events surrounding the assassination and on the social and political pressures present on the eve of the assassination than on the actual killing of the Archduke and his wife. In the wake of tens of millions dead, wounded, or displaced, those two initial deaths meant little more than just the beginning of this massive wave of deaths. But what is the story behind their arrival in Sarajevo? Is there something to be gleaned from their lives that would make their deaths worth considering in a context other than the beginning of a deluge of war-caused deaths?

In their 2013 book, The Assassination of the Archduke: Sarajevo 1914 and the Romance That Changed the World, Greg King and Sue Woolmans take a close look at the doomed couple, seeing in their controversial romance and marriage, as well as their deaths and its aftermath, the clash of an old and new Europe, a conflict destined to engulf millions. Theirs was a marriage of unequals, at least in the eyes of the Austrian court. The future heir to the Habsburg-Lorraine possessions, consorting with a minor Bohemian countess? Even though there had been some liberalization of attitudes during the 19th century, the marriage of a royal heir to a member of the lower nobility was considered to be scandalous. The aged Emperor Franz Joseph refused to recognize Countess Sophie as equal to his nephew and despite his and the court’s every attempt to split the couple, the court finally agreed to allow the two to marry, but only through what is known as a morganatic marriage, in which Sophie could not receive the traditional title’s of the royal Archduke’s consort and any children of hers would be barred from the line of succession. The litany of petty snubs and insults is strange to contemplate a century later:

In several chapters, King and Woolmans juxtapose this ill-treatment with the Archduke’s fondness for his wife and young children. The Franz Ferdinand that they depict is a person of contrasts, a stern, aloof figure in public who was a loving husband and father in private. Utilizing several letters that the couple’s descendents lent to them, King and Woolmans make the case for the Archduke being, if not quite a liberal, someone who considered a federal model, based on that of the United States (which the Archduke had toured in the 1890s), as a possible solution for the growing radical nationalist organizations in various parts of the Dual Monarchy. He particularly saw the fissioning of Hungary into Magyar, Ruthenian, and South Slav constituencies as a way of lessening the power of the landed Hungarian nobility. (p. 130, Ch. 10)

Unfortunately, King and Woolmans do not devote much space to exploring the possibilities that these proposed policies could have had on future imperial politics, as this could have illustrated more strongly their thesis that the Archduke could have been a good ruler who might have staved off some of the nationalistic excesses that took place in 1918 and afterward. In addition, the relative lack of opposing sources to contest their portrayal of Franz Ferdinand makes it hard at times to contrast their rosy image of the assassinated heir with contemporary accounts of his demeanor and actions. Their use of the Archduke’s preserved communications with his wife and others is valuable, but at times it appears that they rely too much on them, risking a distorted image of Franz Ferdinand in their attempt to show him and his wife as tragic figures in the conflagration to come.

The events in Sarajevo in June 1914 are perhaps the most arresting of the book. The efforts the authors make in establishing the characters of the Archduke and his wife pay off in how the Archduke’s conflicts with his military staff and his taking advantage of a situation to have his wife travel openly with him in a public, official position led directly to their deaths on June 28, 1914. King and Woolmans also utilize recently-released records to show that there seem to be very strong connections between the Serbian nationalist group the Black Hand, Serbia, and through Serbia to Russia. The conspirators’ origins and planning are laid out in clear, concise fashion, with enough detail to make the reader curious to know more. This paragraph in particular is intriguing:

King and Woolmans’ discussion of the immediate aftermath makes quite clear that the assassination was not necessarily viewed then as a casus belli:

The authors immediately contrast this seeming apathy in Vienna with violent street fights in Sarajevo, as Turks and Croatians carried black-ribboned mourning pictures of the Emperor and began looting the houses of Serbs, treating them all as complicit in the assassination. (p. 190) The investigation into the murders led to the arrests of most of the conspirators. Mounting evidence indicted that the Serbian government in some fashion either knew beforehand of the assassination attempt or they may have actively aided and abetted the conspirators. Although King and Woolmans make a compelling case for this, the paucity of discussion prior to the final few chapters serves more here to create an intruding discussion into the main narrative regarding the warm relationship between the Archduke and his wife. It is not an unwelcome intrusion, but nonetheless, it does feel foreign to the narrative they had established for the previous four-fifths of the book.

The Assassination of the Archduke is one of those historical books that contains a wealth of sources and footnotes, yet is more accessible for the general layperson who might not be familiar with current research. Certainly King and Woolmans do a good job in presenting a different side to the long-reviled Archduke, but there are times that they come across more as advocates for his defense than as historians writing a historical biography. Leaving this aside, this book is valuable not just for its portrayals of the doomed couple, but also for its cogent presentation in the concluding chapters of possible factors that led to the Austrian government using an ultimatum to Serbia, an ultimatum that was not met and one that led to the catastrophe of World War I. It may not be the best-argued and presented book on the Sarajevo assassination, but it certainly is one that adds to our collective understanding of the people who died there a century ago.