From the Irish Times:
How a family lost its way in a changing Europe
BIOGRAPHY: THE HAPSBURGS were the original eurotrash - multinational, multilingual, and debauched. After ruling the Austrian Empire for centuries, their luck began to run out towards the end of the 19th Century, writes Max McGuinness.
Emperor Franz Joseph's brother Maximilian was executed in Mexico after a quixotic naval expedition in 1867; his only son and heir, Rudolf, addled by venereal disease and morphine, was found dead with his mistress and a pistol in 1889; and his wife, the Empress Elisabeth, was bludgeoned by an Italian anarchist in 1898.
The next in line, Archduke Ludwig Victor, was confined after one too many adventures in a Vienna bath house. His pious younger brother, Karl Ludwig, died in 1896 after drinking the contaminated waters of the River Jordan.
His eldest son, Franz Ferdinand, then became crown prince. He was held in such little esteem that the news of his assassination in Sarajevo by a teenage Serbian nationalist called Gavrilo Princip on June 28th, 1914 made a minimal impression in Vienna where the party went on that night. A month later, all of Europe's major powers were at war and before the decade was out, the Empire was dissolved and the remaining Hapsburgs cast into exile.
But Archduke Wilhelm von Hapsburg, the subject of Timothy Snyder's excellent new biography, The Red Prince, had other plans. Dispatched to the Eastern Front as a junior officer in 1915, he found himself fighting in Ukraine, a nation for which he had already developed a fascination in school.
Sounds like a fascinating read. Good reviews at Amazon.
