Franz Ferdinand marries Maria Christina

Archduchess Isabella of Austria-Teschen wanted the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to marry her eldest daughter, Archduchess Maria Christina.
Or better, she expected him to marry her because of his frequent visits at their estate.
One day Isabella discovered that Franz Ferdinand visited her family so often because he was in love with one of her ladies-in-waiting, Countess Sophie Choteck.

Suppose Franz Ferdinand marries Maria Christina. What happens then?
 
Archie's family didn't like Sophie. He had to agree that none of the children he had with her would be in the line of succession. So there's that.
 
I find it hard to believe that Sophie Chotek was a lower match for FF but one of Isabella (who was the daughter of a Croy and a Ligne) and Friedrich's daughters is fine. The Habsburgs were relatively finicky about equal status, and with the exception of Bavaria, all the girls married German princes of relatively lesser status (Parma doesn't count, since AFAIK morganatic matches don't affect them) who would be only too glad to get a Habsburg archduchess for a wife.
 
I find it hard to believe that Sophie Chotek was a lower match for FF but one of Isabella (who was the daughter of a Croy and a Ligne) and Friedrich's daughters is fine. The Habsburgs were relatively finicky about equal status, and with the exception of Bavaria, all the girls married German princes of relatively lesser status (Parma doesn't count, since AFAIK morganatic matches don't affect them) who would be only too glad to get a Habsburg archduchess for a wife.

The Croy's were Sovereign princes of the HRE, the Chotek's were not.

Isabella didn't have the grandest ancestry but she belonged to a former sovereign family and therefore was perfectly eligible under the strict rules the Habsburgs kept regarding marriage.

Moreoer Isabella's daughters took their title and rank from their father and were recoignised by the Emperor as Archduchesses of Austria, had Franz Ferdinand shown any interest in any of them, the Emperor would have been thrilled, after all Isabella's daughter and namesake married the Emperor's grandson, even if it didnt work out.

Its worth remembering that the Emperor's most senior grandaughter, the Archduchess Elisabeth, only married into a second tier Gotha family, on a par with the Croy's.
 
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Archie's family didn't like Sophie. He had to agree that none of the children he had with her would be in the line of succession. So there's that.

Well he didn't have to "agree." The rules were clear, if he violated them, then they wouldn't have had succession rights simple as that, no agreement about it.

Succession rights were not the only lost thing that Franz Ferdinand's descendants lost, they had no claim to Franz Ferdinand's vast wealth via his Este inheritance, that instead passed to Emperor Karl's son Robert and is currently held by the Belgian Prince Lorenz.

Franz Ferdinand and Sophie's children inherited only a tiny amount of their father's vast wealth.
 
Post 1900

If we were to stretch this topic pass the 1900 boundary, how would the couple live? And, would this butterfly the Archduke's encounter with the Serbian terrorists on 28 June 1914?
 
If we were to stretch this topic pass the 1900 boundary, how would the couple live? And, would this butterfly the Archduke's encounter with the Serbian terrorists on 28 June 1914?

Well Franz Ferdinand's children with Maria Christina would have had succession rights, so that butterflies Archduke Karl becoming Emperor.
 
Suppose Franz Ferdinand and Maria Christina do not encounter the Serbian terrorists on June 28, 1914. In 1916 Franz Ferdinand succeeds to the Austrian throne as Emperor Francis II.
 
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