WI: Archduke Franz Ferdinand gets lucky

Agreed. If his beloved Sophie was killed, he'd be going to the front to rip apart Serbians personally, if he felt it was the Serbs who'd done it. Say what you will about the Archduke, no contemporary of his even remotely questioned his absolute devoted love for his wife.

I expect that, in this scenario, Franz Ferdinand's eventual recovery will be in no small part thanks to devoted attendance by Sophie; he'll probably be recuperating at one of his properties, most likely Konopischt (sp?) which he always considered to be his favorite home next to Artstetten Castle, where the additional presence of their children will also help his state of mind; he was always happiest in the bosom of his family. Sophie was a woman of quiet but exceptionally strong character, who OTL won the admiration and respect of Franz Josef by her dignified refusal to let the continual slights against her provoke her; I wonder if she might end up becoming the heroine of the incident in Sarajevo by her calm conduct and unstinting nursing of her husband, which in turn would raise her even further in the Emperor's esteem...

Now that makes me wonder if Franz Ferdinand might be more willing to (a) sack Conrad for his incapacities and (b) encourage the peace feelers, should war still end up breaking out.

Very likely. FF and Conrad, who had once been one of the Archduke's premier protégés, had been on the outs for years; IIRC the final breach came when FF chewed out Conrad in public over a social misstep at a German-Austrian officers' party attended by the Kaiser himself. I personally think a lot depends on how much longer Franz Josef lives. OTL there had been a serious scare a few months previous when he came down with a bad case of bronchitis, so serious that Franz Ferdinand had actually been alerted to be ready to come to Vienna. FJ might last as long as he did OTL or longer, or on the other hand the stress of trying to decide between war and peace, or manage the war with the continual bickering between FF and Conrad, might finish him off earlier.
 
It depend on FF himself actually. The one in the Austrian government who was not keen on war was him. Would this terrorist attack change his mind? FF hated Slavs, but considered a Slavic Crown within the Empire inevitable because of how many Slavs there were in the Empire. But he was dceptic towards expanding the Empire, since no need for even more Slavs.

It's not quite accurate to say that FF "hated" Slavs. As noted elsewhere, his darling Sophie was herself a northern Slav, a Bohemian from one of the oldest Bohemian aristocratic families, and thus his children were half-Slav. He was always interested in a rapprochement between Austria-Hungary and Russia, and for a long period earlier on he wanted to restore the "Three Emperors' League" of the late 19th century which bound the German and Austro-Hungarian Kaisers and the Russian Tsar. I think his attitude toward Serbia was more dismissive than anything else; one of his arguments against war with Serbia during the Bosnian annexation crisis was that Serbia had nothing worth capturing except plum trees. He was also not terribly impressed with the appearance of the Serbian Crown Prince when the two encountered one another at Edward VII's funeral, terming the prince (per Brook-Shepherd) as looking like a "bad gypsy"; then again, he also dismissed Theodore Roosevelt as a "cowboy". Franz Ferdinand really, I think, was the sort of person who gets along a lot better with other people as individuals than en masse; he had cutting or sardonic remarks to make about just about every group of people imaginable, including the Austrians themselves. A classic misanthrope, you'd say, and one can't deny that he had considerable reason to be so - the perceived betrayal of most of his own flesh and blood during the great drama over Sophie in 1899-1900 was the last straw there.

I think, as noted elsewhere in this thread, that Franz Ferdinand, while disliking and distrusting people as a mass (as opposed to the small numbers of individuals whom he came to trust and whom he showed a totally different fact to), really only hated two groups of people; Italians and Magyar nobles. One can put down his anti-Italian feelings to bigotry (though, be it stipulated that Italy and Austria have been historical antagonists), but in all truth, as Brook-Shepherd and other authors have noted, FF had good reason to despise the incredibly reactionary, arrogant Hungarian aristocracy, who were so reactionary in fact that they made the Archduke look like - ironically!!! - a bomb-throwing revolutionary by comparison.
 
It's not quite accurate to say that FF "hated" Slavs.

He considered Slavs a "culturally inferior" group of nations who should, and would, submit to and obey their German superiors. Which, to be fair, is not the same thing as hate.

FF had good reason to despise the incredibly reactionary, arrogant Hungarian aristocracy, who were so reactionary in fact that they made the Archduke look like - ironically!!! - a bomb-throwing revolutionary by comparison.

That doesn't seem quite right. Franz Ferdinand did not despise Hungarian aristocrats because they were conservative. He despised them because they insisted on Hungary's autonomy and particularism and thus presented an obstacle to his dream of a centralized, absolutist Habsburg monarchy.

Franz Ferdinand was just as reactionary as the Hungarians, and even more reactionary in many respects. He believed that, in his own words, "the autocratic system of Russia is the best possible form of government". One of the biggest flaws of the Hungarian aristocracy was their restriction of suffrage in Hungary - yet Franz Ferdinand himself was furiously opposed to expansion of voting rights in Austria.

Interestingly enough, Franz Ferdinand attacked his own brother for falling in love with and marrying a commoner woman. The similarities with his own marriage to Sophie did not occur to him because, in his mind, even a minor aristocrat was on some level infinitely above any commoner.

There is much one can criticize the Hungarian political elites for, but they were far from the worst or most reactionary element in the Habsburg monarchy. As often as not, they were its voice of conscience and restraint. For example, it was only the protests of the Hungarian government that prevented the Austro-Hungarian army from massacring thousands of Serb civilians in southern Hungary. The Hungarians were often the first to protest the monarchy's many massacres and repressive measures during the war.
 
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