WI: Prince Rudolph of Austria doesn't Commit suicide?

as the title says, what would be the effect it Franz wasn't heir to the thrown?

Would Rudolph still get assassinated?
would a weltkrieger start anyway?

Or what if Franz doesn't save the emporers' life?
then what happens?

this isn't for a tl, i just feel its interesting.
 
At the very least a longer and more stable Austrian Empire. Rudolf was a liberal, or at least had liberal tendencies. So we could see a more stable Austria, I'm not sure what is exact plans were but probably something along the lines of the United States of Austria. As for a war, well the tension between the European powers had been building for decades, I was bound to blow up sometime. The war might be put off longer, especially if Franz Josef had a direct Heir and not a nephew. It could make him less likely to either send the Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Serbia or at least accept that Serbia would not allow Austria's participation in an internal investigation.
 

Deleted member 1487

as the title says, what would be the effect it Franz wasn't heir to the thrown?

Would Rudolph still get assassinated?
would a weltkrieger start anyway?

Or what if Franz doesn't save the emporers' life?
then what happens?

this isn't for a tl, i just feel its interesting.

Rudolph likely had syphilis, which was the reason for his and his mistress's suicide. Butterfly that way and perhaps there would not have been a suicide, otherwise no suicide and syphilis means insanity and worse by the time he inherits the throne.

He was much more liberal than his father, but we are not sure how much and in what ways; I personally think that liberalism would have been highly detrimental to the Empire's stability. Of course Rudolph could have gone after the Hungarians upon his ascent to the throne, which would have significantly delayed the inevitable for the Empire.

The problem is we don't know where he stood on so many issues that would have made an impact on whether he is a target of assassination, plus butterflies would been Empire State Building-sized if Rudolph lives into the 20th century.

So I feel that we are completely in the dark about what his life would mean for the Empire. If someone were to write a TL they would have to make up just about everything, pretty much filling out their own wish list for a Habsburg Emperor.

All I can say is that everything would be different. We could have no World War, an early one, a late one, and everything in between for the Empire itself.

At the very least a longer and more stable Austrian Empire. Rudolf was a liberal, or at least had liberal tendencies. So we could see a more stable Austria, I'm not sure what is exact plans were but probably something along the lines of the United States of Austria. As for a war, well the tension between the European powers had been building for decades, I was bound to blow up sometime. The war might be put off longer, especially if Franz Josef had a direct Heir and not a nephew. It could make him less likely to either send the Austro-Hungarian Ultimatum to Serbia or at least accept that Serbia would not allow Austria's participation in an internal investigation.
Let me be clear: NO ONE IN AUSTRIA TOOK THE UNITED STATES OF AUSTRIA IDEA SERIOUSLY. Franz Ferdinand rejected it when it was presented to him, just as he rejected Trialism by 1907; Rudolph would have rejected it all too, because they would have resulted in the Empire falling apart. They were terrible ideas imagined up by a Romanian professor that no one liked at the time. No one.

Even Rudolph's supposed liberal tendencies were malleable, as he wrote anti-liberal letters under pseudonym to liberal papers in Vienna. So we don't know what 'liberal' and Rudolph actually means. We don't know how belligerent he was when it came to Serbia, because by the time he died Serbia wasn't yet a problem; we don't know where he stood on military matters, so perhaps Conrad doesn't get to be CoS of the A-H army, as he was a Ferdinand pick. We don't know if he was pro- or anti-Slav. Rudolph was a total blank slate.
 
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