Having himself come to power at the young age of eighteen, Franz Joseph was evidently unable to see things from an heir’s perspective. For this reason the emperor rarely involved his heir in the political decision-making process – a mistake that he had already made with his son Rudolf and was later to repeat with his great-nephew Karl. Franz Ferdinand saw in Franz Joseph an old man desperately clinging on to power, while the emperor believed his successor to be a hothead who for sheer ambition could not wait for him to die.įranz Joseph thought that his successor should remain patiently and submissively in the background until the eleventh hour. The two infuriated each other: encounters between the two frequently degenerated into shouting matches, with Franz Joseph putting an end to the discussion with a categorical “As long as I live, I rule!”. Whereas Franz Joseph was self-controlled and reticent to a fault, Franz Ferdinand had a rather charmless personality and was prone to acting on impulse. The personal dislike between uncle and nephew originated from their differences in character. Possessed of profoundly different personalities, the emperor and his successor had widely diverging views of the office of emperor and the future of the monarchy.
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