So the Serbians should have offered George as a reciprocal “guest” to Austria.

Eugene

Imagine the mess Britain could’ve avoided if, instead of declaring war, they’d taken one of their princelings out (say, perhaps, the one with the most fascistic leanings) and executed him. The UK could’ve saved itself the embarrassment of the Wallis Simpson affair, the embarrassment (not to mention the bloodshed) of WWI, and probably even Dunkirk.

The Russians could’ve saved themselves from that disaffected lawyer, and Turkey would’ve still been run by Old Turks and not Young ones.

Instead, European royalty wiped itself out, digging itself up by the roots, where a modest pruning might’ve allowed that inbred family tree to keep growing.

The Emperor Franz Josef couldn’t stand his nephew. The archduke was crass, humorless and irritable; there was no Viennese charm about him. In fact, Franz Ferdinand hated Vienna: too intellectual, too artistic and–or is this redundant–too Jewish. The elderly Emperor may have kept living just to keep his repulsive nephew from the throne.

And if Franz Ferdinand had been killed anywhere but Bosnia-Herzegovina, the old Emperor might have chuckled and shrugged. The Hapsburgs were inured to violent deaths. His brother Maximilian had been executed in Mexico. His wife Elizabeth had been assassinated in Switzerland. Yet Austria had not declared on Mexico or Switzerland, and Franz Josef actually liked his wife.

Unfortunately, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand could not be rationalized or ignored. Bosnia-Herzegovina was Austrian territory (whether or not Bosnians liked it) and it really was a breach of etiquette for the Serbian secret service to be encouraging the murder of Hapsburgs there.

So Austria-Hungary had to declare war on Serbia, so Russia had to declare war on Austria, so Germany had to declare war on Russia, and France was only too eager to declare war on Germany, so Germany had to declare war on Belgium (poor Belgium was in the way), so Britain had to declare war on Germany. Turkey hated Russia and didn’t want to feel left out.

On the positive side, the next-in-line to the Hapsburg throne was the Archduke Karl, and the Emperor liked him.