![]() Sophie concentrated her energies on her firstborn son Franz Joseph. Sophie also bore a daughter named Maria Anna (1835–1840) who suffered from debilitating epileptic seizures and died in childhood, and a still-born son (1840).įranz Karl soon disappeared into the background behind his intelligent and politically ambitious wife. Another five children were to follow.īesides the well-known figures of Emperor Franz Joseph (1830–1916) and Ferdinand Maximilian (1832–1867), the ill-fated emperor of Mexico, the marriage also produced Karl Ludwig (1833–1896), father of the later heir apparent Franz Ferdinand and grandfather of the last emperor Karl I, together with Archduke Ludwig Viktor (1842–1919), who never married and whose homosexual proclivities and eccentric lifestyle generated much gossip. After six years of marriage – allegedly due to the curative properties of the spa waters at Bad Ischl – a healthy son was born and baptized Franz Joseph. At first it seemed as if this marriage would also remain childless, as a series of pregnancies ended in miscarriages. Extremely ambitious, Sophie was at first unhappy with her mentally rather unprepossessing husband. The choice eventually fell on the Bavarian princess Sophie. It was thus all the more important to find him an energetic wife to stand by his side. Descriptions of the young archduke read: ‘weak in body and mind’, or ‘sweet-tempered verging on feeble-mindedness’. Apart from this, the archduke was regarded as not very able, rather odd yet at the same time rather dull. ![]() However, even Franz Karl was not very much better off: his biographers attest that his most outstanding trait was deep religious piety. Since it was unlikely that children would be born from Ferdinand’s marriage, responsibility for continuing the dynasty lay with Franz Karl, the next-born son. The most obvious manifestation of this was the worrying condition of their first-born child Ferdinand, who was destined to follow his father on the throne. The union between two such closely related individuals had evidently negative effects on the mental and physical health of their offspring. Both parents were paternal and maternal first cousins, which even by Habsburg standards was a case of extreme inbreeding. His parents were very closely related, his mother being the daughter of Franz’s aunt, Archduchess Maria Karoline, and thus a first cousin of her husband. Born in Vienna on 7 December 1802, Franz Karl was the third son of Emperor Franz II (I) and his second wife, Maria Teresia of Naples and Sicily.
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