Kaiser Franz Joseph I

August 18, 1830 - November 21, 1916

In his lifetime, with the world quickly marching toward a future where the ideas of slavery, serfdom, and empire would end, Franz Joseph I would see a number of radical changes in the Austrian Empire that he would be reluctant to accept. Largely considered a reactionary, his politics would be marked by conservatism and absolutist rule over his subjects. 

Born at the royal palace of Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria on the 18th of August 1830, he became the 7th longest-reigning monarch in European history. The Kaiser would lose much of his family, including multiple brothers, his daughter, Gisela, his son, Crown Prince Rudolf, and his wife, Elisabeth. Devastated by family tragedy and increasingly desperate for a successor to his lineage, he would have to set his hopes on his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, to take the throne. However, this would never come to be as the Archduke was assassinated by Bosnian revolutionaries who viewed him as another future tyrant of the South Slavic people. After the assassination, Franz Joseph gave Serbia an ultimatum that it would be unable to fulfill, setting off a chain reaction of alliances that resulted in World War I. He would die during the war, in the place of his birth, Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria in 1916.