Austrian archduke, the nephew of Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef
Became heir to the Austrian throne, following the suicide of Prince Rudolf (Franz Joseph’s only son)
He was an excellent candidate for a constitutional monarch: he was intelligent, realistic, well-travelled and much less conservative than his ageing uncle
He could also be stubborn, a quality made apparent by his determination to marry the commoner Sophie Chotek
As heir to the Austrian throne he took an active interest in both foreign affairs and military matters
He was on friendly terms with German ruler Wilhelm II, the two often meeting to discuss military and naval developments
The British press unfairly painted him as a dangerous radical or a puppet of the Kaiser
While on an official visit to the Bosnian capital Sarajevo in June 1914, he and his wife were gunned down in their car by a teenaged Serbian student
