* Serbia was dominated by the two rival dynasties, Obrenovići and Karađorđevići. King Alexander Obrenović had been hated for his pro-Austrian policy and for divorcing his popular queen to marry Draga, an experienced engineer’s widow twelve years older than him. An officer codenamed Apis founded a secret organization, the Black Hand, that decided to kill the king. Apis was Dragutin Dimitrijević, bald, muscle-bound and bullish (his codename was the Egyptian bull-god), who on 11 June 1903 stormed the palace and, finding Alexander and Draga hiding in a cupboard, shot them and then mutilated their bodies, cutting off her breasts and tossing them out of the windows into a heap of manure. Apis installed the Black George family as kings and would play a special role in the tragedy of the First World War.
* Thanks to the Bosnia deal, the Bulgarian prince Ferdinand declared himself tsar. Chosen in consultation with Russia, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg was mocked in the family for his long proboscis (Willy called him the Nose), effete eccentricity and open bisexuality. When he was chosen as prince in 1887 aged twenty-six, Queen Victoria thought this ‘should be stopped at once’ since he was ‘totally unfit … delicate, eccentric and effeminate’, but ‘Foxy’ Ferdinand turned out to be shrewd. Wilhelm loathed the Nose, almost causing a diplomatic incident by smacking him on the bottom at a family wedding.
* The Dönme were a heretical sect which, fusing Muslim and Jewish rituals, believed that a seventeenth-century messianic Jewish mystic, Sabbatai Zevi, was indeed the messiah. Accepted by neither Jews nor Muslims, the Dönme had become wealthy textile merchants in Thessalonica, where many of the Young Turks – including the future rulers Enver, Talaat and Kemal (Atatürk) – were based.
* Forensic tests on his body were carried out in 2008, revealing 2,000 times the usual amount of arsenic.
* Puyi, that vicious toddler-tyrant, went on terrorizing his eunuchs in the Forbidden City. Permitted to live as emperor within the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, he did not know for some time that he had abdicated. He had been missing maternal affection, but the arrival of an English tutor, Reginald Johnston, who gave him the name Henry, changed his life. The court arranged his marriage to a Manchu princess, Wanrong, which was unhappy but long-lived.
* Zhang restored Puyi as emperor for a matter of weeks then deposed him again. In 1924, Puyi was expelled from Beijing and fled to Japanese protection with the empress. Happiest with a male lover, he treated his wife and mistresses cruelly. Wanrong became an opium addict.
* Greenlighted by the tsar, Greece, Romania and Serbia now attacked Bulgaria; Enver joined in. In this second Balkan war, Bulgaria lost its gains and Enver got back Adrianople (Edirne).
Hohenzollerns, Habsburgs and Hashemites
THAT’S HOW YOU WELCOME YOUR GUESTS: FRANZI AND SOPHIE IN SARAJEVO
As they drove through Sarajevo in an open Gräf & Stift Double Phaeton motor car, a Serbian terrorist, Nedeljko Cˇabrinovic´, a member of a Serbian hit squad (three of them teenagers, always the best age for terrorists) organized by Colonel Apis, threw a bomb at the car; the driver accelerated to the governor’s residence. ‘So
Another terrorist, Gavrilo Princip, nineteen years old, waiting with a pistol on another part of the route, realized the attempt had failed and, giving up, decided to eat in a café. At the governor’s house, Franzi insisted on visiting those wounded by the bomb. Since it was obvious that there might well be further assassins – after all, Tsar Alexander II had been killed in May 1881 when he survived the first bomb and ignored the possibility of a second – the planned route was changed. But when Franzi and Sophie climbed into the Double Phaeton, the dazed driver mistakenly followed the original itinerary. Backing down a side street to turn, the driver stalled, delivering Franzi and Sophie in front of the very café where Princip sat. Jumping up, he crossed the street, drawing his pistol, and fired, hitting Sophie in the stomach, then Franzi in the neck. As the car restarted, lurched backwards and raced to the town hall, a streak of blood ran down Franzi’s cheek.
‘For heaven’s sake! What happened to you?’ Sophie said, then, haemorrhaging internally, fell between his knees.
‘Sophie, don’t die, darling,’ he begged her. ‘Live for our children.’ His hat fell off and he toppled sideways, but was caught by his adjutant Colonel von Harrach.
‘Is Your Imperial Highness suffering very badly?’ asked Harrach, trying to unbutton his collar.
