Royalty and World War I

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New York Times, August 2, 1914; Photo Credit – http://collections.yadvashem.org

2014 marked the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I. In 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, set off a chain of events that would quickly lead to what became known as The Great War.  By the time it ended four years later, the Russian, German, Austrian, and Ottoman Empires had crumbled, the royal landscape of Europe had changed forever, and about 10 million military personnel and about 7 million civilians had died.