The Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1880s was a mosaic of nationalities held together by the Habsburg dynasty, but riven by nationalism, antisemitism, and the rise of pan-German extremism—a political context that directly shaped Rudolph's liberal views, his hatred of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his sense of apocalyptic dread.

6:44mustaches, insanely dapper uniforms, waltzes, um, nationalism, you know, simmering beneath the surface, the the subconscious sexual psychosis. Exactly. We are here for all of it. Now, to remind listeners, particularly people who didn't hear our series about the buildup to the First World War when the Austrohungarian Empire last featured, it's in central Europe. It's this mosaic of languages and ethnicities. Half of it is ruled from Vienna, half of it from

7:11Budapest. Uh there are 13 million German speakers, 10 million Hungarians, 5 million checks. There are Poles, Italians, Sloines, Jews, you name it. And what binds them is their unity to the Hapsburg dynasty. So it's a 13th century dynasty of the Hapsburgs. Rudolph of course is a Hapsburg. In his book that you mention his brilliant book and nervous splendor, Frederick Morton calls them manipulative, industrious, strangely modest, inexraable, decent,

7:37stodgy, staunch, drabness was their secret. Drabness and patience. And the man who embodies this is Rudolph's father and that is Emperor France Joseph I. um a great great favorite of the show. So because basically he lived forever. He's Elizabeth II, isn't he? Of uh 19th century history. >> He completely is. And we'll get because he's the father of the killer. We'll spend a bit of time with him because

8:05he's such an important figure in this story. So at this point, although he died in 1916, but at this point 1888, he is not yet 60. And he was born in 1813 in Shernbran Palace, the Austrian kind of Versailles outside Vienna. And he was really the ultimate Hapsburg. He's if you take the sort of Hapsburg spirit was that decent, stodgy, staunch, drab. He's peak Hapsburg and distilled it in human

8:31form, you have this guy. So he's very, you know, he's very pious, pious Catholic. He's completely committed to the imperial ideal. Um, he grew up as a little boy with a passion for uniforms and parades and toy soldiers and that runs all the way through his life. And in the history books, he generally historians tend to kind of laugh at him because historians don't like people like this. He's a sensitive man, France

8:56Joseph, but he's perhaps because he's sensitive, he's very stubborn and he's a stickler for order. Protocol, right? Everything has to be governed by protocol. People used to joke that when he made love to his wife, he would always be wearing full regimental uniform. I mean, the ladies love a uniform. >> They do. And uniform means a lot to him. There are loads and loads of stories of

9:14him losing his temper when people come to court in the in the um in the wrong uniform. Most famously a story that there was a junior officer, you know, just a young bloke at a kind of ball or at a you know some function had the wrong number of decorative buttons on his sleeve and France Joseph said, "How dare you? How dare you turn up with the

9:34wrong number of buttons?" And various other people explained to the emperor that tailor had stopped making these decorative buttons cuz they were pointless. And France Joseph was absolutely crushed and he said it's quite wrong. It's monstrous >> because this is this is a signal that nothing is stable and all may pass. >> Exactly. So as a just a a thought about our protagonist, Crown Prince Rudolph. So he's growing up with a father who is