Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg

Duchess of Hohenberg, and the wife of the heir to Austria-Hungary.

She was born Sophie Maria Josephine Albina Chotek von Chotkow und Wognin at Stuttgart on the first of March 1868, one of eight children of a Bohemian count in the Austrian diplomatic service. The family was noble and poor. She was a lady-in-waiting when she met Franz Ferdinand, and the court assumed for two years that he was calling on the archduchess she served.

Her rank was not high enough. The Habsburg house law required a bride from a reigning or formerly reigning dynasty, and the Choteks were neither. He refused to give her up and refused to marry anybody else, and the Emperor gave way in 1900 on terms: a morganatic marriage, no imperial rank, no inheritance for the children. Franz Ferdinand swore to it in front of the court.

So at every state occasion for fourteen years she walked last, behind every archduchess in the empire, and could not sit with her husband. He minded it far more than she did. He made her Duchess of Hohenberg in 1909, which improved matters slightly and not much.

She went to Sarajevo with him because on a military inspection, outside Vienna and its protocol, she was allowed to ride beside him. It was also their fourteenth wedding anniversary that week.

After the first attempt that morning she insisted on staying with him. She was shot in the abdomen in the car and died before he did. She was forty-six.

In death the protocol held: her coffin was set lower than his, and bore a pair of gloves and a fan.

Their children Sophie, Maximilian and Ernst.