Francis Joseph II of Austria

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Revision as of 00:28, 17 April 2008

Francis Joseph II (German: Franz Josef Karl Philipp Leopold Maria, English: Francis Joseph Charles Philip Leopold Maria) (born April 30, 1978), is the current reigning Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary and Bohemia, and of a number of other formerly sovereign entities within Europe. He assumed the throne upon the death of his grandfather in the fall of 1989, but did not take up personal control of the government until his 18th birthday in 1996.

Early life

Francis Joseph was born on April 30, 1978, in the Schonnbrunn Palace at Vienna. His father Francis was the eldest son and heir of the Emperor Charles II, and his mother Marie-Christine was born a Princess of Belgium , the daughter of Duke Leopold Frederick of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and his second, morganatic wife Lilian Baels. Through his father, he is descended from the Habsburg line of Holy Roman and Austrian Emperors, and through his mother he is related to many of the ruling or formerly ruling families of Europe, including the houses of Saxony, Romania, and Bavaria. The young prince was educated in a classical setting at the palace, for his parents wanted him to become, as his mother confided to Franz's tutor Dr. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, "a philosopher prince for our time". His otherwise rather quiet and uneventful childhood, however, was disrupted by two tragedies that affected the whole of the Habsburg empire. His father was assassinated in 1985 during a tour of a factory in Timisoara by left-wing extremists, and thus placed the young Archduke as first-in-line to the throne after his grandfather. Upon his grandfather's death from a stroke in November of 1989, the 11 year old ascended the throne as Francis Joseph II, picking his regnal name in honour of his relative Francis Joseph I, the great reformer of the 19th century.

Regency