Emperor Franz Josef was in his study when word reached him that his son, Crown Prince Rudolf, had committed suicide. Ten years later, a young Italian anarchist stabbed the Emperor"s wife to death. And sixteen years after that, the Franz Josef"s nephew and heir would be gunned down by a Bosnian Serb in Sarajevo-the event that propelled Europe into the world war. The Emperor would not live to see the end of the conflict, nor the subsequent dismemberment of his multinational empire.