Archduke Franz Karl of Austria

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Archduke Franz Karl Joseph of Austria (7 December 1802 – 8 March 1878) was father of two emperors (Austria and Mexico) and the grandfather of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, whose shooting was the occasion of the start of World War I.

He was born in Vienna, the second son of Emperor Francis II and his wife Maria Theresa of the Two Sicilies.

On 4 November 1824 in Vienna he married Sophie, Princess of Bavaria, the daughter of Maximilian I of Bavaria and his second wife Queen Karoline. Their children included Franz Joseph, who would become Emperor of Austria; Maximilian, who would briefly be Emperor of Mexico; and Karl Ludwig, Archduchess Maria Anna Caroline Pia and Archduke Ludwig Viktor.

Franz Karl was an unambitious and generally ineffectual man, although he was a member of the Council that ruled in the stead of his mentally retarded brother Emperor Ferdinand from 1835 to 1848. At the urging of his wife, he renounced his claims to the throne at the time of his brother's abdication in December 1848, allowing their eldest son Franz Joseph to take the throne. Archduke Franz Karl died in Vienna in 1878, six years after the death of his wife.