It shouldn't be too difficult to imagine the aging emperor Franz Joseph I dying around seven years earlier than OTL. He was a very old man by then, already in his late seventies, so it shouldn't be too difficult for him to catch a cold that turns into pneumonia and kills him.
This means that the archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination sparked WWI, would become emperor of Austria Hungary. How would he rule the huge, cumbersome multinational and unstable state that the empire was? Could he take any steps to better prepare its military for ITTL's equivalent of WWI?
Hopefully such a war could be averted altogether, but there were so many points of friction in Europe that any spark could start a war that nobody wanted.
Could he have somehow broken up Hungary and, with it, the power of its magnates?
This means that the archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination sparked WWI, would become emperor of Austria Hungary. How would he rule the huge, cumbersome multinational and unstable state that the empire was? Could he take any steps to better prepare its military for ITTL's equivalent of WWI?
Hopefully such a war could be averted altogether, but there were so many points of friction in Europe that any spark could start a war that nobody wanted.
Could he have somehow broken up Hungary and, with it, the power of its magnates?
