A vicious assassination, a brutal beheading,
and the firing squad. What did these royals say when they faced death? Let's find out.
Thanks to a complicated web of European alliances,
Franz Ferdinand's assassination in 1914 led directly to World War I.
But the assassination was much more chaotic and had more victims than many might know. A group
of Serbian radicals decided to kill the royal when he was in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was
then a part of the Austrian empire. The attack was actually conceived as a bombing, and indeed, there
was a bomb. It did not get to its intended target though — not knowing what it was, Franz Ferdinand
actually swatted the small bomb away when he saw a projectile heading toward his wife, Sophie,
who was also in the car. The resulting explosion did, however, wound many innocent victims who had
come to see him drive by in his open car. After the explosion, the archduke actually got out to
try and help those who were injured, before continuing on to his original destination.
Later that day, Franz Ferdinand changed his official schedule to go see the bombing
victims in the hospital. This time, the car drove past another member of the terror cell,
Gavrilo Princip, who shot both the archduke and his wife.
"Sophie—"
According to Sarajevo: The Story of a Political Murder,
as the dying Franz Ferdinand was rushed away for help, he kept repeating, in German,
"It is nothing." As rulers of Scotland and England
when they were still two separate countries, Mary, Queen of Scots and Queen Elizabeth I
of England were natural rivals, even though they were also first cousins once removed. After years
of political machinations in Scotland, Mary fled to England where she was locked up by Elizabeth.
The English queen tried to avoid executing her cousin, but when Mary was implicated in a plot
against Elizabeth, it was clear she was a danger to her throne and had to go. It was perhaps ironic
that Mary was sentenced to die by beheading, as Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, had also been.
"Mary Stewart is condemned to death."
Mary's final hours on February 8, 1587, were recorded in great detail. According
to Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens by Jane Dunn, a dean from the Church of England tried
to get her to convert before her execution, but the staunchly Catholic Mary refused.
According to the 1923 book Trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, she faced death bravely. While all her
attendants were crying, Mary insisted she was about to be very happy. She wore bright red
petticoats, clearly a commentary on her fate. She tried to get the whole thing over with quickly,
laying her head on the block and repeating Jesus' last words in Luke 23:46, which translate to,
"O Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit."
George V died in 1936, and for decades his death was put down to natural causes. In reality,
as The New York Times reported in 1986, the king's doctor recorded in his notes
that he gave the unconscious, dying man a lethal overdose.
Original reporting on George's final words were as sanitized as his cause of death,
with the public told that, at the very end, George was still thinking about the state of the realm.
Later, the public somehow started a rumor that the king's last words were actually,
"Bugger Bognor."
Bognor Regis is a coastal town that was considered a good place for invalids to recuperate. The story
was therefore that when it was recommended to the dying George that he go there to recover,
he told the individual what he thought of that idea. However,
the same doctor's notes that revealed how the king really died also included a detail
on his last words. As he lost consciousness for what would be the final time, he said,
"God damn you."
"The king is dead."
Being one of Napoleon Bonaparte's best friends could be a lucrative position — for a while,
at least. One of his favorites was Joachim Murat, who Napoleon made king of Naples when he took over
the country. Normally, Napoleon appointed one of his siblings to run places; in Naples, however,
he gave the crown to Murat in 1808. The two were not related by blood — only by marriage,
since Murat's wife was Napoleon's youngest sister Caroline Bonaparte.
While Murat actually did some good things while in charge of Naples,
politics in Europe was a whirlwind in the early 1800s. Murat lost his throne in 1815,
and when he tried to take it back, he was apprehended. In The History of Napoleon
Bonaparte, John S. C. Abbot, wrote that Murat was sentenced to death by firing
squad. Murat turned down a blindfold, then spoke to men aiming guns at him, saying,
"Save my face; aim at my heart."
Once a concubine for Emperor Wenzong of Qing, Empress Dowager Cixi managed to overcome centuries
of tradition and take power for herself — first alongside another former concubine in 1861,
then on her own. It was unheard of for a female ruler to take control and, technically,
according to China Under the Empress Dowager by J.O.P. Bland and E. Backhouse, there was a male
emperor: Cixi's son became Tongzhi Emperor. But as he was only 5 years old at the time,
power flowed through his mother. After her son died in 1875, Cixi simply placed different young
male relatives on the throne in turn, so it was really she who stayed in charge for decades.
Cixi held on to power until her death in 1908. Considering how calculatingly and
methodically she, as a woman, had gone after and consolidated power,
Cixi's official last words were hypocritical, to say the least. She said,
"Never again allow any woman to hold the supreme power in the State. It is
against the house-law of our dynasty and should be strictly forbidden."
To be fair to Cixi, it was not women who were her greatest concern for the royal family;
that would be eunuchs, since she added,
"Be careful not to allow eunuchs to meddle in government matters. The Ming dynasty
was brought to ruin by eunuchs, and its fate should be a warning to my people."
France's Louis XIV. He built the Palace of Versailles into the giant golden building
tourists flock to today, put the hair bands of the 1980s to shame with his coif,
and consolidated power, despite being only 4 years old when he took the throne.
However, one thing Louis didn't do was say the
most famous quote ascribed to him, which translates to,
"I am the State."
However, he made up for it with his final words. Louis' last years had been sad,
with many of his relatives dying young, and a difficult war. But on his deathbed in 1715,
aged 76, Louis still understood his place and purpose in life. Speaking in French, he said,
"I am leaving, but the State will always remain."
They were virtually perfect last words for a monarch who had effectively made himself the
center of France's world. However, considering he thought of the State firmly in terms of the
monarchy, he was also wrong. In 1789, the French Revolution ended the rule of the royal family.
"To the barricades!" Empress Elisabeth of Austria, popularly
known as Sisi, was set up to have a perfect life, at least on paper. She was stunningly beautiful
and came from a wealthy, important family. When Emperor Franz Joseph, seven years her senior,
met Elisabeth for the first time, he fell in love at first sight and refused to marry anyone
else. So, in 1854, Elisabeth became empress of one of the most powerful countries in Europe.
What followed was a deeply difficult time. Sisi's mother-in-law hated her. The aristocrats and
others in her social class hated her. Her only son, Crown Prince Rudolph, died in a
murder-suicide in 1889 along with his lover, and Elisabeth's own death would be just as violent.
In 1898, the empress was in Switzerland, traveling under a fake name with her
friend and attendant Countess Irma Sztáray, according to the book,
Elizabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary. However, her real identity got out,
and Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni decided to kill her. While waiting to board a ship,
he got close enough to Elisabeth to stab her in the chest. As Elisabeth collapsed, the countess
didn't even realize anything was wrong, thinking the empress had only fainted. She was rushed
onto the boat where she collapsed again. Finally seeing blood on her clothes she asked, bewildered,
"What has happened?"
She then lost consciousness and died a few hours later.
Considering how he lived, it's frankly astonishing that George IV survived as long as he did. He
drank and ate to such a degree that, by the end of his life in 1830, he refused to go out
in the society he loved because of how large he had become. According to The Age of Scandal by
T.H. White, he was also losing his sight and, to some extent, his mind. The 1926 biography George
the Fourth supports this last point, saying that while the king had always been fond of
exaggerating, as he slowly died over the course of weeks, the fantasies he told his visitors
about his achievements became more ridiculous. He even claimed that he'd played a key role at
the Battle of Waterloo, despite having never left England during the conflict with Napoleon.
George's death was long and drawn out, so much so that even his former
non-royal wife Maria Fitzherbert had to time learn he was gravely ill,
travel to London, and write him, hoping to be called to see him before he died.
Based on his last words, it's clear that George's doctors downplayed just how dire
a situation the king was in, or at least how much time he really had left. On June 26,
he suddenly woke up after sleeping a full 24 hours and shouted,
"This is death. Oh God, they have deceived me."