Franz Josef

pic or never happened

Aside from everything that's already been said, from what I've heard he was quite popular among his subjects (even the many ethnic minorities, as would have you believe).
Also on a somewhat related note, I visited a family-run Italian restaurant in Spain a while back that had Victor Emmanuel III on the wall.

I don't have one at hand but the Habsburgs in general were very well regarded in the area my family is from - the so-called Teschener Kammer, Cieszyn (Teschen) Silesia and the Żywiec (Saybusch) area. There are still portraits of them adorning various town halls and even private homes, train stations and the like proudly bear inscriptions like "Emperor Ferdinand's Northern Railway" and so on.

In a more general perspective Poles had a significant amount of autonomy in Austria-Hungary and the Habsburg were never quite hated the way the other two powers which partitioned Poland (the Russians and Prussians) were. People from the former Russian partition will talk about Russian oppression and brutal Russification, people from the former Prussian partition will talk about German oppression and brutal Germanisation, but people from the former Austrian partition are likely to regale you with nostalgic stories of the Good Old Days and how His Majesty visited the area and did something amusing.

I remember when there was an administrative reform going on in the 1990s and there was supposed to be a referendum on which of the two neighbouring administrative divisions my area should end up in. A popular local idea was to write-in "Austria-Hungary" as your vote.

Also branch of the Habsburgs were major landowners in the area from the 17th century to the end of WW2, they were always around and well liked, adopted Polish citizenship, served in the Polish military and so on.

The last of them died a few years ago and her funeral was a huge local affair.

That's really interesting, dude. I have some similar anecdotal stories about how the British monarchy were/are seen in Ireland if anyone wants to hear em.

Don't they tend to be hated in Ireland?

That's the thing, it's actually more complicated and polarising than you might think. I'm speaking purely about what is now the Republic of Ireland here. And for the record, I am not particularly fond of the monarchy but I the public attitude towards it interesting.

In the current year, most actual monarchists would unsurprisingly be old money Protestants. But I've met plenty of Catholic/irreligious people, particularly young women, who keep up with the royal family still. For example, the most recent royal wedding was very widely viewed on television here.

But in a historical sense, the British monarchy actually went through a weird period of popularity from the aftermath of the famine (~1850) until the Great War.
Again, some examples: In 1904, the royal yacht sailed near the coast of Kerry at the southern tip of Ireland (a very rural and remote area, especially back then, and one usually thought of as being very Catholic) and literally thousands of people flocked to the beaches to catch a glimpse of their king. It's a hard thing to explain, but Edward VII and George V were surprisingly popular here. George's popularity only waned after the leaders of the 1916 rebellion were executed and nationalism rose, but even then people didn't personally blame him for it. He was widely respected for his attempts to bring peace during the War of Independence (especially by the Catholic clergy), even if his goals didn't align with what most Irish people wanted.
In law school, I even studied an old case about a wealthy Catholic Irishman who had booked a hotel room to attend the coronation of Edward VIII and tried to get out of his contract when the whole abdication shitshow happened.

Would that be because English royals are mostly powerless so they didn't get blamed by what the government did?

Sure, go ahead!

I have read a few Polish works on Franz Josef and they usually talk about how he fills the role of the archetypical "good monarch" in the popular / folk imagination of the parts of Poland which used to be art of the Habsburg Monarchy.

He's remembered as this benevolent, somewhat out of touch grandpa who tours his country being nice in a royal sort way, asking ordinary people what is it that they do, saying funny quips etc.

Part of it is rooted in Habsburg propaganda of his era.

Pretty much. Although it's worth noting that Victoria was blamed by many (but not all) for the 1845 famine during her reign, and is still called the "Famine Queen" by some to this day.
On the other hand, her death led to a huge public outcry of mourning across Ireland, which led to the epithet of "sourface" being used pejoratively by republicans to describe monarchists for years.

Franz Joseph would be a perfect King of England.

Why didn't Ireland try to have a Catholic monarchy?

cause they had no native aristocracy by then, and didn't like the idea of putting some random foreign noble on the throne (as other countries like Greece had done)
republicanism was a logical counter-point to British imperial hegemony

maybe in the early modern era when the Gaelic chiefs were still around, and religious divisions were deadly deep, they could make such an arrangement, even with an non-Irish monarch

The old Irish nobles were all destroyed when the English conquered them?

This is basically true, but there is one thing you might not know.
During the 1916 rebellion, it was understood by the rebels that victory depended on the support of the Central Powers. So Prinz Joachim of Germany was actually considered for the Irish throne (a la Greece) in the event of a German victory.. But this obviously never happened.
Yes, eventually. It was called the Flight of the Earls. They fled to continental Europe in the 15th(?) century and served in the armies of Catholic states there.

Just checked, it actually happened in 1607. The native Irish aristocracy had been leaving in dribs and drabs over the preceding century but 1607 was the final nail in the coffin.

The problem is a slow moving monarch like him is something A-H did not need as the 19th century wound down. He was a man out of time ill-equipped (especially emotionally) to deal with the modern world. In all honesty he should've stepped down at some point in favor of Franz

Yes. He was not exceptional, somewhat stolid, but competent and absolutely dedicated to his empire and his people.

Many other men would have gone mad or given up when met with a life as hard and fraught with loss as Franz Joseph I, but he kept on until the end.

Only a historically great ruler could have saved AH. You would need a Hadrian.

Franz Josef would be a great 21st century, powerless constitutional monarch.

He was great, really. From a hungarian standpoint, this guy is amazing. Came in, stopped the hungarian rebellion of 1848-49 and he was demonized for it by the hungarians understandably. He also had a minor role in bamboozling the Croatians in the process. But after they made amends for the rebellion in 1868, (due to Prussia cucking) people actually liked the guy, even though he was ruthless and in the following decade after the rebellion, they stomped down on hungarians hard, yet around the time WW1 rolled around, he was regarded as kind ruler. He held the empire together during the war, which was honestly, lost to the Monarchy from the start. He might've been not good at military matters, but he knew how to run and hold together an empire. The few dualist decades before WW1 is regarded as a golden age in Hungary, even if it was your typical corrupt monarchy. Also, he had a hard life, amazing that the guy was able to keep on ruling after countless personal tragedies.

Even then, I doubt that a great ruler could've won the war for AH. Poor Franz had to fight colonial superpowers, or just simply massive powers in russia's case. True, he could've invested more in military, and actually be the one who spearheaded the German unification, instead of the Prussians, and that can be chalked up to him being wrong. I honestly think he was a great ruler. Under a lesser emperor, the Habsburg empire wouldn't have lasted untill the end of the war, it would've crumbled way before that for sure.

He managed to hold A-H together for a long time. So he obviously wasn't a terrible leader

I don't think he was bad either... for most of his time. There's a lot to be said for stability but there's also a lot to be said for being a tortoise racing against automobiles instead of hares. Things were changing and evolving so rapidly in the 25 years or so prior to World War I that A-H needed someone more forward thinking and energetic to lead it.

Wonder how different things are if Franz Josef dies in, say, the first decade of the 1900s leaving Franz Ferdinand on the throne.

I remember reading on here that Franz was asked by the army if they should restore order in the outer regions of the empire when the war was ending, but he refused since he didn't want to burden the people anymore.
Is that true?

Ofc not, he was a jew cocksucker

so basically ireland was decapitated

>He was a great ruler and was beloved by the people.
>Under him industry education and quality of life for his subjects grew infinitely.
>Germans were supreme yet even the dumbest slav had a chance at wealth and a good life and cultural differences were celebrated not mashed into a cosmopolitan shit culture
>Today an american pays a tax rate at about 30% meaning 1 in every 3 days you work for the government; under Franz you worked 1/5 days
>the aristocracy was respected and functioned well within society but plebians were also respected and given an equal chance at success
>free speech
>hated Jews but didnt oppress them

Inspite of his greatness he was lived a tragic life. His whole family died young or was murdered including his brother. He was hopelessly in love with his wife but she was never happy because of his royal duties. His daughter died at young age. His son commited suicide. His wife was stabbed to death by an anarchist.

In the end he lived a solitary life and woke up around 5 am and worked all day and went to bed.

Compare this portrait to OPs. Just look at the mans face. 60 years nothing but suffering

hard to find a good biography on him in english btw.

probably not, he died two years before the end of the war.

Habsburgs were well liked in Poland.

The polish aristocrats were attempting to improve their power in the region being geographically isolated from vienna and at the same time increase privelage and oppress polish serfs.

The habsburgs essentially stepped in with imperium and gave the poles democracy and rights as imperial citizens. This struggle took place over the course of the 19th century.

Really interesting stuff actually.

I'm not surprised the poles there still like him. The economic situation was vastly improved by joining the empire as well as the quality of life of peasants. .