Imperial Cauldron is a trilogy, plus a booklet of Appendices and background information. Volume 3 very roughly covers the period from 1890 up to the end of the Second World War.
The aftermath…
The Habsburg family had once seemed such a cohesive structure, committed to duty and to their role in the world. But the cracks had long been showing. The new heir to the throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was an outcast long before anyone had heard of the Countess Sophie Chotek, the woman he loved so much. In marrying her he becomes tarred with a reputation of being an ogre. His life is split into two halves, one a warm private family world lit up with profound intimacy, the other a public face that reveals nothing. This is the road that leads to Sarajevo and war.
In the aftermath of war the once proud imperial family is scattered. Rudolf’s widow has been pushed into the shadows and forgotten. His daughter has grown up to be a rebel and a firebrand. The road her life takes leads about as far from the glitter and the glory as it was possible to travel. She will go from being an Archduchess to being a communist and the wife of a minor bureaucrat.
The figures that had once been so adulated are spread around the world. Were they doomed to tear themselves apart, bringing down an ancient dynasty, an empire, a way of life and thrust it all into the flames of the First World War?