It is true, too, that the loss of his only son through an affair with a woman of inferior rank, had embittered Franz Josef and probably caused the monarch to look with uncommon harshness upon similar liaisons among the members of the Hapsburg family. Undoubtedly the morganatic marriage of his second cousin with the shining moth of the theater displeased the monarch and widened the breach between him and his kinsman; but it must be remembered that Johann Salvator was only a distant cousin; that he was not even remotely in line for succession to the throne; that he had already been deprived of military or other official connection with the government; and that affairs of this kind have been by no means rare among Hapsburg scions. Dour and tyrannical as the emperor may have been, he was no Anglo-Saxon, no moralist. His own life had not been quite free of sentimental episodes, and he was, after all, the heir to the proudest tradition in all Europe, head of the world’s oldest reigning house, and a believer in the sacredness of royal rank. He must have looked upon a morganatic union as something not uncommon or specially disgraceful, whereas a renunciation of rank and privilege can only have struck him as a precedent of the gravest kind. Thus, Johann Salvator did not need to take any extreme step because of his histrionic wife. He might have remained in Austria happily enough, aside from a few snubs and the exclusion from further official participation in politics. He might have gone to any country in Europe and become the center of a distinguished society. His children would probably have been ennobled, and even his wife eventually given the same sort of recognition that was accorded the consorts of other princes in similar case, notably the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination at Sarajevo precipitated the World War. Instead, Johann Salvator made the most complete and unprecedented severance from all that seemed most inalienably his. Historians have had to interpret this action in another light, and their explanation forms the second version of the incident, probably the true one. In 1887, as a result of one of the interminable struggles for hegemony in the Balkans, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha had been elected Prince of Bulgaria, but Russia had refused to recognize this sovereign, and the other powers, out of deference to the Czar, had likewise refrained from giving their approval. Austria was in a specially delicate position as regards this matter. She was the natural rival of Russia for dominance in the Balkans, but her statesmen did not feel strong enough openly to oppose the Russian course. Besides, they had their eyes fixed on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ferdinand had been an officer in the Austrian army. He was well liked at Franz Josef’s court, and stood high in the regard of Crown Prince Rudolf. What is most germane to the present question is that he was the friend of Johann Salvator.