Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand The five bullets Žerajić fired at Varešanin and the fatal bullet he put in his own brain made Žerajić an inspiration to future assassins, including Princip and Princip's accomplice Čabrinović. Princip said that Žerajić "was my first model. When I was seventeen I passed whole nights at his grave, reflecting on our wretched condition and thinking of him. It is there that I made up my mind sooner or later to perpetrate an outrage." In 1913, Emperor Franz Joseph commanded Archduke Franz Ferdinand to observe the military maneuvers in Bosnia scheduled for June 1914. Following the maneuvers, Ferdinand and his
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand wife planned to visit Sarajevo to open the state museum in its new premises there. Duchess Sophie, according to their eldest son, Duke Maximilian, accompanied her husband out of fear for his safety. As Sophie, although of high aristocratic birth, was not from a dynastic family, her union with the Habsburg heir presumptive could only be a morganatic marriage. Emperor Franz Joseph had only consented to their marriage on the condition that their descendants would never ascend the throne. The 14th anniversary of their marriage fell on 28 June. As historian A. J. P. Taylor observes: Franz Ferdinand was an