The Great War: American Front grim official holiday marking the 1882 surrender and keeping alive the dream of revenge for the two humiliations inflicted by the South. The novel's main plot begins on June 28, 1914, the same day Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg of Austria-Hungary, are assassinated in Sarajevo by Nedeljko Čabrinović with a bomb thrown into their car and explodes (as opposed to Gavrilo Princip with a gun in our timeline), with the incident drawing the European powers into a whirlwind of war. At the eruption of an alternate World War I known as the Great War, the
Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg (; ; 1 March 1868 – 28 June 1914), was the wife of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Their assassination in Sarajevo sparked a series of events that eventually led to World War I. Sophie was born in Stuttgart as the fourth daughter of Count Bohuslav Chotek von Chotkow und Wognin, a Bohemian aristocrat and Ambassador, and his wife Countess Wilhelmine Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau. As a young woman, Sophie became a lady-in-waiting to Archduchess Isabella, the wife of Archduke Friedrich, Duke of Teschen, head