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
Princess Sophie of Hohenberg is forbidden from seeing her further. Several times during the series, he is shown wearing a locket that contains her picture, which she gave to him. Princess Sophie of Hohenberg Princess Sophie of Hohenberg ("Sophie Marie Franziska Antonia Ignatia Alberta von Hohenberg"; – ) was the only daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, both of whom were assassinated at Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. Their assassination triggered the First World War, thus Sophie and her two brothers are sometimes described as the first orphans of the First World War. Princess Sophie