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Archduke Franz Ferdinand
The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the heir to the Austrian throne and his death started World War I. He was killed by Serbians who did not want to be part of the Austrian empire. Russia said that they would help protect their Serbian brothers. So all these nationalist feelings led to the war.
he was the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary so presumably he was Austro-Hungarian
Franz Ferdinand never reigned. His father's brother, Franz Joseph, was the Emperor for sixty-eight years. The Emperor's only son, the cousin of Franz Ferdinand, committed suicide when the Emperor refused him permission to marry the girl he loved (see the movie "Mayerling"). With that suicide the old Emperor had no heir, and tried to make his brother, Franz Ferdinand's father, the heir to the throne, but the brother did not want it. So that left Franz Ferdinand to be the heir to the throne when his old uncle might die, but he just lived on and on and on. Franz Ferdinand was heir for more than fifteen years, but when he was murdered his uncle was still alive. The old Emperor outlived Franz Ferdinand by two years, dying in 1916.
Franz Ferdinand is famous because of the fact that his assassination triggered the beginning of the First World War. Franz Ferdinand was a heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary and he was assassinated in Sarajevo in the year 1914.