Early life and marriage Franz Karl was born in
Vienna, the third son of Emperor
Francis II of the
Holy Roman Empire by his second marriage with Princess
Maria Theresa from the
House of Bourbon, daughter of King
Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and
Maria Carolina of Austria. On 4 November 1824 in
Vienna, he married
Princess Sophie of Bavaria from the
House of Wittelsbach, a daughter of King
Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria by his second wife
Caroline of Baden. Sophie's paternal half-sister,
Caroline Augusta of Bavaria was by this time Franz Karl's stepmother, having married his thrice-widowed father in 1816. The Wittelsbachs condoned the unappealing manners of Sophie's husband in consideration of the incapability of his elder brother
Ferdinand and Sophie's chance to become Austrian empress. , 1839 Franz Karl was an unambitious and generally ineffectual man, although he was, together with his uncle Archduke
Louis, a member of the
Geheime Staatskonferenz council, which after the death of Emperor Francis II ruled the
Austrian Empire in the stead of his mentally ill brother
Ferdinand from 1835 to 1848. The decisions, however, were actually made by the Chancellor Prince
Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and his rival Count
Franz Anton von Kolowrat-Liebsteinsky. His wife Sophie had already transferred her ambitions, when she urged Franz Karl to renounce his claims to the throne at the time of his brother's abdication on 2 December 1848, allowing their eldest son Franz Joseph I to take the throne.
Death and burial Archduke Franz Karl died in Vienna in 1878, six years after the death of his wife. He is buried at the
Imperial Crypt at the
Capuchin Church. Franz Karl was the last Habsburg whose
viscera were entombed at the
Ducal Crypt of
St. Stephen's Cathedral and whose heart was placed at the
Herzgruft of the
Augustinian Church according to a centuries-long family rite. ==Honors and awards==