At the age of eighteen, Franz Josef  became Hapsburg Emperor and in 1867, ruler of Austria-Hungary. He was emotionally insensitive and led a life of myopic devotion to duty and a constant exercise of form and style that was rnasquerading a deep sadness.

Franz Joseph has much to be sad about. On February 18, 1853, he survived an assassination attempt by Hungarian nationalist János Libényi. His brilliant wife, Elizabeth (Sissi), one of the most beautiful women in Europe,  was assassinated by an anarchist in Geneva (1897). Their first daughter Sophie died as an infant. His son, Crown Prince Rudolf, kept his suicide/death pact with his lover Baroness Mary Vetsera at the hunting lodge of Mayerling in 1889.

Following the Rudolf's suicide,  Franz Joseph had many arguments with his nephew and heir,  Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was assassinated by Serbian nationalists on June 28,.1914 in Sarajevo.  The assassination precipitated a crisis which led to the outbreak of World War I and the subsequent dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Although Franz Joseph's deep love for Vienna provided the intellectual, artistic and social atmosphere that produced  Brahms,  Mahler, Strauss,  Klimt,  Kokoschka, Schiele, Schnitzler, and Freud, he disliked music, never read anything, except government reports, and had no interest in art. He might have benefited from being psychoanalyzed by Freud for his lack of emotions and what was almost a sexual fetish for uniforms.

Franz Joseph almost always wore a uniform, which had a high collar that almost completely enclosed the neck. It so happened that the collar of his uniform was made out of very sturdy material. Even though the Emperor was wounded and bleeding from assassination attempt by János Libényi, this stiff collar saved his life. which may in part explain his uniform fetish.