As far as I am concerned, it will always be “The War of the Royals”, millions died for them, for what, Empires? Who really won because of it? No one. All it did was plant a seed for the next big one. We didn’t need WW I, it wasn’t our war, we got suckered into it. We had no Royals here, we were not part of anyone’s empire nor were we allied with any of them. The only reason to go was $$$$$.
The "Royals" had no power to speak of after the reforms of the late nineteenth century. France was a parliamentary democracy, and all the others except Russia were "constitutional monarchies" i.e. the crown wielded no real power at all. After the "Glorious Revolution" and the Act of Settlement, all the British crown (arguably the most powerful remaining) had was, in Bagehot's famous words, "the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn."
Look rather to the chancellors of the various European governments (most particularly France and Germany, which had a long-standing squabble over Alsace and Lorraine).
“...We didn’t need WW I, it wasn’t our war, we got suckered into it...” [Bringbackthedraft, post 2]
The assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir wasn’t the cause. It was the excuse.
Misperceives the international situation of the period, and misidentifies America’s role in all of it.
We Americans seem of two mindsets, which don’t meet up anywhere. Are we the “city on a hill”? Or are we a trading nation, pursuing commerce wherever it can be found, near and far? The evidence points to the latter. Claiming we are the former is pretty presumptive.
The United States did not get “suckered.” The Allies had been pushed to the edge of the cliff. If America had not intervened, the Central Powers would have had the victory, Russia would have become a vassal agrarian state of the Germans or the Austrians, and we’d all be speaking German or some dialect of Turkic.
The economic impact of France and Britain capitulating would have made the 1929-1941 Depression look like a slow sales day on Main Street. The Allies were dependent on USA for materiel and foodstuffs; they were deeply indebted to US banks. Going to war to rescue bankers may not fit the neat little fantasies that more-moral-than-thou isolationists are so in love with, but doing so amounted to less of a disaster than refusing to act. To assert otherwise is to indulge in hubris.
And it is less than honest to blame the “royals.” The pop-culture stereotype of them as heedless lotus-eating sybarites, partying hearty while their lowly troops suffered and perished in the muddy hell of the trenches, is nonsense.
Kaiser William II favored war at first, then reversed course after German officials had conned and tricked the Austrians into backing the Serbians into a corner. He engaged in “personal diplomacy” by writing an exchange of telegrams with Czar Nicholas II, aimed at heading off the clash. At the very last moment, he made telephone calls direct to his commanders on the Western Front, ordering them not to invade France. Senior army officers and other German officials balked; to them, it was unthinkable that invasion plans be interrupted, once given the go-ahead. Troop movements and railway timetables uber alles.
The British did attempt to stay clear, but when the Germans insisted on invading Belgium in their march against France, the British government honored its treaty obligations and did intervene (France and Germany were co-signers, so many of the first principles of diplomacy were being undermined).
It’s pointless to quote historians, authors, and other public intellectuals who have voiced cute little objections along the lines of, “This was so awful, someone should have foreseen!” Many sovereigns did say to their armies, “You’ll be home before the leaves fall!” What of it? Those rousing words have been speechified to massed military forces at the outset of campaigns beyond number. Rarely have conflicts gone so perfectly as to make them come true. Pretending moralistic outrage that the prediction proved wrong in 1914 is just silly.