Care to share with us precisely who they are?
Ferdinand was not a very popular figure. His political vision of a Tripartite state instead of a Dual Monarchy, with equal rights for Slavs as well as Hungarians and Germans did not sit well with Franz Joseph II, or the establishment in Austria-Hungary.
That did not mean Ferdinand had any special love feelings for the Slavs. He was trying to prevent the outdated Monarchy from falling apart and proposed the unthinkable -- federalization of the state.
He fell into the line of succession by sheer luck, or lack of it. Jospeh's son Rudolf never made it, and Joseph's brother, Ferdinand's father, who would have succeeded Joseph, died prematurely. Ferdinand was not a choice.
He was neither popular with the German or Hungarian people who despised Slavs, nor with his own family. He was therefore a perfect sacrificial lamb for Austria to realize its long-desired goal of eliminating Serbia/Montegro as pro-western obstacles to the energy-rich Berlin-Baghdad axis.
Ferdinand also married a common woman of Slavic ethnicity, Czech (Bohemian) by nationality despite the Emperor's objections. Her father was an equerry, not a very flattering thing for a future empress.
Marrying "below" his status, and a Slav, was in clear violation of rules that any successor of the Habsurbg throne had to be someone from the ruling houses of Europe. The thought of having a commoner and a Slavic Empress in Austria was about as terryfying as having an Arab (Princess Di's last lover) in the Buckingham Palace. Emperor Jospeh II did not attend his wedding.
His children (three of them) were explicitly barred from succeeding their father on a throne, and his wife from sitting with him in the royal box or royal carriage.
The Austrian government was specifically warned that it would not be a good idea for the Archuke to go to Sarajevo by the Serbian ambassador to Vienna, Yovan Yovanovich. The warning was dismissed because Yovanovich was considered a pan-Serb "extremist."
After the assassination and all the outward politically correct outrage and rhetoric about the loss, the murdered couple was burried. Neither Austrian, nor German emperors attended the funeral.
It looked as if the Serbs handed Austria and Germany a perfect solution for eliminating the Serbian roadblock to Baghdad, while ridding the Austrian court of an unawanted successor to the throne.
As it turns out, things are not always what they seem to be.
Nor did it sit well with the Serb nationalist nutcases who offed him rather than see Bosnia's Serbs get too comfortable under the Austro-Hungarian empire and thus undercut efforts to unify the Serbs in one State.
Speaking of nutcases, why don't you help me figure out how Ujedinjenje ili Smirt's goals and methods are any different than those of their ideological descendants in the 1990's - that should be fun.
I'm not very comfortable revealing who this person is, but it's not really all that important. I was just trying to illustrate that I've heard Archduke Ferdinand was a "friend" of the Serbs from a reliable source.
Your remarks don't neccessarily contradict what I've heard and in many ways confirm the story. I suppose what is debatable is the definition of the word "friend".