{"id":679,"date":"2007-10-10T07:48:02","date_gmt":"2007-10-10T06:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=679"},"modified":"2007-10-10T07:48:02","modified_gmt":"2007-10-10T06:48:02","slug":"the-curse-of-the-black-rose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=679","title":{"rendered":"The curse of the black rose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1889, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zamek-konopiste.cz\/index.php?jaz=ENG&#038;ID=0\">Konopiste Castle<\/a> just outside Prague was obtained as his home by the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferndinand d&#8217;Este, the heir to the imperial throne. In 1907, he employed an English botanist to cross-breed roses at Konopiste in order to produce a black variety. It seems that he was warned that black roses bring death and war.<br \/>\nApparently it took until 1914 to cultivate the rose. Later that same year, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, leading directly to the outbreak of the First World War. Coincidence?<br \/>\nSo what has all this got to do with me? Well, last week I was in Prague for the graduation ceremony of a friend [see my blog posting <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/2007\/10\/back_from_prague_1.html\">here<\/a>] and I visited the castle at Konopiste which is walking distance from where my friend now works as a newly-qualified doctor. A few weeks previously, I was on a break in Sarajevo and saw the exact spot where the Archduke was assassinated by a Serb extremist [see my account of the trip <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/Sarajevo.html\">here<\/a>]. More coincidence?<br \/>\nI only ask because I&#8217;ve met some people who argue that there is no such thing as coincidence and that instead everything happens for a reason. So should I be worried?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1889, the Konopiste Castle just outside Prague was obtained as his home by the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferndinand d&#8217;Este, the heir to the imperial throne. In 1907, he employed an English botanist to cross-breed roses at Konopiste in order to produce a black variety. It seems that he was warned that black roses bring [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}