 Born as the seventeenth child of the dispossessed Robert I , Duke of Parma and his second wife Infanta Maria Antonia of Portugal , Zita married the then Archduke Charles of Austria in 1911 . Charles became heir presumptive to the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria in 1914 after the assassination of his uncle Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria , and acceded to the throne in 1916 after the old emperor 's death . 
