I also seriously doubt that your friends had Archduke over for kumovi unless they were at the very top of the social pyramid -- royal and government.
They were at the very top of the social pyramid and the Archduke was Godfather to my friend's father-in-law in more than just a ceremonial way.
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 He was trying to prevent the outdated Monarchy from falling apart and proposed the unthinkable -- federalization of the state.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.