Black George (Serbian Crni Đorđe, romanized Karađorđe) is the commander of the Black Hand in its 1914 version, who plans the Sarajevo assassination from a back room. He is not the historical Karađorđe but his chronomantic namesake, serving the same cause a century later.
| Type | Character |
| Motto | Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (“Union or Death”) |
| Houses of the Cycle | ※ House of the Name · ⌖ House of History · ⛧ House of the Pact |
| Spanish entry | Black George — la mesa de la Mano Negra |
Description
He stands over the planning table in a black astrakhan cap and dark uniform, a small knife as pointer on the word SARAJEVO on the map, five men watching the knife. Behind hang posters reading UJEDINJENJE ILI SMRT and NARODNA ODBRANA SRBIJE 1914; on the table lie a pistol, coffee and a book titled SLOBODA ILI SMRT (“Freedom or Death”).
History
He coordinates the cells, hands out weapons to Gavrilo and the other conspirators, and sets the day: 28 June, the date that crosses with the Battle of Kosovo of 1389, Saint Vitus’s day, which the Black Hand renews across the centuries.
He is the highest authority over the assassins. On the day, he orders the attack and closes in English, the operation’s lingua franca: “When you return to Serbia, if everything went well, if you did everything you had to do, I will free you.”
He knows that the Time Bandits are not the true perpetrators but victims of the magical compulsion of the Simultaneous Circle. The promised release is chronomantic: he holds the group in the attack by collaborating with the Circle’s device. He does not appear in the historical photograph of the attack.
Union or Death is a pact formula. Whoever swears at his table binds his own death to the political effect of the act: if Gavrilo shoots, the empire falls; if he shoots and the conspiracy fails, Gavrilo dies anyway, and the empire still falls later.
His namesake (1768–1817) founded the Karađorđević dynasty against Ottoman rule and led the First Serbian Uprising (1804–1817); in 1914 the oppressor is Austro-Hungarian.