With several explosive pops, petals and candies rained down. Countless cameras flashed at once, freezing time in that very moment.
Thanks to advances in photographic technology in the Austrian Empire, beyond the royal photography team, countless ordinary people recorded this instant as well.
Fortunately, Franz and Olga had both grown accustomed to being props for posed photographs. Hand in hand, they walked into the church.
Inside, 24,800 candles had been lit, and a red carpet had long been laid all the way to the altar. Countless beams of light filtered through the stained-glass windows at the top of the church, falling over Franz and Olga and playing beautifully against the surrounding candlelight. Olga's wedding gown looked even more dreamlike at that moment.
Most miraculous of all, the sunlight itself seemed drawn to them, slowly shifting with their footsteps.
"A miracle! My God!"
Someone cried out loudly. At that moment, more clergymen than noble ladies fainted.
Of course, it was no miracle, but science. Someone was controlling the direction of the glass to adjust the angle at which the sunlight entered.
Yet to most people of this era, such technology was hardly any different from a miracle.
Upon reaching the altar, Olga's mouth fell open in disbelief. Franz, too, was slightly stunned, because the one presiding over the ceremony was not Archbishop Rauscher, as previously arranged, but Pope Pius IX.
The public and the wedding guests clearly knew nothing of this, however. They only felt it was the highest honor, for no emperor's wedding in history had ever had a Pope officiate.
In the past, a Pope had not been synonymous with weakness, powerlessness, and pitifulness. In the past, a Pope had been a true temporal sovereign, an unattainable spiritual leader, God's representative walking upon the earth.
Since written records began,