There were few monarchs who personally led campaigns, and fewer still who could truly turn the tide.
Nicholas I had once launched a grand imperial expedition himself, yet in the end, he had been forced to wrap it up hastily when cholera broke out.
Only Franz had defeated every opponent under the threat of half of Europe and ultimately claimed victory.
No one knew whether Fanny Cote was France's saint of the age, but it was common knowledge that she was Franz's mistress.
Rumors had spread between the two sides during the war, but people had long delighted in tales of heroes and beauties, so not many paid them any mind.
Fanny Cote liked to see herself as a patriot. She wanted to become a hero of France. She did not like being asked time and again about her relationship with Franz, much less having it made public.
In truth, Fanny Cote had initially been deeply resistant even to the annuity Franz offered her, but after the war ended, she quickly realized that she had been cast aside.
The duchess, stripped of both office and property, soon accepted Franz's arrangement.
But before long, Fanny Cote's relationship with Franz could no longer be concealed, because she was pregnant.
Franz neither admitted it nor denied it, and that was the greatest protection he could give her.
To the older generation of nobles, this was nothing out of the ordinary, but to the younger generation, it was utterly explosive. After all, fighting a war while having a one-night stand with a female general from another country who was both enemy and friend was simply too thrilling.
Franz did all the things they did not even dare imagine.
At night, at the Wallachian royal summer palace.
In the Turkish bath, Anna Ipadis had just