Franz's breakfast was very simple: bread, jam, milk, along with some fruit and vegetables—more or less the standard fare of the middle class.
It was just that coffee had been replaced with milk. Perhaps influenced by his previous life, Franz had no love for coffee and even preferred dark bread.
The dark bread in the palace was naturally different from the sort outside, mixed with all kinds of random ingredients. At Franz's request, it contained sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, walnut kernels...
There were more people today, so the kitchen had naturally prepared a more lavish spread, adding coffee, sandwiches, butter, pastries, and ham.
Everyone had different tastes and chose breakfast according to their own preferences. The relationship between ruler and subjects in Europe differed from that in the East; everyone was quite relaxed at meals, without that cautious, tiptoeing restraint.
After breakfast, everyone had their own schedules and dispersed to begin the day's work.
"Your Majesty, your appointed time with Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich is approaching," the maid Jenny reminded him.
Grand Duke Alexander Nikolaevich was Nicholas I's eldest son—the famous Alexander II of history, who carried out Russia's serfdom reform.
He was also an outstanding scholar, proficient in four foreign languages—English, German, French, and Polish—and was the best educated of all the tsars of the Russian Empire.
Alexander Nikolaevich and Franz had much in common. Both had received military training from childhood, both carried themselves with the bearing of soldiers, and both were top students.
Birds of a feather flock together. The two men should have become friends, since they had so much in common, but after the outbreak of the Crimean War, they had found themselves on opposing sides.
Now, history was naturally going to change. Distant alliances and attacks on nearby enemies were not always the right