Spring 1873
The world had settled into something that resembled calm.
Not peace—Elias knew better than to confuse the two—but equilibrium.
Treaties had been signed, sealed, and archived.
Ambassadors had returned home to reassure their governments that the Balkan crisis was, for now, contained.
Borders were guarded, flags replaced, currencies exchanged, and administrations restructured with the grinding inevitability of history reorganizing itself around a new reality.
Montenegro ruled the Balkans.
And, remarkably, nothing was on fire.
From Elias's vantage point in the Drina Marches, this was the surest sign of success.
The great machine of Europe had absorbed the shock and resumed turning, its gears now meshing around a new cog it had not anticipated, but one whose appearance did not disturb the great works underway.
That would not last forever.
But it would last long enough.
He stood in the study of his governor's residence, a travel case open on the desk, its contents precise and minimal.
Elias had never been sentimental about possessions.
Anything he truly valued could be replaced, replicated, or summoned again.
Power, after all, was portable.
A thin folder lay beside the case, its contents mundane to any ordinary official: transit papers, shipping manifests, letters of introduction bearing seals from neutral consulates.
To Elias, it represented something else entirely.
Distance.
For the first time since the war began, he was leaving Europe not as a necessity, not as an escape, but as a choice.
A vacation, he thought wryly.
More than ten years past since the last time he had done so, being to busy with build up his shadow empire behind the scene, or commanding foreign legions from afar.
But up till now the chance for an escape was limited, America became engulfed in war, Europes tensions reached a head, as Russian volatility boiled over igniting the flames of war once more.
But now?
America was mostly stable save for hawk faction federals seeking to reclaim lost territories by targetting the Native Autonomous zone, further opressing the native peoples and bringing the lands fully under their control.
Those within the zone would be safe, but the tribes who did not reside within the liberated states, the hammer fall would come harder than ever before.
Europe, barring catastrophe or extraordinary stupidity, would remain stable for decades.
And if the worlds conciousness insisted on proving him wrong?
His forces would be sure to respond in kind.
Elias closed the folder and snapped the case shut.
America awaited.
The plan was to cross over, under the guise of simply securing trade deals and the like for his tiny province, all the while his real goal would be just to enjoy himself and watch the world as time passed him by.
Watching the sky that was ever changing, as he rode, carriage, train, and steamboat across both land and sea.
The Ottomans' collapse had done more than rearrange borders—it had unbalanced assumptions.
Power vacuums were dangerous things, but they were also fertile.
In the Middle East, he expected unrest within years.
In Africa, competition would sharpen into violence.
In Asia, empires would test one another's reach, cautiously at first, then with growing confidence as the fertile orient had not yet been exploited to its utmost.
And America?
America was still pretending it had finished its growth.
The United States was still recovering, and yet this did not stop them from taking over their parent nation, by meddling in the affairs of others.
The expedition to Korea was a good boost to their national morale, as American influence in the Orient could finally plant its own flag among the various other European powers that already had created trading ports to exploit the region, rich in resources, and spices.
Though a punitive expedition that they soon after withdrew from, making an example of the Korean Joseon Dynasty that had sunk an american ship citing the ship had illegally crossed into their national waters.
The conflict was small overall with only a thousand men involved overall, and the result was an increased isolationist policy for the Koreans.
The other relatively useful piece of information was that the Third Carlist War in Spain had kicked off.
Following the abdication of the Spanish throne by Queen Isabella II, allowing for the battle for the throne to exist between the two different claimants.
Amadeo I, son of Italy's own king Victor Emmanuel II was proclaimed as King of Spain, however a rebellious movement the Carlists rallied around Carlos VII hoping to restore the more fragmented state of the kingdom pre Phillip V, and his Nueva Planta decrees.
The civil war itself had already been underway for almost a year now.
With the Liberal forces under the King, trying to root out the rebellious movement, while restoring royal control to the breakaway regions.
On the otherside the Carlists, operated more like a true rebellion, forming militant groups that acted like Guerilla fighters, performing hit and run tactics rather than facing their enemy on the field of honor.
That being said for the initial months of the declared state of war, Spain did not see any real scale conflicts.
However in the 2nd half of 1872 when the majority of Europe was engaged in peace talks to determine the true end to the Russo-Montenegro-Ottoman war, that was when the Spanish warfront started heating up.
Now with 1873 already well underway and the temperatures rising as we head towards summer the Carlist camps were being roused and marching on a series of different campaigns to secure additional support, mainly being the acquisition of a city that could serve as their Carlist capital, which had their eyes turned to the city of Estella in Navarre.
With Estella secured they operations in the region could increase, going north to secure Bilbao and a significant atlantic port, or south to Zaragoza where ample population could be used to bolster their numbers.
But for Elias, the goings on in Spain, were a mere afterthought.
The region was highly unstable even more so than the Balkans, only the Balkans would become unstable after being released from Ottoman control and allowed self-governance, Spain on the otherhand, due to the method in which the Kingdom was forged, was a hotbed for repeated revolutions and uprisings, resulting in this being the third rebellion by the Carlist movement in the same century.
Looking even further, this was their third rebellion againt the Kingdom of Spain in the last fifty years.
That right there was a clear sign that Spain as a nation was highly unstable.
A regime that though managing to survive was incapable of preventing the incitation of civil war, not once or twice, but three total times.
Add to that the knowledge in Elias's own mind that even following the restoration of the Bourbon line to the throne of Spain was doomed to fail within one generation, as the King of Spain Alfonso XIII would be deposed and allowing the nation to be reformed as the Second Spanish Republic, though even that wouldnt cease the nations troubles, with yet another Civil war being incited within the same decade causing the fall of the Republic.
Elias had no interest in interfering with the current state of Spain, but depending on how much he could interfere with the coming World War as the worlds nations test out their military might on an industrial scale, and from it, the potential birth of extreme ideologies and kicking off not a war of nationalism but ideology instead.