In 1830, at the Neuschwanstein Castle.
Late at night, the stars cast a faint glow across the cold, silent sky.
Standing on the bedroom balcony, Otto Friedrich Ludwig looked up at the skies, emotions surging as memories of his past life flooded back. For a moment he felt unmoored in time, as if reality itself had slipped.
Otto Friedrich Ludwig—second son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria and Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen—was born in 1815 in Salzburg in the Austrian Empire, a Bavarian prince.
But the Otto of this moment was not the Otto of the original timeline. At birth, his body had been taken over by a soul from the future.
Honestly, Otto was content enough to have been reborn as a prince. His station was lofty, and barring accidents, after the London Conference of May 1832 he was slated to become king of Greece.
By now Napoleon had been definitively defeated, yet the ideas of the French Revolution and the tide of nationalism that marched across Europe with his armies were steadily on the rise.
To better meddle in Ottoman affairs, the Russian Empire had won, in an earlier Russo-Turkish war, the right to protect Orthodox Christians within the Ottoman domains.
Leaning on that right, Russia continually fostered the spread of nationalist thought inside the Ottoman Empire, stirring unrest there—especially across the Balkans.
Among Greek writers and intellectuals of influence, Rigas Feraios, deeply shaped by the French Revolution, called on all Balkan peoples to unite and establish a "Balkan Republic."
In 1797 he was arrested at Trieste by Austrian officials, handed over to the Ottomans with his associates, and hanged in June the following year; their bodies were cast into the Danube.
Rigas's death ultimately ignited the flame of Greek nationalism. His patriotic poem "Thourios" was translated into various Western European and Balkan languages and became a battle cry rallying Greeks to resist Ottoman rule.
Another Greek writer who had witnessed the French Revolution, Adamantios Korais, sought to spread Enlightenment ideas by educating the public. He spent years persuading influential Greeks to establish schools and libraries and to advance Greek education.
This Greek Enlightenment fervor drew support not only from wealthy merchants in Western Europe and Russia but also from philhellenes in the West.
In 1814 three young Greek merchants—Nikolaos Skoufas, Emmanuil Xanthos, and Athanasios Tsakalov—secretly founded the Society of Friends (Filiki Eteria) in Odessa.
The fledgling society gained backing from affluent Greek communities in exile in Britain and America, as well as aid from Western sympathizers.
Its initial goal was to restore the Roman Empire with New Rome (Constantinople) as its capital, and it sought the help of Alexandros Ypsilantis.
The tsar's aide-de-camp accepted. With assistance on various fronts, the society expanded rapidly.
In 1821 the Ottoman Empire was mired in war with its old foe Persia and faced the rebellion of Ali Pasha of Egypt as well. Forced to redeploy large numbers of troops, the Ottomans left openings that convinced the Greeks the time for revolt had come. Plans were laid to rise up in the Peloponnese, the Danubian Principalities, and Constantinople.
Because ancient Greece was the source of so much of Europe's classical heritage, public sympathy for Greek independence ran high.
Wealthy Americans and Western European nobles—including the poet Lord Byron and, later, the physician Samuel Gridley Howe—took up arms and joined the Greek revolutionaries.
The insurgents set up a provisional regime and, the following year, convened the First National Assembly to proclaim independence.
The Ottoman reaction was fierce.
Though the empire had entered a prolonged decline, Sultan Mahmud II was no fool. He knew that if the Greek revolt succeeded, it would open Pandora's box for national independence movements within Ottoman lands.
For an empire whose ethnic problems were no less complex than Austria's, letting Greece break away would trigger a chain reaction across Ottoman territory.
But corruption was rampant, and the reforms of Selim III had threatened many interests. Under Mahmud II, fresh uprisings in places like Wallachia further distracted him from suppressing the Greek independence movement, making the response sluggish.
As news of the uprising spread, financial aid poured in. The London Philhellenic Committee floated two loans to the rebels in 1824 and 1825, for £800,000 and £2,000,000 respectively.
Governments were initially divided, but over time the philhellenes' lobbying gained ground. At Greece's most perilous moment, Britain, France, and Russia extended support.
In 1827, to halt the Ottoman crackdown, the combined fleets of the three powers united and destroyed the Ottoman fleet.
In 1828 Russia even declared war on the Ottomans, sparking another Russo-Turkish conflict.
In that war the Russians pushed steadily south, ravaging Moldavia and Wallachia, and advancing through Bulgaria toward Constantinople itself, forcing the Ottomans to sue for peace and cede territory.
Meanwhile, France sent troops and took control of the Peloponnese. These great-power moves tied down Ottoman strength, leaving the empire unable to quickly crush the "rebellion" launched by the Greek insurgents.
Cornered, Mahmud II turned to Muhammad Ali, the governor of Egypt, offering rich rewards to secure his help in brutally suppressing the Greek revolt together.
Even so, the desire for independence could not be extinguished. Overmatched by the joint pressure of the three powers, the Ottoman Empire was ultimately compelled to accept Greek independence.
At last, in 1830—this very year—the London Treaty fixed the borders of an independent Greek state, comprising the Peloponnese, Athens, the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth, the island of Euboea, and the Cyclades.
If history did not swerve because of this "butterfly" that was himself, then in 1831 President Ioannis Kapodistrias would be assassinated, Greek factions would scramble for power, and the country would descend into turmoil.
To stabilize the situation, Britain's foreign secretary, Palmerston, then reached out to his French and Russian counterparts to discuss how to steady Greece.
After deliberation, and without consulting the Greeks, the three powers agreed that Greece should be a monarchy.
They selected Prince Otto of Bavaria to be king of Greece and consented that his descendants—or the issue of his younger brother—could inherit the crown, but under no circumstances could the crowns of Greece and Bavaria be united.
Once that decision was made, the three powers instructed their ambassadors in Constantinople to sign the Treaty of Constantinople with the Ottomans, ensuring non-interference and fixing Greece's frontier along the Arta–Volos line.
Which is to say, if history did not change because of his presence, two years hence Otto would become the freshly minted king of Greece—Otto I of the history books.
In his previous life, Otto had been an unremarkable salaryman, at best a hobbyist of military affairs and history. From what he remembered, Greece was seldom truly at peace.
What's more, in 1862 the "original" Otto I was expelled from Greece and replaced by the second son of the Danish king—a thought that gave Otto a headache.
They say the reborn are favored by fate, destined to defy destiny and steamroll the world.
But Otto had no such grand designs for now. Greece was a small Mediterranean country with little industry, few resources, and a sparse population—a textbook "three-have-nots" state.
For most people, Greece evoked mythology—or the scenery of the Aegean.
So the daydreams about "punching Britain and kicking America" were just idle flashes. Otto's modest goal for the moment was to keep his crown and, by riding the international currents, achieve a measured expansion for Greece.
With preparation and careful alignment, that goal didn't seem impossible.
Another key was to manage surging nationalism—lest a fevered public mood drag the country over a cliff and take him down with it.
In the original timeline, Greece, flushed with nationalism and driven by the so-called Megali Idea, entered the Balkan Wars. Militarily, it performed poorly and was thrashed by the Ottomans; had it not chosen its camp well in World War I, it wouldn't have gained swaths of territory from the Ottomans while contributing comparatively little.
In that sense, Greece on the military front was not unlike the Kingdom of Sardinia during Italian unification—losing more than winning, recovering lost ground mainly thanks to picking the right side.
By contrast, in the Balkans the "tough little" Bulgaria—also a small state—was full of fighting spirit. But its habit of switching sides offended one neighbor after another; after backing the wrong camp in World War I, it emerged devastated, forced to cede land and pay indemnities, and slid into decline.
From this perspective, "choosing sides" is an essential art—especially for small countries. Pick wrong, and at best you languish; at worst, the country itself disappears.
Whatever the future held, whatever choices awaited him, Otto was, for now, merely an ordinary Bavarian prince, with an elder brother—Bavaria's future Maximilian II—above him.
His selection as king owed to the differing aims of Britain, France, and Russia and, on paper at least, to a sliver of dynastic legitimacy: through the family tree he could claim blood ties to the Byzantine Komnenos and Laskaris houses.
His thoughts circled back. "When circumstances are narrow, tend to oneself; when successful, aid the world." Otto was not yet king of Greece and did not need—for now—to ponder how to rule it.
What mattered most at present was making money. Otherwise, when he eventually took the Greek throne, relying on a land still scarred and impoverished, even maintaining his current comforts would be an open question.