As SMS Nassau pushed into the Thames estuary, the world turned to grey.
Fog lay on the river in thick bands—not the clean, honest fog of sea air and morning cold, but something heavier, dirtier. It clung to the water and the rigging and the men's coats like a damp film. Smoke fed it. Coal fed it. A city's breath fed it.
Oskar drew in a careful breath and immediately regretted it.
His lungs had grown used to cleaner air.
Germany—his Germany—had begun to shed this kind of choke, the worst of the industrial haze beaten back by his reforms, overseen by Greenway and the slow, stubborn march of cleaner systems. The fog still came, of course, but the blackness that used to live inside it had been reduced to a memory in many cities.
London had no such mercy.
Here, the fog felt alive.
Not picturesque.
Not romantic.
Alive in the way disease was alive.
Along the river, gas lamps still burned pale and tired, their flames blurred into soft halos by the haze. Morning had come, yet many lights remained lit—not because London wanted beauty, but because the lamplighters had not yet made their rounds, moving through the streets with ladders and long poles like men fighting a daily, unwinnable war against darkness.
And the river itself was crowded.
Ships of every type and flag drifted and steamed in slow procession—foreign warships come for mourning, come for ceremony, come to be seen. Coal-fired stacks exhaled into the low sky. The smell of it was everywhere—sulfur, soot, hot metal. Even the water seemed to taste of it.
Nassau moved through it like a quieter predator.
Her boilers burned oil, and the difference mattered. Less black smoke. Less soot. Cleaner exhaust—though in a city like this, "cleaner" was only a relative word. London was already choking before the first ship arrived.
Oskar leaned against the rail and watched the ghost-shapes slide past: docks, cranes, bridges emerging and vanishing again. Somewhere deeper in the fog, the city rose in silhouettes—old stone and iron, layered like history itself.
However for all its faults, London was still undeniably magnificent.
The architecture along the Thames carried the confidence of an empire that had ruled the sea so long it had begun to carve beauty into even its streetlamps and piers. Heavy iron posts stood like sculptures, some of them decorated with absurdly ornate flourishes—fish, vines, crests—art forced into function by men who refused to let utility be ugly.
And there were horses.
Everywhere, horses.
No swarms of motorcars. No engines snarling through streets. Only the old world's heartbeat: hooves on stone, wheels on cobble, carriages moving through the fog like drifting shadows.
Oskar found it strange—almost peaceful from a distance—until he remembered what lay behind it.
In his other life, he had seen documentaries and read accounts of London's poor health in this era. He remembered that especially the East End of London was notoriously poor. East End lungs blackened early. Children there were too small for their age. Men worn down by hard labor, underfed bodies, and air that quietly injured them every day. When war came—in the old timeline—too many were unfit even to march.
Of course, the problem was not only smoke.
It was everything layered beneath it—nutrition that failed bodies early, housing packed too tightly to ever be clean, work that broke backs before men reached their prime. Streets where too many lives pressed together until disease, exhaustion, and desperation became ordinary.
And yet, London was improving.
Clean drinking water existed now. Sewers existed. Public baths and sanitation were no longer fantasies whispered by reformers. This was not a medieval city. It was modernizing—just unevenly, like a coat patched carefully in some places and left to fray in others.
What unsettled Oskar was what his memory insisted on supplying.
The East End.
Even decades later—long after coal smoke had thinned and factories had closed—it remained poor. Not just struggling, but persistently so. Generation after generation. Crime, overcrowding, desperation repeating themselves with stubborn regularity.
He had never understood why.
Not in his previous life, and not now.
How could a city that ruled the world for centuries—whose wealth crossed oceans, whose influence bent continents—fail so completely to lift parts of itself out of the same misery, century after century?
Perhaps the British government truly tried. Perhaps it even meant well.
And yet, for whatever reason he couldn't comprehend, the pattern remained.
Oskar watched the riverbanks slide past with a mixture of admiration and something colder—pity, perhaps, or even a faint disgust he did not like admitting to himself.
Because in Germany, and especially Potsdam and Berlin, he had seen something else become possible.
Not perfection—but enough.
Programs, infrastructure, industry aligned with intent. Air that no longer choked. Water that did not sicken. Food that nourished rather than merely filled. Time for rest. Time for strength. Time for dignity.
His people had estimated that by the year 1913, even the poorest in his cities would sleep without fear, wash in clean water, breathe air that did not slowly kill them, and find moments of leisure—training their bodies, letting their children laugh in warm halls and waterparks even in winter.
It would not be a life of luxury for everyone.
Just a life that did not grind people down from birth, the way the old world so often had.
The thought of home comforted him—of Germany, of what he had already changed, of lives slowly growing healthier, steadier, easier. Not perfect, but no longer suffocating.
And yet his mind drifted back to London. To the East End. To the kind of hardship that seemed to outlive generations.
He remembered the saying—hard places create hard people—and wondered, not for the first time, whether that was wisdom…
…or simply an excuse powerful societies told themselves for failing to do better.
The question lingered with him, unanswered, as the river slid past in silence.
The ship passed British vessels again and again—destroyers and cruisers sliding out of the fog like knives, flags snapping, officers watching from bridges. Beautiful ships in their own way, but cramped and coal-breathed, their decks crowded, their lines still carrying the older logic of speed and smoke.
Oskar couldn't help thinking what it must feel like to live inside such steel cages, breathing that exhaust for weeks.
A rear admiral stepped up beside him and saluted. Reinhard Scheer—forty-six, sharp-eyed, and already at ease among steel—looked every inch a future fleet commander.
"Your Imperial Highness," Scheer said, voice respectful, "I am sure we will have another chance to come here in the future as well."
Oskar glanced at him.
He understood what Scheer meant.
Another visit.
Another arrival.
Another time Germany would bring steel into Britain's river—not as guests for ceremony, but as something else.
Oskar nodded once, slow.
"In one form or another," he said quietly. "Yes, although I do hope it's in a more peaceful form than what you are imagining."
He valued Scheer. Not only for competence, but for the kind of ruthless clarity some men possessed without becoming reckless. In another timeline, Scheer would one day command Germany's fleet in the great battle the world remembered—Jutland—and he would prove himself outstanding.
This timeline was different.
But the man was the man.
Nassau continued westward through the grey.
Then from the fog ahead, two darker shapes emerged ahead—hulks cutting through fog like cliffs moving across water.
British battleships.
Their silhouettes were unmistakable even before the flags were clear—big guns, slab-sided hulls, the angular confidence of a navy that had ruled the sea so long it had begun to treat it as private property.
Rear Admiral Scheer lowered his binoculars.
"Your Imperial Highness," he said, voice neutral, "the British have sent battleships to meet us."
"To meet us," Oskar echoed, a faint smile touching his mouth. "A generous interpretation."
He leaned lightly on the rail as the ships grew clearer.
"Two battleships at once," Oskar continued, almost amused. "That's less a welcome and more a reminder."
A show of force.
A polite threat dressed in ceremony.
Beside him, Kiderlen-Waechter squinted into the fog and exhaled softly.
"They look smaller than Nassau," he said.
Scheer answered immediately, patient as a teacher correcting a student.
"Distance lies, Excellency," he said. "They are not much smaller. Their displacement is close—only slightly less by our estimates." He raised his binoculars again. "But in combat power… our ship is superior."
"Even one against two?" Kiderlen-Waechter asked.
Scheer's mouth tightened—confident without being reckless.
"Even one against two," he said. "Our armor is thicker. Their class favors speed. And our triple-gun turrets—long-barreled 305 mm—hit harder at range."
Oskar listened without looking away.
He didn't need the reassurance.
He already knew what these two ships represented.
Not danger.
Not today.
But a message: Britain is watching you come upriver.
---
On the lead British ship—HMS St Vincent—a young officer stood with binoculars pressed to his eyes, studying the German dreadnought like a man looking at an approaching insult.
He was David Beatty—still early in his rise, still full of the hard pride that the Royal Navy bred as naturally as salt crusted on steel.
He lowered the binoculars with a faint curl of disdain.
"Ugly," Beatty said flatly.
One of his officers hesitated, then dared to speak.
"Sir?"
Beatty made a small dismissive motion with his gloved hand.
"The German ships," he said. "Short hulls. Squat profile. Like fat cattle." His eyes narrowed. "Nothing like a proper British battleship."
A few officers chuckled politely, eager to agree with anything that sounded like confidence.
"They don't seem much threat, sir," one said. "Not compared to our class."
Beatty's expression remained cool.
"They're Germans," he replied. "They build machines, not art." Then he lifted the binoculars again and paused. "Still…"
He stared.
Their main turrets were covered.
Gun shrouds.
A habit the Germans had adopted, and one the British despised—not because it mattered tactically in peace, but because it denied easy information. It denied comfort.
An officer leaned closer.
"Sir, the turret covers… what are they hiding?"
Beatty lowered his binoculars slowly.
"Hiding?" he said. "They're signaling."
He looked toward the German ship again, eyes sharp.
"We decide what you know."
A beat.
Then Beatty's mouth tightened.
"Very well," he said. "Signal them. Formal welcome. Let it all look civilized."
The officer nodded and moved away.
Flags rose on St Vincent—bright cloth against grey fog—welcoming the German Crown Prince's visit as protocol demanded.
Across the water, Nassau answered with her own signal flags, acknowledging the welcome with the correct restraint.
Steel speaking to steel in cloth and code.
Then, with the two British battleships taking position, the escort formed.
A lead ship.
A trailing ship.
A corridor of power.
And the German dreadnought sailed between them into the Thames.
Past more vessels.
Past the river's black breath.
Past London's distant silhouette behind smoke.
Toward Gravesend, where the port waited like the first threshold of the island empire.
Oskar watched the British ships slide ahead of him and felt no fear—only that familiar, calm calculation settling behind his eyes.
This wasn't a greeting.
It was an inspection.
And he intended to pass it.