On the bridge of the lead British battleship, David Beatty lowered his binoculars and watched Nassau slide between the escorting ships—massive, self-possessed, refusing to bare her teeth even under inspection.
He did not frown.
He did not smile.
He looked… mildly bored.
"German warships," he said at last, voice flat with the calm certainty of a man who had never had to imagine his flag losing. "They're never much to look at."
An officer beside him lifted his own glasses again, eager to agree. "No, sir. Our St Vincent–class is far better crafted."
Beatty gave a small, approving hum and rested the binoculars against the rail, gaze still fixed on the German dreadnought pushing through the fog like a blunt argument.
Germany had tried.
He would grant them that. They always tried—industrious, relentless, clever in the way schoolboys were clever when they copied a master's handwriting.
But imitation was not supremacy.
Supremacy was tradition plus habit plus time—centuries of it—stacked so deep it became part of a nation's bones.
Britain had ushered in the dreadnought age. Britain had written the rules. And Britain had never stopped building.
Germany could chase as fast as it liked.
Chasing was still chasing.
Even the rumors barely touched him.
Triple-gun turrets? Efficient fittings? Perhaps. That was the German way: clever engineering solutions, tidy compromises, mechanics that behaved.
But wars weren't won by clever fittings alone—or by the will of a Crown Prince barely old enough to have earned his first real wrinkles.
Beatty's mouth twitched—almost a smile, but colder.
Youth was charming in drawing rooms.
In strategy, it was a liability.
"They make good machines," Beatty said, dismissive. "And good razors that keep my face well shaved. But the sea doesn't bow to machinery. The sea bows to men who've lived inside it."
And Britain had men.
Men trained from boyhood on salt decks, speaking weather like a second language. Men who learned discipline from motion and punishment from waves. Officers who didn't merely join the service—they were shaped by it. Sailors pulled from every coast of the Empire, hardened by distance and routine, fed into the fleet like rivers fed into an ocean.
And behind the fleet stood something Germany could not forge in a factory.
Reach.
Ports and coaling stations scattered across the globe like stepping stones—Gibraltar, Malta, Aden, the Cape—names that weren't geography so much as leverage.
Britain could appear anywhere and remain there as long as it pleased.
Even the dominions were stirring now—Canada beginning its own naval service, Australia inching toward a proper fleet unit, volunteer forces and reserves wherever the Union Jack flew. The Empire didn't even need to fight as one to matter.
It only needed to exist.
Germany had clever innovations.
Britain had the world.
"They could never defeat us at sea," Beatty said softly, as if stating the color of the sky. "Not unless the ocean itself turns against us."
He lifted the binoculars again—
—and paused.
For a moment the fog thinned, and he caught a clear view across Nassau's upper deck.
There he was.
The German Crown Prince.
Not huddled in the shelter of the bridge like a sensible young aristocrat, not staring at the British battleships as etiquette demanded—but looking outward, toward the river and the city, as if London were scenery put there for his amusement.
Beatty felt a small, sharp irritation flare beneath his certainty.
He should be watching us.
He should be measuring us.
He should be impressed.
Instead the prince stood as if he didn't care at all about British naval power, but was more impressed by the cities architecture.
Although to him the boys youth was the strangest part. Beatty could accept the existence of a German battleship. Even accept German ambition. Those were predictable.
But the idea that a man so young could carry this kind of weight—could reshape a navy, reshape an empire—felt absurd.
It didn't fit the world Beatty understood.
And then his gaze snagged on the figures near the prince.
The Eternal Guard.
At first they were just shapes—dark silhouettes in the fog.
Then the fog shifted again and the details snapped into focus.
Armor. Full coverage. Faces erased behind masks. No idle movement. No casual stance. They looked less like soldiers and more like purpose made human—a wall that could walk.
The rumors had called them Oskar's Black Knights.
Beatty had laughed at that.
Now, watching them hold position as if they were carved from the ship's steel, he understood why the name had stuck.
An officer leaned closer, lowering his voice as if the question itself was impolite.
"Sir… are those the prince's personal guards? Why are they armored so heavily? I thought modern rifles made armor useless."
Beatty lowered the binoculars slowly.
"I don't know," he said, voice clipped. "But they are clearly meant to be seen."
He stared into the fog where Nassau's deck vanished again.
"Maybe the armour is not for protection," he added after a beat. "Just simply for effect. And I must say, it's working."
The escort continued upriver toward Gravesend, toward anchorage, toward ceremony.
Beatty held his confidence—because confidence was what Britain breathed.
History had proven them superior too many times to imagine otherwise.
And yet as the German dreadnought moved towards the port a head, he felt that irritation settle into something harder.
Not fear.
Not doubt.
Just the uncomfortable awareness that a rival could be competent without being courteous about it.
Beatty's mouth tightened.
Britain would remain unstoppable.
Of course it would.
---
However, Oskar on the other hand knew the reality of the situation.
If one bothered to count only the ships that actually mattered—the dreadnought generation already afloat and combat-ready—the gap Britain liked to imagine simply wasn't there yet.
Britain could now field ten modern capital ships: Dreadnought herself, three Bellerophons, three St Vincents, and the three Invincible battlecruisers. Ten hulls that represented the new era.
Germany, meanwhile, had twelve.
Four Nassaus, five Heligolands, and three Blücher battlecruisers flew the Kaiser's flag. On paper, it was a narrow edge. In reality—with German gunnery, armor schemes, fire control, and internal subdivision pushed far beyond the old timeline—it was more than that.
Quality mattered.
And Oskar had made damn sure Germany's quality was no longer theoretical.
Of course, if one looked forward instead of at the present moment, Britain's confidence made more sense.
British shipyards never slept. Neptune was about to enter service. Two Colossus-class battleships were nearly ready for trials. Four Orions were already rising from slipways, heavier and more dangerous than anything before them. New battlecruisers, too—fast, brutal things meant to hunt.
Germany's yards were working just as hard—Kaisers, Moltke-class, the first Königs, and the new Derfflingers taking shape—but Britain's machine had started earlier and had deeper momentum.
If history followed even roughly the same path Oskar remembered, Britain would soon launch ship after ship—King George V, Iron Duke, Queen Elizabeth, Revenge, Tiger—a flood of steel that would bring the Royal Navy to its historic peak.
But history didn't repeat itself cleanly.
Not anymore.
Germany's ships were no longer the ones he remembered from textbooks and documentaries. They were better—stronger armor distribution, tighter internal layouts, better gunnery doctrine, better damage control, better crews drilled under a system that assumed war was coming rather than hoped it wouldn't.
If Germany did not make catastrophic mistakes—if it fought intelligently instead of ritualistically—then even Britain's enormous fleet was not invincible.
Numbers mattered.
But quality and especially how ships fought mattered more.
---
Led by two St Vincent-class battleships flying the White Ensign, SMS Nassau pressed on toward Gravesend, cutting through the Thames with slow, implacable confidence.
By the time she eased toward anchorage, Oskar understood immediately that Germany had not arrived first.
Foreign warships already lay at anchor or along the quay—dark hulls half-lost in the fog, flags hanging limp in the damp air. Launches and tenders skittered between them like insects. Every detail of the harbor spoke of ceremony.
And beneath that—
control.
Britain was hosting the world.
Britain intended everyone to feel it.
A band waited on the pier.
Not festive music—nothing bright. Britain was mourning, and the musicians played accordingly: formal, restrained, heavy with brass and discipline. The kind of music that didn't lift hearts so much as remind them to stand straight.
Trumpets sounded anyway.
A clear call cut through fog and river-smoke as the gangway was lowered—rails polished, its surface covered in dark carpet laid down like a strip of permission from ship to shore.
Oskar appeared at the rail.
Even before he moved, the dock seemed to tighten.
When he stepped onto the gangway, the world reacted the way a body reacted to a blade—instinctive, silent, alert.
He was simply too much man to ignore.
Over two meters tall, built like something carved rather than born, broad shoulders filling a dark greatcoat, military uniform beneath—Crown Prince, Inspector of the East, the future commander of the Eighth Army. Each step made the gangway creak under him, and the sound carried through the hush like a slow drumbeat.
Sailors straightened.
Officials blinked.
Somewhere in the crowd, a whisper escaped—then died in the fog.
Behind him, the Eternal Guard moved.
Six men fell in without a word—black coats, grey steel armor, weapons unfamiliar to British eyes, faces erased behind masks. They did not swagger. They did not look around. They walked as if the pier belonged to their prince and the world was merely allowed to stand near it.
And that was when the British line stiffened.
Royal Marines stood at attention along the pier—rifles spotless, boots aligned, faces locked into professional indifference. But their eyes slid—just once—to the Germans behind Oskar, measuring discipline and weaponry and the simple insult of it:
Germany had brought its own shadows onto British ground.
Beyond the cordon, the public pressed behind barriers—flat caps, dark coats, pale faces peering from the haze. Curious, wary. People who had read too many papers calling Germany a rising threat and had come anyway because fear did not cancel fascination.
Cameras waited too—tripods, flash powder, men with notebooks and sharp eyes already composing tomorrow's headlines.
Then a boy stepped forward.
Not a man in uniform.
A prince.
Prince Edward—young, 15 year's old, narrow-shouldered, trying very hard to stand like someone older than he was. His face still carried the softness of youth, but his posture was practiced: chin lifted, shoulders squared, eyes steady. He was flanked by officials, a naval officer, and a rigid court man who looked as if he had been carved from protocol itself.
"Your Imperial Highness," Edward said clearly, "welcome to England."
Oskar stopped at the foot of the gangway.
For a moment they simply looked at one another—Britain's future in a boy's body, and Germany's future in a giant's.
Oskar had to angle his gaze down to meet the prince's eyes. The difference in height was absurd enough that even the British guards had to tilt their heads up to properly see him.
"Thank you, Your Highness," Oskar replied, his English precise, his German accent controlled. "The passing of His Majesty King Edward VII is a loss felt far beyond Britain. Please accept my condolences."
Edward inclined his head, the movement precise—as if he had been trained exactly how to receive grief.
Then his gaze flicked, just briefly, to the figures descending behind Oskar.
It was a small motion.
Everyone saw it.
Edward's jaw tightened. He corrected himself at once, lifting his chin a fraction higher, drawing on posture and protocol the way a smaller man drew on armor. When he spoke again, the tone had shifted—not hostile, but no longer welcoming either.
"Your Imperial Highness," he said, "I regret to say I have been given specific instructions. For reasons of public order and safety, I must ask that your personal guard not accompany you beyond the pier."
The air changed.
It was there in the Marines' shoulders as they squared without moving. In the journalists leaning forward. In the way the Eternal Guard halted with unnerving precision—boots stopping half a beat too cleanly, like a blade being slid back into its sheath.
Hands tightened on rifles.
The Guard did not shift their stance. They did not look around. They stood as men who understood that they were outnumbered—and did not care. If Oskar gave the word, they would fight here, on British stone, without hesitation. To them, this was not procedure.
It was an insult.
Oskar looked down at Edward.
Not aggressively.
Simply with the calm awareness of scale and consequence.
For the first time since he had stepped forward, Edward felt it—the pressure of presence, the knowledge that authority could be physical as well as inherited. He checked himself, swallowing once, and held his ground because he was a prince and this was his shore.
"My apologies," Edward added quickly, smoothing the edge without retreating. "British security will escort you. This is not a slight. It is procedure."
For a heartbeat, tension lay across the dock like fog.
Then Oskar exhaled—slowly.
He raised one hand.
The gesture was small.
Immediate.
The Eternal Guard froze, then stepped back in perfect unison, easing away without protest. Discipline, not submission.
Oskar had no intention of being provoked. He understood the test for what it was—and he refused to give it the satisfaction of a reaction.
Calm, in that moment, was power.
He looked at Edward again, and this time the faintest curve touched his mouth—half acceptance, half amusement.
"Of course," Oskar said evenly. "I understand."
He glanced back at his men.
"It would have been… pleasant to show them London," he added mildly, as if discussing a tourist inconvenience. "For many of them, it would have been their first visit."
A pause.
"But I will manage."
The words were soft.
The meaning was not , especially as Oskar clenched his hands slightly into fists.
Edward adjusted his collar, tension visible for a fraction of a second before he mastered it.
Oskar inclined his head once more.
"Lead on, Your Highness."
Relief passed through the dock like a released breath. The Marines remained rigid, but the moment—whatever it had nearly become—dissolved.
Edward gestured toward the waiting carriages.
Kiderlen-Waechter stepped into place at Oskar's side, his expression perfectly composed, as if nothing unusual had occurred. Diplomacy, after all, was often the art of pretending one's pulse had not quickened.
Oskar began to walk.
The crowd watched him pass with a mixture of awe and uncertainty—young, composed, undeniably imposing. The newspapers had called him dangerous, unpredictable, almost mythic.
Now they saw him in the flesh.
And whether they admired him or feared him, a single truth settled in his wake:
Germany had arrived.
Oskar and Kiderlen-Waechter boarded their carriage, the weight of Oskar's frame making the suspension groan softly. Horses stamped and snorted in the damp air. Leather creaked. The driver flicked the reins.
As they moved off, Oskar lifted one hand in a brief wave.
For a moment, the crowd hesitated.
Then cheers broke out—tentative at first, then louder. Children waved eagerly. Even adults raised their hats. Whatever else he was, the giant prince did not look monstrous when he acknowledged them.
The carriage line moved.
Harness leather creaked. Hooves struck wet stone. The driver flicked the reins, and Gravesend began to fall behind them—foggy docks, muffled horns, the smell of coal and river water fading into the damp air.
London waited inland.
Smoke and stone.
Ceremony and calculation.
Smiles sharpened with teeth.
They followed the road west along the Thames, moving through a landscape that felt like the Empire's bloodstream: warehouses and yards, rail spurs, cranes looming out of haze like skeletal arms. Barges slid along the river beside them, black silhouettes on grey water. The air tasted of damp soot and iron—London breathing hard even in mourning.
Inside the carriage, Kiderlen-Waechter sat opposite Oskar with his usual composed stillness, as if the creaking wheels and staring crowds were merely background noise to policy.
"Your Imperial Highness," he said quietly, "our ambassador reports that nearly all foreign delegations have already arrived. We are among the last."
Oskar's gaze drifted through the carriage window—past rows of brick buildings, past workers in dark coats pausing to watch, past police lines and mounted escorts stationed at intervals like punctuation marks in the city's sentence.
"So Britain still pulls the world by the collar," he murmured.
Kiderlen-Waechter didn't disagree. He only nodded once.
"No empire has held the sea so long," he said carefully, "or made its dominance feel so… normal. But this is not Queen Victoria's world anymore. The costs are rising. Their rivals are stronger. And across the ocean—"
He didn't need to name America aloud.
"The world is shifting," he finished. "If we are disciplined—if we are patient—we will surpass them."
There was no triumph in his voice.
Only calculation.
Oskar nodded, though the words left a familiar bitterness behind his ribs.
Men spoke of war too easily. Too cleanly. As if it were a policy tool instead of a furnace that consumed generations.
The carriage rolled on, deeper into the city—past fog-thick streets, gas lamps burning pale in daylight, black cloth hung on certain doors like a nation wearing mourning on its sleeves.
Ahead, somewhere beyond the layers of smoke and stone, Buckingham Palace waited—bright, guarded, and polite.
Oskar watched London slide past and felt the unease settle behind his ribs.