Chapter One Thousand Eight Hundred Eighty-Seven
27th October 1968
Mitte, Berlin
When Louis Ferdinand considered who he was, he couldn’t help but think about what a younger version of himself might have had to say. He had been dubbed the “Rebel Prince” during his days in America. Hobnobbing with Movie Stars in Hollywood, working briefly on the auto assembly lines at the Ford Motor Company, having drinks with the captains of industry and politicians. All of that had later proven to be a fairly good education for when he had unexpectedly become Crown Prince and later the Emperor of Germany. Tonight thought, he figured that his younger self would be bored to tears with the prospect of playing cards with his daughters. Especially because Antonia and Annett were still learning how to play. Louis didn’t especially mind because he knew that he would probably find the younger version of himself to be something of an insufferable twit.
All of his girls had different things going on with them. Kristina wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of marriage, now, next summer or ever. She thought that it was completely unfair that Louis had conspired with Benjamin to get her to agree. She said that them doing that while she had been going through a cancer scare to be dirty pool on their part, Louis had no idea how else they might have gotten her to finally agree to even consider the matter. It wasn’t as if Kristina didn’t love the boy. Louis figured that was that somewhere along the way she had picked up some problematic notions about marriage being the end of her aspirations. Regretfully, Louis knew Kira had inadvertently done that. He wished his late wife had accepted Kristina for who she was as opposed to who she had wanted her to be. Presently, Kristina was looking at her hand with a frown on her face. She never could hide it when she had been dealt a bad hand but refused to just give up.
Marie Cecilie was still pursuing her various crusades. Animal rights, human rights, the environment, social justice, and God only knew what else. She had gotten through University with a Diplom in Philosophy, which immediately reminded Louis of the old joke about the last assignment for Philosophy Majors being a detailed thesis about exactly what they intended to do with a degree in Philosophy. For Marie, Louis refused to call her by her childhood nickname for the same reason he never referred to Kristina as Kiki, she had discovered the answer in the form several Non-Governmental Organizations that happened to share her interests. She was always happy to help out where she could, mostly in the form of using her quasi-celebrity status to bring exposure and help raise money for the cause. What Louis hoped Marie never learned of was one of the offers that the delegation from Galicia and Ruthenia had made, to declare themselves a Principality with Marie Cecilie as the Sovereign. That region had the potential to become rather rich in the coming years and exactly what Marie might do with those resources at her disposal was a frightening thought. Tonight, she was sitting there with her head laying on the table, indifferent to the game. The weird part was that Marie was winning more hands than anyone else.
Victoria was visiting from Bavaria and had gone out of her way to tell Louis that all was well so far with her pregnancy. She was nearly seven months along and it felt that she was telling herself that as much as him. Her due date was in late December or early January and Vicky was fretting over lost time in her pursuit of a Doctorate in Psychology. Louis had suggested months earlier that she ought to be taking notes about her current mental state, what she was going through would probably be of great interest to the discipline one day. That suggestion had not been well received. There was also the reality of her marriage to Prince Franz of Bavaria and that she was carrying a potential heir to the Bavarian throne to consider. The Kingdom in southern Germany remained conservative and tradition bound even as it seemed like the rest of the Empire was progressing forward in fits and starts. It was a stronghold of the center-right National Liberals and sole remaining bastion of the far-right Center Party. This was unlike the rest of the Empire where the far-right opposition was splintered between various factions of Royalists, Nationalists, and what could only be described as religious fundamentalists who were considered kooks by everyone else. In Bavaria those two Parties had formed a block that had kept everyone else out of power for decades. How Victoria fit in was an example of one of the earliest lessons Louis had learned in politics, people see what they want to see. And in Bavaria people wanted to see a young couple who were expecting their first child, just who they preferred to spend their personal time with never came up. Tonight, Victoria was feeling pensive and wasn’t interested in the game, generally folding as soon as the cards were dealt. Louis couldn’t help but notice how often her hand frequently strayed to her rapidly expanding midsection. Regardless of the truth about her life, Victoria’s child was very much wanted and would be joyfully welcomed into the world.
“That isn’t how you play the game” Kristina said to Antonia and Annett who had been comparing hands and quietly debating strategy. Annett blew a raspberry at their older sister, which Antonia found hilarious. It was nice to see Annett happy, she had come a long way from the scared little girl who he and Charlotte had taken in a couple years earlier. When Annett had arrived home after spending the summer at Hohenzollern Castle, they had surprised her with the news that her adoption by Louis and Charlotte had finally gone through. Taking Annett in had originally been Charlotte’s idea. She had learned about how the childhoods of Louis’ older children had been lonely at times and had realized that because Antonia had been something of a surprise for both of them, she was not going to have any younger siblings. Then Katherine had told them about this brave, resilient little girl she was trying to figure out what to do with. Charlotte had decided Annett would be the perfect sister for Antonia, she saw the early difficulties as a bonus. It won’t hurt Antonia to learn that the world is not always a kind place, was how Charlotte had termed it.
Louis had long understood that his children would need to earn their place in the world. The three oldest girls were doing that to differing extents, mostly because there wasn’t just one way to go about doing it. Oddly, of his boys it was Friedrich he was currently the most concerned with. He remembered that during early days of the Soviet War, Augustus Lang had made a big show of national unity and how the Emperor was a unifying figure. He had not been able to keep the mask on entirely though. Louis had known that Lang had never really abandoned his beliefs as a revolutionary firebrand and that his faction within the Social Democratic Party had called for elimination of the Monarchy, strict separation of Church and State, and heavy regulation of capital. That was a bit of a contradiction from the pragmatic persona that Lang had maintained as the Chancellor. Exactly who had claim to Lang’s legacy remained a fierce debate, the pragmatists, or the revolutionaries. Though many people thought that Louis must be mad for doing so, it was the reason why he had brought back the Imperial Election with the appointed Electors. Friedrich would need to win over them and the wider public if he were going to succeed Louis upon his retirement. While that might seem to be a low bar to get over, creating that sort of consensus would be a challenge at a time when getting it would be like herding cats.