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Germania and Visegrad did not have much historical basis for their friendship - from the Twenty Years' War onward, Visegrad and the Holy Roman Empire often conflicted with one another, this opposition arising both from religious differences (the HRE was Reformist while Visegrad remained Catholic) and from competition to dominate Central Europe. This animosity culminated in the German Revolutionary Wars, when Maximilian Schwarzburg laid down plans to dismantle the United Kingdom, only cancelled due to his defeat in Sopron and Revolutionary Germania's subsequent demise. However, the changing geopolitical situation in Europe put down the foundations for a change in German-Visegradian relations, and as the two countries found themselves surrounded by superior foes, they started to grow closer together.

Much like in Visegrad, the 19th century was bountiful in Germania, both in the North and in the South. The Kingdom of South Germania, unlike it's northern counterpart, was left completely independent - the French government realized that assuming control over Vienna would only result in new attempts at revolution, so they only kept an eyes on them and mostly left them alone, even placing a German monarch, one of the members of a distant branch of the Habsburg dynasty, crowned as Otto I. South Germania was a democratic state with strong Republican, Nationalist and later Unitarian sentiment, and it was able to successfully industrialize thanks to it's democratic and liberal foundations, a large population base and the acquisition of the Rhineland. With Nordrhein and Saxony under it's control, South Germania possessed one of the largest reserves of coal and steel, the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution, and thus it managed to rapidly build up it's heavy industry. North Germania lacked this resource advantage, and unlike it's southern neighbour, it had a much larger French presence to deter any attempts of unification with the South - but it possessed a strong mercantile economy thanks to it's strategic position between the North and Baltic Seas, as well as a large bourgeoisie class, a relic of the Hansa.

The one undying issue present in every South German election, one that every person in the country, and many across the entire continent, had to have an opinion on, was the eternal Wiedererstehung - meaning "revival", it was the term coined for the German nation's struggle to reunite into one. Brutally denied the chance to create their nation in the German Revolutionary Wars, the people of Germania never forgot the bitter defeat at Sopron and the idea of a united, powerful Germania, capable of asserting it's power in Europe. And the revanchism for the failed Wiedererstehung fell on France and Lithuania, but especially the former. Lithuania may have defeated Schwarzburg, but they were barely present in a normal German person's life, while France was Germania's neighbour and, as far as the people knew, or thought they knew, constantly sought to assert it's domination over the country. And that was just the beginning - after a unification with North Germania, what should be done about the Germans in Alsace-Lorraine? What about Silesia and the Sudetes? What about cultures which do not consider themselves German, but are nevertheless very close, like the Dutch - should they get a chance to join a hypothetical reunited Germania, too? And before we can even discuss this, how in the world can the Germans even achieve reunification? Defeating France is a must, but they are the most powerful country in Europe, and perhaps the world...

The Wiedererstehung was not just a nationalist movement - it was also the sum of all these questions, and nobody knew what the answers were.


Meanwhile, it was the opposite in Visegrad - France was seen either as an annoying overlord that is trying to impose it's will over Europe, but not a life threatening adversary, or as a model Western European nation; but Lithuania, the federal kingdom's main rival for supremacy in Central and Eastern Europe, was constantly looming over the horizon. In the 18th century, the United Kingdom of the Three Crowns was almost dismantled and then turned into a battleground between Lithuania and Visegrad, Republican revolutionaries and the monarchy, and many other factions. While the situation stabilized after the Revolutionary Wars and Visegrad even later became one of the fastest developing countries in Europe, the Lithuanian threat and the humiliation of the last century did not go away, and tensions between Visegrad and it's eastern neighbour rose even further after the ascension of Mykolas I. Meanwhile, French-Visegradian animosity was relatively recent, only coming to light during the Concert of Africa and especially the Cairo Affair. While the civil war in the Ottoman Empire allowed Visegrad to annex Tripolitania, which it was granted during the Conference of Rome, the news that France established a puppet government in Egypt after the affair, and was actually backing them all along, AND began to build the Suez Canal, made the government of Visegrad livid.

Surrounded from both the west and the east by the two policemen of Europe, South Germania and Visegrad were naturally drawn towards one another. Not to mention that they were quite similar to one another - both were constitutional monarchies, both were displeased with the actions of France and Lithuania, as well as with the Paris System in general, so on and so forth... The first diplomatic summit concerning economic cooperation, allowing German companies to construct over 500 kilometers of railroads in eastern Hungary, happened in 1861 in Vienna. While the path to an alliance was slow at first, the death of Žygimantas III and the subsequent loss of all hope to restore Visegradian-Lithuanian relations hastened the talks. One of the architects of the alliance was Heinrich Heydrich, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of South Germania from 1878 to 1887, who organized a number of open discussions and secret talks with the King of Visegrad, Franciszek II, and his cabinet, finally overseeing the signing of the German-Visegradian Alliance in 1885. Both nations pledged to support each other in defensive wars, as well as continued economic cooperation.

Already after Heydrich's death, in 1889, the Alliance was reorganized into the Baltic-Adriatic Coalition, a full-fledged military alliance with pledges on mutual support both in offensive and defensive wars. It was the first faction to form in late 19th century Europe, with the clouds in the horizon growing darker and darker...

The Paris System has witnessed a challenger.