After the meeting broke up and his "war council" left to wrestle with diapers, helmets, and cat sand, Oskar closed the door to his room and turned back to the one thing that had been haunting his waking thoughts:
Battleships.
His desk was buried under layers of sketches and calculations. Armor schematics, turret layouts, powerplant notes. For weeks he had been living in three modes:
train,
sleep with Tanya,
draw increasingly cursed war machines.
Now, just before Christmas, the big one was finally done.
He bent over the main sheet, adding a few last annotations.
On the blueprint, a battleship sprawled in black ink: low, lean, predatory in silhouette. It looked almost like something that didn't belong in 1904 at all.
Before HMS Dreadnought, most battleships in the world were:
~10,000 tons displacement,
mixed-gun layouts: a few big guns and lots of smaller "secondary" guns,
relying on the smaller guns' rate of fire to compensate for the slow-firing main battery.
Then Dreadnought would come along and say:
"Forget all that. Big guns only. All big guns. All the time."
The true all-big-gun era.
Oskar's design went all-in on that idea—and tried to get ahead of the British.
What he'd drawn for the German Navy was a true heavy-gun ship. At a glance, it resembled the future Nassau-class—but that was where the similarity ended.
Historically, Nassau would have:
six twin 280 mm main turrets
arranged hexagonally: one forward, one aft, four on the wings
allowing eight guns to fire on a broadside in practice, but with awkward arcs and complexity.
Oskar's version took a different path.
He'd replaced the six twin 280s with three triple 305 mm turrets:
one forward,
one aft,
one amidships.
Nine bigger guns. Fewer turrets. More concentrated firepower.
In his old world, he knew how things would go:
Triple turrets became standard on many WW2-era ships,
Yamato and Iowa types perfected the philosophy of "fewer turrets, bigger guns, better armor layout."
With triple mounts, you could:
save weight and volume,
shorten the armored citadel,
concentrate armor and machinery,
simplify fire control.
So the battleship on Oskar's desk wasn't just a copy of Dreadnought.
It was more like a proto–WWII German dreadnought disguised as a 1900s ship.
He'd also attacked the propulsion system.
No more coal-fired boilers vomiting clouds of soot.
No more triple-expansion reciprocating engines with their clanking rods.
Instead, he'd specified:
oil-fired boilers,
feeding steam turbines.
Cleaner. Lighter. Faster.
In his mind's eye, he could already see it:
A German dreadnought slipping through the North Sea at speeds British captains didn't expect, throwing broadsides of 305 mm shells at ranges nobody in 1904 was really ready for.
"I hope the old man likes this one," Oskar murmured, studying the plan. "If Wilhelm II says yes… then when the Dreadnought race begins, we punch first."
If the German Navy could field a superior design as soon as the dreadnought era opened, then at least at sea Germany might stand on equal terms, or even briefly ahead.
On land, he knew the railways and artillery and bodies would decide. But at sea… a few years of advantage could mean everything.
Now that he had real money—and had promised to donate battleships, plural, to the Navy—he refused to waste that on glorified antiques.
No more pre-dreadnought garbage built twenty times over. If he was going to sink a fortune into steel, it would be future steel.
There was also the matter of politics.
Wilhelm II loved the navy. He dreamed in gray hulls and big guns. If Oskar could be the one who handed him the blueprint for a revolutionary warship and the money to start it…
Title. Influence. A real voice in affairs.
Not a burdensome office, hopefully. He didn't want to spend his life in meetings. Just enough status that when he said, "Hey, maybe don't start a world war," people listened.
Also, maybe enough goodwill that his father would stop remembering that time he accidentally called the Naval Academy "garbage."
And beneath all that was something simpler:
If the Empire fell, so did he.
A prince in peacetime enjoyed palaces, cars, servants, power. A prince after a collapsed monarchy was just a target with a famous name and a lot of enemies. Money might help, but exile was exile.
He could never go back to China and pretend to be a natural-born local. This time, his fate and Germany's were welded together.
As for the throne?
He snorted.
He had no interest in that madness. As long as Crown Prince Wilhelm lived, and his other brothers existed, Oskar's place was in the back row. That was fine by him. Being Emperor sounded like the worst job in the world.
If he could, he'd make Karl the Crown Prince—but sadly the laws of blood and height were against them.
Days passed.
He trained.
He slept (sometimes).
He learned German with Tanya's patient help.
He occasionally tried not to be caught with Tanya.
He drew ships.
The German Welfare Lottery Company continued to expand. Double Color Ball was now the lottery every German who could afford a ticket wanted to play.
The few winners of first prizes were walking advertisements:
Hans the miner,
a merchant's widow,
a teacher,
and even a six-year-old orphan boy.
That last one had been both insane and heartwarming—a six-year-old orphan now technically a millionaire. Oskar had almost choked when the report came in.
The boy's name was Gustav Schwarzenegger—yes, really—and after some hasty negotiations, charity arrangements, and newspaper madness, he now lived in the palace stables complex, studying under tutors and feeding horses, with his money held in trust until adulthood.
"Future strongman," Oskar had muttered. "We will make him Austrian steel number one, my man."
The press loved it.
Between lottery profits and the early trickle of money from safety gear, hygiene experiments, and other newborn ventures, Oskar's personal fortune grew steadily—like a bodybuilder on a good bulk.
With the royal family's explicit protection, no one dared move openly against them.
He and Karl were already sketching plans for overseas expansion in the next year:
Austro-Hungary,
the Balkans,
even overseas colonies,
maybe neutral countries.
If he could siphon money from foreign pockets via "harmless" lotteries and products, he would. Every mark sucked in from outside and turned into German steel was one less mark in some future enemy's budget.
If enough wealth poured into the Reich, and enough of it was converted into ships, guns, and railways—perhaps, just perhaps, the day any enemy thought to attack, they would look across the border, soil themselves, and decide not to.
That was the plan, anyway.
Christmas approached.
For Westerners, it was apparently a very big deal. In his original life, Christmas had been about sales, neon, plastic trees, and—recently—girls on the internet charging money while wearing skimpy Santa outfits.
Here, in 1904, it was… holy.
No OnlyFans. No strippers in elf hats. Just candles, hymns, family, and politics.
For the royal family, Christmas was a time of:
family reunion,
public piety,
and quiet deal-making.
To reinforce bonds with the various kingdoms, duchies, principalities, and power blocs of the Empire, Wilhelm II hosted a grand Christmas Eve banquet at Potsdam.
There, one would find:
the royal houses of Saxony, Bavaria, Württemberg, etc.,
grand dukes and princes,
senior ministers,
high-ranking generals and admirals,
industrial tycoons,
ambassadors from half of Europe.
Oskar had originally planned to "be sick" again and skip it.
Wilhelm II had personally resolved that with a visit, a leather belt in hand, and a remark along the lines of:
"If you skip Christmas again, I'll flog you myself and give your lottery company to your brother."
Oskar had decided attendance might be good for his health.
The one mercy: Karl had quietly informed him that the Kaiser had agreed not to force him into dancing. Oskar had briefly imagined being told to waltz in front of nobles with nothing but TikTok memes in his muscle memory, and broken out in a cold sweat.
So: banquet.
On the day of the event, he stood in his room, dressed like a caricature of "Prussian Prince":
parade uniform perfectly buttoned,
boots polished,
medals aligned,
hair neat,
vaguely smelling of soap instead of fear and onions.
Tanya fussed over his collar and cuffs, smoothing fabric, straightening belts.
Then the door opened and Karl strode in.
He wore a white suit that made him look like a dwarf mafia boss, or an underworld accountant who'd just promoted himself. His hair was slicked back, his face freshly shaved, and his eyes were shining with barely contained excitement.
"Your Highness," he said, "I am ready. When shall we depart?"
Whatever else he was, Karl was still a young man walking into a hall full of noblewomen for the first time.
Oskar suspected his small friend was hoping to catch a wife the way a fisherman hoped for a fat river trout.
Oskar himself felt… different from last year.
Back then, he was a fake prince hiding in his room. Now he was:
the brain behind the lottery,
a millionaire many times over,
someone whose name mattered in Berlin's economic circles.
Back home in modern China, he had scrolled past streams where people casually donated 10,000 yuan just to make a girl say "thank you, oppa."
He snorted.
In China due to inflation being a millionaire barely put you on the board. Here, in 1904, it was practically a different social class having a million that is.
He shoved those thoughts aside, patted Tanya gently on the head like a devoted idiot, and turned to Karl.
"Okay, my man," he said. "I am ready. Let's go slay demons."
Tanya, cheeks puffed, watched them go with a mix of pride and loneliness, then went to clean something furiously—her default coping mechanism.
Oskar picked up a small suitcase. Karl assumed it held papers or something boring.
In reality, inside were carefully chosen gifts for his parents and siblings. No bombs. No prank gifts. Just real, thoughtful presents.
Now that he was wealthy, he couldn't show up to Christmas empty-handed.
Outside, a Mercedes-Benz waited.
Karl slid into the back seat with ease. Oskar followed and hit his head on the frame, wedging his shoulders awkwardly until he finally folded himself inside.
The car groaned faintly.
Apparently, Wilhelm II had decided his fifth son should no longer wander Berlin on foot like a vagabond. A car had been allocated, driver and all.
As they pulled away from the palace and headed toward Potsdam, Oskar stared out at the streets and then down at the interior of the vehicle.
Mercedes-Benz cars had been around for years, but from his perspective they were:
rattling metal boxes,
ugly steering wheels,
no radio, no heating controls,
no cushioning worth the name,
and certainly no autopilot or screen.
"So primitive…" he muttered in Chinese.
Then, in German, half to himself:
"The Welfare Lottery rakes in money every day. To let so much just sit in banks is wasteful. We should consider next investment. Cars… maybe good direction."
Karl's shoulders tensed slightly.
"More investment…?" he asked carefully.
"Yes," Oskar said. "If I design cars like future ones—smooth, beautiful, comfortable, fast—they will sell like cheap cheeseburgers in my previous world. Everyone will want one. But…" He looked out the window at horse-drawn carts and trams. "We go step by step, my man. First: bath. Then: battleship. Then: cars."
Karl exhaled slowly and leaned back.
He had the distinct feeling that tonight's banquet would be the least stressful part of his month.