After Oskar's seventeenth birthday party on 27 July, life took an interesting turn for him—both in a very good way and in a slightly dangerous one.
The very next day, the young priest Arnold, who had been present when the babies first came into the world and had called them "blessed by the Lord," personally baptized all three children in church. Their mothers were not married to Oskar, but the children were nonetheless legitimised. They would never stand in the line of succession to rule Germany—Crown Prince Wilhelm's future children were already destined to stand far ahead of them—but on paper they were no longer "nobodies." They were the recognised children of a prince.
Not everyone was pleased.
Oskar's choice of names for the children did not go unnoticed by the Church. It caused a small storm. Some clergy—especially in Germany and Austria‑Hungary—reacted positively; others were scandalised. For a brief moment it seemed as if the matter might explode into a larger conflict.
In the end, nothing truly came of it. The children were allowed to keep their names. Oskar was "only" the fifth prince; his offspring would never inherit the throne. And by now he wielded so much influence among the common people, not just in Germany but beyond its borders, that the Church did not dare push too hard against him. They might criticise, they might grumble—but they would not risk a frontal clash with the "people's prince."
It helped that Oskar was not actually against the Church itself. His views simply did not always align with the official line. With Father Arnold's quiet advice, he began to appear in church more often—publicly, visibly. He listened to sermons, exchanged polite words with pastors, crossed himself at the right moments. He made a point of showing his faith, slowly repairing his relationship with the religious establishment.
Naturally, he went to a Protestant church. The Hohenzollerns were Lutheran; Roman Catholicism was for other families.
---
Where the Church chose caution, Karl chose paranoia.
He was the first to step in and insist on increased protection—not for Oskar himself, who hated having guards trail after him, but at least for the women and, above all, for Tanya, who was now known to half of Germany from newspapers and gossip alone.
"Oskar," Karl said bluntly, "you are becoming a more polarising figure than you realise."
By now, a large part of the population adored him. Some had begun to treat him like a living legend, a symbol of hope; a soft cult of personality was forming around the tall, strange prince who lifted iron, saved miners, and handed out fortunes. Another portion of the people remained undecided, watching him with wary curiosity. And then there was the minority who looked at his behaviour with pure spite and called it immoral, sinful, or simply dangerous.
It wasn't the masses that worried Karl.
It was Oskar's industrial group.
The rapid expansion of Oskar's factories, shops, and companies was creating as many enemies as admirers. Powerful industrialists and rich merchants in Germany, and increasingly in other countries, were beginning to feel threatened. Old money did not enjoy being outperformed by a teenager with strange ideas and endless energy.
"For now," Karl said, "we should at least assume that an assassination attempt is possible. In a very short time, you've attracted extremely positive attention and extremely negative attention. That heat will not just touch you; it will touch your women and your children as well."
Oskar, who had been shot at by drones in another life, did not find the idea completely absurd.
---
With the Kaiser's approval, the solution came quickly.
Oskar was granted his own personal guard unit—paid for, ironically, with the money Oskar was already funneling into the royal family through his industrial group. The state did not even have to pay for his protection; Oskar essentially financed it himself.
He, being himself, did not simply accept a standard guard detachment.
Instead, he took the two men who had guarded his bedroom for months—Conrad, the older day guard, and Dieter, the younger man who had spent many nights sitting outside Oskar's door listening to strange noises—and promoted them.
They were no longer just palace guards.
They would become the founding officers of his own security force.
He called it the Eternal Guard.
A grand name, perhaps a bit ridiculous, but also… fitting.
Conrad and Dieter spared little time before organising a recruitment campaign. Oskar sketched out the selection process himself, based loosely on what he remembered of a modern police academy:
First: background checks. He wanted men with clean records, decent self-control, and solid language skills. No drunks. No lunatics. No fanatics.
Second: classroom tests—personally overseen by Oskar—to make sure the recruits were not complete idiots and could actually read, write, and think.
Third: a fitness test in the royal palace gym. Running, lifting, endurance. If a man couldn't jog without coughing up a lung, he had no place guarding Tanya or Anna.
Fourth: basic hand‑to‑hand evaluation. They didn't have to be martial arts masters, but they had to be able to wrestle a knife away from an assassin without immediately dying.
And finally, Oskar's most controversial requirement:
Only married men or men with fiancées would be accepted.
He simply refused to have young, hormone‑soaked bachelors hovering around his women all day. It wasn't that he distrusted Tanya or Anna. He distrusted human nature. His women were young, beautiful, and lively; it was better that their guards already had their "needs" taken care of at home.
Pass all of that, and you might earn a place in the Eternal Guard.
In the end, he assembled twenty‑four men, plus Conrad and Dieter, making twenty‑six in total. The unit was split into two equal detachments.
Conrad commanded the detachment assigned to Tanya.
Dieter led the one assigned to Anna.
Each detachment had twelve men. They worked in eight‑hour shifts, so that at any given time four guards were assigned to each woman—two close, two in support. On days when the women left the palace, the detail increased accordingly.
The guards would have long stretches of free time between rotations.
Oskar already had plans for that.
He intended to use those hours to turn them into something unprecedented in the German Empire: a true modern VIP protection unit. He didn't claim to be an expert, but in his old life he had spoken with Russian special forces soldiers, interviewed them, and even pulled some of them off the front lines in Ukraine. He had listened. He had asked questions. He had watched how they moved.
Hungry for knowledge as always, he had absorbed the basics.
Now he began to pass that knowledge on.
Classroom lectures mixed with practical drills:
risk assessment,
route planning,
escape and evacuation procedures,
how to form a protective ring around a principal,
how to shoot under pressure,
how to fight in close quarters without accidentally killing your own protectee.
In the middle of all this, Oskar had found an unexpected happy surprise amongst his new guards.
Among the new recruits, he spotted three familiar faces—the three soldiers from the train.
The same men he had once taught basic hand-to-hand combat and first aid to, back when a simple case of a child choking on bread had sent him into a furious lecture about the people's lack of basic lifesaving knowledge. That day, half out of annoyance and half out of genuine concern, he had shown them how to save a life, how to throw a proper punch, and how to actually use their bodies for something other than standing in neat lines.
Now those same three men stood before him again, transformed.
They looked different.
Stronger.
Sharper.
As if the long months of training and work—what he jokingly called Pump World's influence—had reshaped them entirely.
Broader shoulders.
More muscle.
Brighter eyes.
Life had clearly been kinder to them since that day.
The biggest of the three, a man named Gunther, stepped forward when Oskar called his name.
Oskar grinned and clapped him on the shoulders.
"My man, you've changed a lot," he said. "Once you were a big man. Now you're an even bigger man. I'm glad to have you here."
Gunther, like everyone else, was stunned by the prince's casual, brotherly greeting. In his heart, he had longed for exactly this. He and his friends had sought ways to serve Oskar more closely ever since that first encounter. They had watched the newspapers, followed the stories, seen the pictures of the prince's "angelic children," and quietly sworn that they would willingly die to protect this man and his family.
Now he stood slightly shorter than Oskar, looking up proudly as he answered:
"No, Your Highness. It is our greatest honour to serve you and your family. You have given us hope for a brighter tomorrow, and we will do everything in our power to make sure that you and your loved ones can continue to give that hope to others—in safety and security, as we have sworn."
All around him, the other Eternal Guards nodded in fierce agreement.
Oskar smiled, warmed by their loyalty.
"Good," he said. "But remember—your job is to guard my women and my children. I myself require no protection."
He smirked slightly.
"For I am me."
The Eternal Guard already knew this; still, hearing it aloud stunned them into silence. None of them argued. This was the prince who had fought grown soldiers bare‑handed, lifted men like sacks of grain, and stared down generals. If anyone could walk unguarded through a hostile crowd, it was him.
---
So Oskar's personal army began to take shape.
Through these twenty‑six men, modern tactical thinking began to seep slowly into the German military—very limited at first, only in whispers and borrowed drills, but it had begun.
What Oskar did not know was how close he had come to losing many of these men before he ever met them.
Gunther and several of his comrades had once been so disillusioned with life in Germany that they'd seriously considered emigrating to the United States in search of better work and more opportunity. Thousands of others had felt the same.
But the arrival of the "miracle prince," his reforms, and his companies changed that.
For those men—and for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of other Germans—hope returned. Thoughts of America drifted to the back of their minds. The statistics, if anyone had bothered to gather them, would have shown it clearly:
Suddenly, Germany was barely losing any ethnic Germans to overseas emigration.
Some even began returning to their homeland.
Not only because of Prince Oskar, but also because of the German Family Strengthening Act of 1905—a law that proved, to every German family, that the imperial dynasty cared about ethnic Germans and wanted them to prosper. Combined with the Imperial Worker Protection Act of 1905 and Oskar's own actions, it sent a clear message:
This royal family was not a greedy, detached clan of nobles who only cared about money and palaces. They were willing to spend, to legislate, and to fight—on paper and in person—for the well‑being of their people.
Without entirely realising it, Oskar had unleashed a new wave of nationalism.
People turned back toward Germany.
And for the first time in a long while, they believed that staying might be better than leaving.
Of course, before any of this—earlier that same year—Oskar's life had already taken a sharp turn.
Thanks to his first-aid classes and training sessions, he had suddenly become a major figure—almost a revolutionary—in the medical field. Doctors wanted to interview him. Foreign physicians travelled to Pump World in Potsdam just to observe his lessons, and whenever he visited another city for a new Pump World opening, they followed him there as well. Some of the young Pump World staff even found themselves doing the unthinkable: teaching veteran doctors and medical "experts" the basics of first aid and the simple science behind it, parroting exactly what Oskar had drilled into them.
Oskar himself found the whole thing a bit much.
Every time he stepped outside he was hammered by questions—from doctors, from priests, from journalists, from complete strangers—until he felt like he was being mobbed by an entire university faculty. Whenever he walked through the streets, a flock of people trailed after him like he really was some sort of Jesus figure, hanging on every word, scribbling his casual remarks down as if they were scripture to be debated later.
And his phrases were spreading.
Across Germany, people had begun greeting one another with "my man", "my woman" or "my little man" when talking to children. Pump World members copied his offhand dramatic English lines. Men in caps and women in aprons were suddenly saying things like, "I'll be back," or muttering, "There is no try, only doing," as they hefted coal bins or struggled with shopping baskets. The worst, in his opinion, came from a bad day when too many people had badgered him with questions and he had snapped:
"That's it, I've had enough of these damn questions—shut up or talk to the hand!"
The phrase spread like wildfire. Now, whenever someone was irritated, you heard, "Talk to the hand," muttered in streets, bars, and even the palace corridors.
To Oskar's modern Chinese brain, all of this was unspeakably cringe and second-hand embarrassing. To the people of 1905, it was hilarious. Cool, even.
Naturally, there were skeptics.
A seventeen-year-old prince revolutionizing first aid and martial arts? Many simply refused to believe it. Some insisted he must have a secret mentor whispering knowledge in his ear. Others swore he had discovered a hidden vault from the Library of Alexandria. Pious souls shrugged and said God worked in mysterious ways. A few cynics claimed he was just making everything up and that none of his methods really worked—until they did. When the results could no longer be denied, the conspiracy theories only got more imaginative.
He would have liked to demonstrate his martial arts properly, but it was hard to find anyone willing to spar with a nearly two-meter-tall German prince who looked like he could crush bricks with his grip alone. So, as usual, Oskar let people believe whatever they wanted, come to whatever conclusions they liked.
What he did do was practical: he hired a professional writer and, with a small team, began turning his notes into a simple first-aid book called First Aid for Dummies, written by Prince Oskar. For the martial arts material, he had posters, flyers, and basic instructions printed and distributed to every gym so people could learn on their own.
Still, people wanted him.
Pump World staff knew what to do when something happened and could explain the basic reasons behind it, but the deeper science—the why beneath the why—was missing. Only Oskar truly held that key, and the same was true for the martial arts and almost everything else. Others could imitate his methods and slowly reverse-engineer his thinking, but that would take time. Until then, if they wanted the complete explanation, they wanted the prince himself.
And so, in that eventful year of 1905—while royals dressed their cats and dogs in AngelWorks clothing; while Germans walked the streets in Pump World sweatpants and hoodies; while earlier in the year Norway and Sweden had split apart "like a bad couple"; and while the war in the Far East turned disastrous for Russia—another shock hit the world.
The Russo–Japanese War had shown everyone the terrible power of big guns at sea, vindicating Oskar's theories about heavy-calibre naval artillery. It was around the time the Russians began seriously planning for peace with Japan that something completely different made headlines:
the worldwide release of First Aid for Dummies, written by Prince Oskar.
The book exploded.
It sold out everywhere almost instantly and became a bestseller across Europe, in the Americas, and especially in Russia. In St. Petersburg, the Tsar himself, along with his medical staff, pored over its pages, desperately searching for anything that might help his fragile son Alexei. It was, at its core, "only" a book about basic first aid—but at the end, Oskar had appended a short section about staying healthy and eating properly.
There he listed foods that could "help the body heal":
high-protein foods like eggs for recovery,
animal liver and leafy greens for blood and clotting factors,
carrots for vitamins and better eyesight,
fish for strength and energy—his way of pointing at vitamin D and healthy fats,
fresh fruits like citrus or strawberries for vitamin C to strengthen the blood and the vessels.
Earlier in the book he had also slipped in a hint toward far more advanced first-aid methods: the possibility of transferring blood between people, and the strange, crucial concept of different blood types. He didn't explain everything—this world wasn't ready for all of it—but he planted the seeds.
The Tsar and his doctors were captivated. They devoured the book's knowledge and the idea of these new "medical diets", though Oskar had wrapped it all in clear warnings: nothing in excess, everything in moderation, the body must be kept in balance.
And, because he was still Oskar, he'd chosen a cover image that was as subtle as a battleship broadside.
On the front of First Aid for Dummies stood Oskar himself: a massive, muscular prince in a German military uniform, looming at the front of a classroom full of children, pointing a commanding finger at them with a caption that read:
"Shut up, read and learn."
Shipping the book to the United States cost about 1.65 Marks per copy (less in some places). It sold for 5 Marks. That gave roughly 3.35 Marks in profit on every book sold in the USA—and even more on copies sold closer to home.
Oskar hadn't thought much of it at first. To him it was just a useful project and a way to stop answering the same questions a thousand times a day. But on release day, the first print run of 200,000 copies vanished almost immediately, bringing in around 800,000 Marks minus production and transport costs and such things.
The next week, as more books rolled off the presses, they too disappeared as soon as they reached the shops. And within a month it was looking like a total of a million copies would be sold, generating an estimated four million Marks in profit.
By early calculations, if this pace continued to the end of the year, Oskar was on track to become easily one of the richest men in Europe—even without counting the Oskar Industrial Group. The 5 Mark price was low enough that almost anyone could afford it, and the book's simple pictures and child-friendly explanations made it accessible to everyone: workers, housewives, farmers, even children themselves.
Soon it seemed the book would become a standard household item around the world. In Germany and Austria-Hungary, in France and Britain, in Russia and America… and even in China. That last fact made Oskar particularly proud, because the Chinese edition needed no translator: he had written it himself.
And just like that, almost by accident, Oskar found himself no longer merely a beloved German prince.
With one plainly written book called First Aid for Dummies, by Prince Oskar, he had taken his first real step toward becoming a true international icon—helped, of course, by the fact that he was a prince of Germany in the first place.
Overwhelmed as Oskar was with work—and now with crying infants in his room—life inside the palace had become crowded in every sense. He, his women, and the babies all lived together in the same grand chamber. While Tanya oversaw AngelWorks and Anna took primary charge of the children, Oskar still couldn't stop himself from sticking his nose into his father's politics whenever something important crossed his path.
Not just Morocco, either.
Earlier that year, Wilhelm II had secretly met Tsar Nicholas II off the coast of Finland, both men aboard their private yachts. There, they signed the Treaty of Björkö—a supposed defensive alliance between Germany and Russia.
On paper, it was a small miracle.
For a brief moment it looked as if the long-frozen friendship between Germany and Russia might be restored. The Franco‑Russian alliance seemed to wobble. The Russians quietly hoped German armies would one day move east across their territory to help them fight Japan. Wilhelm, meanwhile, dreamed that Germany might finally be freed from encirclement and no longer hemmed in on every side.
In private, the two emperors got along well enough. They were related, after all, and neither was a completely free tyrant who could simply do as he wished. Each was shackled by ministers, parliaments, courts, and family.
The problem was simple: what two cousins agreed on a yacht was not automatically the law of two empires.
Back in Germany, news of the agreement stunned many, and Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow was not pleased. Wilhelm had altered the treaty at the last moment so that it would only apply within Europe. Any war in distant colonies or overseas would lie outside its scope. The Tsar had accepted that change easily enough.
In Berlin, if Wilhelm pushed, he could almost certainly have forced the treaty through. In Russia, things were different. There the ministers flatly refused to ratify it without France also signing on—and France had no intention of entering any alliance that brought them closer to Germany. Under pressure, Nicholas gave way, and in the end nothing came of the whole grand plan.
The treaty died quietly.
In truth, Oskar—despite knowing the broad strokes of history—had almost forgotten the whole episode. He was so buried in his own projects that he barely noticed it at all.
He had more pressing concerns. For example: Anna Müller's family.
Anna already had three beautiful daughters living in the Brandenburg countryside near Potsdam. Once upon a time, all of them—Anna's parents, siblings, cousins, everyone—had crowded together on a tiny shared farm and survived by doing odd jobs and scratching a living from tired soil.
Now, thanks to him, everything had changed.
They had upgraded from a cramped farmhouse to a spacious villa: a large, luxurious country house surrounded by good farmland and tended by hired workers. The transformation had come almost entirely from Oskar's money and his ideas.
Together they founded a new company: Greenway.
Greenway became a subsidiary of the Oskar Industrial Group—small for now, but carefully designed to be the seed of something much larger.
In 1905, Greenway wasn't yet turning any real profit. It functioned more as an experimental farm and a research center than a normal business. For Oskar, that was exactly the point.
The name Greenway was his quiet promise: to show Germany—and eventually the world—a green way forward, a path into a cleaner, safer future.
On the test farm he put in place methods that wouldn't normally appear for decades:
Perfectly managed fields, laid out with modern planning in mind.
Pens for selective breeding of livestock—stronger animals for more meat, milk, and eggs.
Greenhouses for controlled growing and experimenting with new plant varieties.
A machine shed full of early tractors and implements, testing mechanized agriculture long before it was common.
Everything on the farm was kept clean, efficient, and carefully measured. Nothing was left to chance.
Greenway adopted sustainable practices decades ahead of schedule:
Modern crop rotation: grain → legumes → root crops → fallow/grass.
Cover crops to protect the soil in between harvests.
Contour plowing and avoiding cultivation on steep slopes to reduce erosion.
Mixed farming: crops and animals integrated, with manure carefully recycled as fertilizer.
Hedgerows and tree lines to cut wind erosion and support birds, insects, and other wildlife.
Composting and deliberate nutrient management so fields weren't mined dry of everything valuable.
Beyond fields, Greenway also began buying forest land.
There, under the direction of Anna's brothers, they practiced modern forestry long before it was fashionable or understood:
Selective logging instead of clear‑cutting.
Long‑rotation plots instead of quick, short-term profit.
Planting mixed species instead of endless rows of spruce—stronger forests and better timber in the long run.
Oskar wanted Germany's economic rise to be different from the one he'd known in his past life. He wanted an industrial powerhouse that didn't destroy its own soil, forests, and animals for short-term gain. Once better seeds and stronger breeds of animals were developed at Greenway, the plan was to sell them across the Empire—raising yields and productivity everywhere.
You make the whole country richer, he thought, not only with steel and coal, but with better wheat and healthier cows.
Part of his "green" vision had already started reshaping the cities. In Berlin and other towns around the Empire, Oskar was quietly pushing programs to plant trees and create greener streets and parks. It was all done with his father's approval and help. At this point Wilhelm II almost never opposed his plans—especially when Oskar showed him the numbers.
By now, Oskar could have almost paid off his personal debt to the Kaiser entirely. Instead, he'd agreed to settle it with battleships and poured every spare mark back into Germany.
That money burned quickly.
New AngelWorks shops. New factories to supply those shops. New merchant ships bringing raw materials from abroad. New Pump World gyms. New equipment for training, first aid, and martial arts.
Hans's company, Albrecht Safety Works, was expanding just as fast—producing helmets and safety gear for mines and factories across Germany. They were opening new plants at a steady pace. If things continued like this, within four or five years almost every miner and factory worker in Germany would be wearing some form of safety equipment produced by Hans's factories.
There was a problem, though.
Albrecht Safety Works had also begun mass-producing conveyor belts—machines that transformed mines and factories, but also threatened to throw thousands of men out of work if introduced too quickly.
Conveyor belts had to be implemented slowly, carefully.
If a mine or factory tried to shift everything at once, up to 20–40% of its workers might suddenly be "unnecessary." Oskar refused to accept that.
Wherever conveyor belts were installed, he insisted on conditions:
Workers could not simply be discarded.
Whenever possible, they had to be retrained and moved into new roles.
Or the factory had to expand, using the saved labor to produce more goods instead of just cutting costs.
Of course, that was not always possible. Some people would still lose their jobs. That, in turn, was why Oskar pushed so hard on building out his service industries: Pump World, AngelWorks, and the German Welfare Lottery. Those sectors could grow quickly and absorb displaced workers with new jobs and new skills.
And then there was the next giant project already taking shape in his head and on his maps: a German freeway system.
Together with his father and key ministers, Oskar was planning a nationwide network of modern roads—a project that would take decades but employ huge numbers of people and catapult Germany's industrial capacity even further.
By the time the year began drawing to a close and Christmas approached, the Empire was buzzing with change.
Amid all this, Oskar received some very personal good news.
Karl and Heddy Diesel were finally getting married.
Franz Bergmann—Karl's father and a loyal member of the Kaiser's household staff—was overjoyed. So was Oskar, and of course the Diesel family. It felt like a small miracle born out of this strange new era.
On a crisp Christmas Day, 25 December 1905, Oskar's beloved "little man" and dwarf assistant stood proudly at the altar and married Heddy Diesel. Oskar himself served as best man.
Everyone was there—even members of the Eternal Guard.
After the wedding, funded by Karl's now-considerable fortune, the new couple moved into a mansion close to the palace. Oskar had little doubt that in the future, healthy and intelligent dwarf children would come out of that household—ready to become assistants, secretaries, and guardians to his own children one day, just as Karl was to him now.
The year closed on a world shifting under many feet.
Russia lost the Russo‑Japanese War. The Tsar faced unrest and rebellion at home. Alexandra of Denmark, despite her dislike of Germany, continued to buy AngelWorks products for herself and her beloved animals. Vanity could sometimes cross borders that politics could not.
And Oskar—only seventeen, not even finished with school—was now regarded as one of the brightest minds and most influential people in the world. Even in the Forbidden City, the Empress Dowager Cixi had heard of him. Courtiers brought her a copy of First Aid for Dummies, written in flawless Guānhuà, the official language of Qing administration.
Oskar had written the Chinese edition himself.
No translation needed.
And without quite realizing it, the Fifth Prince of Prussia had become more than just a German phenomenon.
He was slowly turning into a global one.