On 15 May 1910, Oskar left Berlin by train.
He did not travel as a boy prince on a polite excursion. He traveled as the Crown Prince—Inspector of the East, the man shaping the future Eighth Army with his own hands—and the weight of that authority followed him like a second coat.
At his side sat Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter, neat and unreadable, Germany's State Secretary for Foreign Affairs—folders stacked beside him, the paper smelling of ink and quiet danger.
The train cut northwest through Germany, past green fields and dark forests and towns that still wore the soot of industry like a second skin, until the air began to change.
Salt. Coal smoke. The faint metallic tang of shipyards.
They were bound for Wilhelmshaven.
From there, they would cross to England.
Oskar was reluctant to go.
Not because he feared Britain.
Because he was leaving his wives and children again—leaving Tanya, Anna, and Gunderlinde, the palace swollen with life and noise and the dangerous softness that made a man want to forget history existed. All three were pregnant now, and he could never fully relax into that warmth because the future kept tapping him on the shoulder like an impatient creditor.
But obligation was the price of power.
And he had never been allowed to forget the bargain: if he wanted to change what was coming, then he had to keep walking into the rooms where the world decided it would happen.
The crossing itself would be quick by naval standards—perhaps thirty to fifty hours depending on sea and speed. The real uncertainty was London. The funeral. The court. How long Britain would keep them—and how tightly it would smile while doing it.
---
On the morning of 16 May, Oskar boarded the dreadnought SMS Nassau.
The first Dreadnought of its kind in German service—steel made into an argument.
Even with newer ships entering the fleet, Nassau still carried a presence that made men speak a fraction softer. Not merely a warship, but a symbol: square-shouldered, turreted like a fortress, bristling with menace even when silent.
Sailors snapped into salute as Oskar stepped aboard.
He dwarfed the gangway.
Over two meters tall and built like carved stone, he didn't simply walk onto the deck—he claimed it by existing there. Corridors designed for ordinary men felt suddenly too narrow around him. Even the planks seemed to acknowledge his weight with a deeper, more solid creak.
He was dressed for sea wind and authority both.
A dark naval greatcoat cut for his massive frame—double-breasted, heavy wool, collar up. Beneath it, a crisp uniform with clean lines and disciplined restraint—no gaudy parade nonsense. Just the necessary insignia: Crown Prince, Inspector of the East, a man who belonged in war rooms and barracks, not ballrooms.
The ship vibrated beneath him as turbines came alive.
Propellers bit into the water.
Wilhelmshaven slid away, and once Nassau entered the open North Sea she gathered speed, her bow cutting through grey water with steady, confident brutality.
She could do twenty-one knots at full power.
But this was not a race.
Most of the time she cruised lower, conserving fuel and strain, moving like a predator that did not need to hurry.
If all went well, they would reach the Thames by the following afternoon.
Edward VII's funeral would not be held for a week.
They had time.
---
Oskar stood on the deck and let the wind hit his face.
Salt. Cold. Clean, sharp air that made the lungs feel honest.
The sea rolled and broke and reformed endlessly, and with it came that strange, familiar feeling—how ridiculous his life still was.
In another world he had been a nobody with a camera and a microphone, chasing attention and views. A student with unfinished plans. A soldier in the wrong place at the wrong time. A man who had died in a flash of violence that never should have been his.
Now he stood on the deck of a dreadnought.
His dreadnought.
A floating fortress that answered to his flag and his family name.
The sensation of authority still unsettled him sometimes—not because he disliked it, but because it remained surreal how few could tell him no. Only the Kaiser truly could, and even then Oskar had learned to bend the world without cracking the crown.
He looked back across the ship—turrets, steel, sailors moving with practiced purpose.
Germany was so different now.
Not the Germany he remembered from history books and documentaries, not even close.
This Germany had an ever increasing number of his fingerprints on it.
And because of that, even small things while travelling by ship had changed.
At his feet sat a compact cooler—an absurd modern comfort on a 1910 battleship—packed with ice and bottles. Oskar reached down, took one, and drank.
Cold apple juice on a North Sea wind.
A ridiculous luxury.
A quiet reminder that the future wasn't only guns and treaties.
Sometimes it was simply the fact that comfort could exist because an industrial empire had learned how to make even convenience into infrastructure.
Captain Carter of the Eternal Guard's Third Company approached with the measured calm of a man who treated open air like a battlefield. He struck fist to heart.
"Your Imperial Highness. The State Secretary requests an audience. Shall I allow him through?"
Oskar took one more sip, the bottle sweating in his hand like it belonged at a summer picnic rather than on a dreadnought's deck.
He waved once, casual.
"Let him through."
Carter turned, and the invisible wall around Oskar shifted. Eternal Guards adjusted without breaking formation, opening a narrow corridor through black coats and watchful eyes.
A moment later, footsteps approached from behind.
"Your Imperial Highness."
Oskar turned.
Alfred von Kiderlen-Waechter stepped onto the open deck with the careful stiffness of a man built for rooms—maps, ink, sealed doors—and not for wind and salt. The sea tugged at his coat and ruined the perfection of his moustache by a fraction. He bowed, not theatrically, but correctly—Prussian restraint even in etiquette.
Officially, he was not "Foreign Minister."
Germany did not use the name.
He was the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs—a title that sounded harmless on paper and yet held the levers that decided who Germany offended, who it reassured, and who it prepared to outlive.
Oskar gave him a single nod.
"State Secretary," he said. "What is it?"
Kiderlen-Waechter did not answer immediately. His eyes drifted across the deck first—over the turrets, the armored lines, the disciplined motion of sailors and the darker stillness of the Guard. Over Nassau herself, driving forward through grey water like a steel wedge.
For a moment his composure thinned into something almost human.
"Your Highness," he said at last, "it is still… difficult to accept that this exists."
He let the sentence hang, as if he could hear how childish it sounded and did not care.
"That the fleet has reached this point so quickly."
Then, softer—more honest:
"Britain will not take it lightly."
Oskar watched a wave break and slide away along the hull, listened to the turbine hum beneath his boots—steady as a heartbeat.
He understood what the State Secretary really meant.
Not Britain will dislike this.
But:
Britain will remember it.
Britain will not forgive it.
For years Oskar had been pulling the cautious men of the civil ministries closer—Bülow, Kiderlen-Waechter, the careful faction that preferred stability to brilliance and paper to prophecy. They weren't enemies. They weren't allies either. They kept their loyalties clean and their opinions reversible, supporting whoever the Kaiser chose as if succession were merely a stamp on a document.
Oskar knew why.
Three wives. A household that looked like scandal to old Europe. A Church that had contained the crisis rather than embraced it. Too much change too fast, driven by a prince who didn't ask permission.
The Army loved results. The people loved strength.
The civil faction loved predictability.
And Oskar still wore acting like a hook in the flesh—one word that could, in theory, be removed by another word. Not easily. Not cleanly. But possible.
That instability was poison to men who built their lives on continuity.
Kiderlen-Waechter spoke again, voice careful, impressed despite himself.
"I know how much effort went into concealment," he said. "Covered guns. Tightened shipyard security. Restricted access to Germany. Disinformation." His eyes flicked once toward the sailors—as if the ship itself might be listening. "If war comes… the world will be surprised."
Oskar allowed the smallest smile.
"This was the work of many hands," he said. "The Navy. The yards. And yes—the Cabinet."
He lifted the bottle of apple juice slightly, as if toasting bureaucracy.
"These machines are expensive."
Kiderlen-Waechter made a sound that might have been a laugh, if he were the kind of man who laughed freely.
"Your Highness," he said, shaking his head once, "I know the true state of things. If it were not for you, we would not be here."
Oskar didn't accept the compliment. Not openly.
Praise in politics was rarely free.
The State Secretary stepped closer anyway, lowering his voice—not from secrecy, but from habit.
"Based on your achievements alone," he said, "it is only right that you become the heir of the Empire—truly, not provisionally."
His eyes held Oskar's with the careful weight of a man choosing to cross a line.
"No one else is suitable," he added. "Not in ability. Not in… the weight you carry."
Then, as if it cost him to say it aloud:
"Even the former Crown Prince Wilhelm was… far inferior."
Oskar's face didn't change.
Inside, however, something in him leaned forward.
So the civil faction is moving.
Or at least—this man was.
---
Oskar set the bottle down on the rail, folded his hands behind his back, and gave Kiderlen-Waechter the calm, pleasant look of a prince who had never once needed anyone's permission to exist.
"State Secretary," he said gently, "you flatter me."
He turned his gaze toward the sea as if the horizon were more interesting than crowns.
"Whether I become Crown Prince is my father's decision," he continued. "I will support whatever choice His Majesty makes."
The words were perfect.
Obedient. Humble. Unthreatening.
And, in the strictest sense, carefully incomplete.
Because Oskar would not surrender the crown now—not for pride, but for his household. For his children. For everything he had already dragged into being.
He would wear the dutiful-son mask as long as it served.
And if the world demanded a different face later…
…it would receive one.
For a moment he said nothing more.
Nassau drove on through the grey North Sea, turbines humming beneath their boots like a restrained beast.
Then Oskar spoke again, quieter now, voice pitched so only the man beside him could hear.
"My goal has never been a title."
Kiderlen-Waechter studied him in profile, measuring the line between sincerity and ambition.
"Whether I remain 'acting' or become something firmer," Oskar went on, "I intend to do the same work." He let a breath of wind pass between them. "To make sure the Empire survives what is coming."
When he spoke again his tone hardened—not into drama, but into the cold clarity of someone who had already looked over the edge.
"The next war will decide whether Germany remains a great power," Oskar said, "or becomes a lesson."
The State Secretary's mouth tightened.
"If we lose," Oskar continued, "the Empire won't 'decline.' It breaks. Not politely. Not with speeches. And our people will pay for it for generations."
That was the difference between Oskar and the old court talkers.
He didn't sound like a man arguing policy.
He sounded like a man counting graves.
Kiderlen-Waechter was silent for a beat, coat tugged by wind, salt settling invisibly on the rail.
Then he inclined his head—slightly.
"Your Highness," he said, quieter now, "the Chancellor and I… are not blind."
Oskar didn't move.
"For a long time," Kiderlen-Waechter continued, choosing each word as if it were a document being signed, "the civil ministries maintained neutrality. Not because we doubted your ability… but because our world survives on stability, and stability dislikes surprises."
A faint, dry breath.
"You are," he added, "by nature, a surprise."
Oskar's mouth twitched—almost a smile.
"And yet we have watched the results," Kiderlen-Waechter said. "Industry aligns. The Navy rises. The police reforms hold. The treasury stops bleeding." His eyes held Oskar's now, direct. "It would be foolish to pretend any other man in the Empire can carry what you are carrying."
He paused—then spoke the next line like a key turning in a lock.
"This is not flattery," he said. "It is a decision."
Oskar waited.
"From this point forward," the State Secretary continued, "you will have the support of the Chancellor's office—and of my ministry—so long as you continue to act as the Empire's stabilizing force."
There it was.
Not worship.
Not romance.
A bargain made by men who understood how power really moved.
Oskar felt something in his chest loosen—barely. He didn't allow it to show.
"Is that also the Chancellor's intention?" he asked.
"Yes," Kiderlen-Waechter replied at once. "He asked me to speak plainly."
Oskar nodded once.
Then he gave the only answer a prince could give without sounding like a man biting at the throne.
"Then I accept your support," he said quietly. "And I will continue what I have done—protecting the state, preparing it, strengthening it."
His eyes drifted back to the sea.
"I will not waste what you are investing."
Kiderlen-Waechter exhaled as if he hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath.
After that, they spoke for a time—France, Russia, Britain's mood, the tightrope Germany walked between strength and provocation. Oskar asked questions that sounded simple but weren't. He answered with restraint, saving the sharper truths for the inside of his skull.
It left the State Secretary quietly unsettled.
Not because Oskar sounded foolish.
Because Oskar sounded more knowledgeable than he had expected, especially regarding Russia and even China and it's Qing Dynasty for some reason.
---
By the following afternoon, SMS Nassau reached the Thames estuary.
The sky was low and pale. The water thickened with traffic—pilot boats, tenders, signal flags snapping in damp wind. In the distance, London's smoke hung like a veil that never truly lifted.
Foreign warships were directed to anchorage as arranged. Flags from many nations floated side by side—bright cloth above grey steel.
Britain was mourning.
Britain was also performing.
A naval review would accompany the ceremonies—an elegant reminder that even in grief, the island still ruled the sea.
Oskar stood at the rail and watched the English coast draw closer.
He didn't smile.
He didn't frown.
He simply looked—measuring, memorizing.
Then he said softly, almost to himself:
"We're close enough to London to smell it."
Kiderlen-Waechter glanced at him.
Oskar's eyes stayed on the shore.
"Let us hope," he murmured, voice smooth as oil, "that the next time a German battleship comes this near…"
A beat.
"…it is still welcomed."