The 1980s and 90s were marked by an almost bizarre confluence of powerful births within the elite circles surrounding the Romanov Tsar in Russia. It was as if destiny, though Anatoly was free from its strings, was overcompensating by seeding his immediate environment with exceptional individuals destined for greatness—and, crucially, for loyalty.
In the opulent home of a Duke who commanded the Tsar's vast financial holdings, a baby named Yor Forger was born in 1989. Her movements, even as an infant, were unnaturally precise, her grip impossibly strong—the silent herald of her lethal talent. In the bureaucratic heart of St. Petersburg, to the Minister of Information, Makima was born, her golden eyes holding a disconcerting, almost hypnotic authority.
Among the Royal Guards, steeped in military tradition, Altria Pendragon arrived, a daughter whose bearing, even in childhood, exuded the noble, martial spirit of a true king. Bulma, the daughter of a brilliant, though eccentric, Imperial Academy scientist, was born with an instinctive grasp of mechanics far surpassing any adult.
The scientific community also yielded fruit: Vegapunk (and her split personas) was born to a high-ranking naval engineer, displaying a fractured yet unparalleled genius from the moment she could babble. Isabella, a daughter of a family managing the vast network of state-owned agricultural resources, showed an early, chilling mastery of observation and manipulation.
Even the Tsar's personal security forces welcomed two unusual additions: Roberta, the formidable daughter of a Royal Guard Captain, possessed a protective ferocity that bordered on the superhuman; and the Pleiades, born to various loyal officers and retainers, forming a disparate yet perfectly unified set of highly capable handmaidens and protectors.
Anatoly's childhood was one of gilded cages and intense, hyper-accelerated education. He didn't just study history; he analyzed the flaws in every past imperial structure, calculating the exact leverage points needed to maintain absolute control. With Rick Sanchez's intellect, learning became less a process and more an instant assimilation of data. By age five, he was calculating complex differential equations in his head; by ten, he had mastered seven languages and was reading esoteric quantum physics journals for leisure.
His teachers, the most brilliant minds in Russia, often found themselves baffled and sometimes intimidated by the depth of his questions. They saw not a child, but a rapidly evolving supercomputer housed in the body of a prince.
Crucially, his innate powers—Absolute Existence, Nexus Singularity, Omni-Energy Manipulation, and Teleportation—remained a perfect secret. His DNA tests, required regularly by the paranoid Imperial court, always came back utterly unremarkable, precisely as he had wished. He practiced his Teleportation and energy manipulation in the private, soundproofed sanctuaries of the palace, mastering the control of his soul-based abilities. He found that Omni-Energy Manipulation was not merely about blasting things; it was about manipulating the fundamental energy of reality, allowing him to subtly influence electromagnetic fields, thermodynamic states, and even localized gravity.
His interactions with the "new generation" were carefully managed. Esdeath, with her growing, undeniable mastery over ice, became his fiercest protector, viewing the world only through the lens of serving him and weeding out the weak. Yor was a shadow, silent and deadly, her loyalty absolute. Makima, unsettlingly perceptive, seemed to understand his unspoken intentions before he voiced them. Altria, Bulma, Vegapunk, and the others all gravitated toward him, their powerful, unique abilities and geniuses dedicated entirely to his person and the crown he represented. They grew up not just as loyal subjects, but as a coterie of devoted, powerful women who saw him as the apex of existence, the embodiment of the nation's strength.
By his eighteenth birthday in 2007, Anatoly was no longer just the heir; he was the primary power broker behind the throne. His strategic mind had identified the crucial weakness of Russia's absolute control: economic stagnation and reliance on old-world industry.
"Power is meaningless without global leverage," he mused to his Grand Duke advisor, who was secretly Bulma's father.
On January 1st, 2007, he officially inaugurated Frontier Industries, a state-backed, yet privately managed, conglomerate positioned as Russia's leap into the 21st century. Leveraging his unmatched intellect, the first product lines were not gadgets, but medical miracles.
Within months, Frontier Industries announced the successful, absolute cure for AIDS/HIV, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease. The world medical community was stunned, suspecting fraud until the cures, backed by impossibly flawless clinical data Anatoly had personally generated, proved irrefutable.
The pricing strategy was an extension of his geopolitical chess game. For Russian citizens, a vile cost the affordable sum of 500 USD, reinforcing the Royal Family's image as benevolent providers. For the rest of the world, desperate to save millions, the price was a steep 5,000 USD per vile. The revenue flooded the Imperial coffers, securing Russia's economic dominance overnight and making the Romanovs untouchable by foreign debt.
The next wave was technological. By 2008, Frontier Industries began mass-producing and exporting devices that were 18 years ahead of the curve. True, fully autonomous, self-driving cars, smartphones with processing power that dwarfed anything Apple or Samsung were dreaming of, ultra-high-resolution holographic cameras, and self-maintaining quantum computers. Bulma's practical engineering genius, guided by Anatoly's designs, ensured flawless, scaled production.
Across the globe, the reaction was a mixture of awe, panic, and burning resentment.
In Washington D.C. and the halls of the CIA, Russia was no longer viewed as a struggling post-Soviet state, but as a monolithic, technologically superior threat. The cures had bought them global good will, but the technology was a sledgehammer to Western economic dominance. Nick Fury, then a rising star in what would become S.H.I.E.L.D., pored over intelligence reports, finding only frustratingly vague data on the "Prince Anatoly" who seemed to be the source of this revolution. "He's too smart, too fast," Fury muttered to a subordinate.
Tony Stark, still a cocky arms dealer in 2008, openly mocked the Russian products at first, but secretly, the blueprints that managed to leak out troubled him. "Impossible power density in those batteries," he ranted to Pepper. "It violates everything we know about superconductors. They must have found a new element—or a genius we haven't heard of."
In the criminal underworld, the Kingpin and The Hand watched Russia with grudging respect. The Tsar's government was too stable, too powerful to touch. They had to deal with Frontier Industries' security technology, which was already rendering their usual surveillance countermeasures obsolete.
Hydra, ever the opportunists, viewed Russia's new stability with cautious optimism. Could the technology be weaponized? Could the Absolute Heir be subverted? Their attempts to infiltrate Frontier Industries, however, were brutally dismantled, often before their agents even crossed the Russian border, thanks to Makima's surveillance network and Esdeath's brutal efficiency in internal security.
Wakanda, normally isolated, had its interest piqued. The medical cures were legitimate, but the rapid technological leap was suspicious. General Okoye noted, "Their advancement is linear, yet exponential. It is as if a single mind is directing the entire course of human progress from Moscow."
The power structure had fundamentally changed. Russia, ruled by an absolute monarch, backed by impossibly loyal super-soldiers and super-geniuses, and possessing the world's most advanced technology and medical solutions, was now the undisputed global superpower, and Prince Anatoly was their absolute ruler in waiting.