Arthur Lionheart's vision for the Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition, once presented to the court, ignited a blaze of excitement among Britain's aristocracy and financial elite.
With Queen Victoria's personal endorsement—and with the vast treasury of the Royal Promotion Association behind him—the project was launched with unprecedented speed.
Joseph Paxton, shown Arthur's futuristically elegant sketches and given precise guidance on modular iron components and prefabricated structures, was inspired as if touched by divine lightning. Within days, he produced a complete architectural plan—ambitious, breathtaking, and impeccably rational.
Orders for thousands of tons of glass and steel swept across the nation like a winter storm. In factories from Manchester to Birmingham, furnaces were stoked day and night. At Hyde Park, legions of workers dug foundations under blazing lamps, transforming the quiet green into a colossal construction site.
London trembled with anticipation.
The Empire was preparing to birth a modern wonder.
Yet beneath the festive surface…
A deep, simmering fury began to rise.
In a cramped, foul-smelling pub in the East End—thick with the reek of sweat, cheap ale, and soot—the atmosphere simmered like a boiler on the verge of rupture.
Dozens of workers' representatives sat packed together: exhausted textile hands with pallid skin, coal miners with faces stained by black dust, factory mechanics whose rough palms bore the scars of metal and fire.
Their eyes burned—not with alcohol, but with indignation.
"We can't wait any longer!"
A haggard textile worker slammed his fist on the table, voice trembling with rage.
"Those damned mill owners treat His Royal Highness's Factory Act like a joke. They smile at us in public—then force our children to work twelve, fourteen hours in secret! Last week, my neighbor's girl—ten years old—had her hand crushed in a spinning machine because she was too exhausted to pull it away!"
"Too right!" shouted a coal miner, his voice like gravel. "And the mine owners! They spend more on bloody carriage decorations than on a single extra support beam underground! My best mate died in that collapse last month—buried alive like a dog!"
An older worker sighed heavily.
"We went to the town council. We went to the police. None of those gentlemen care. To them, our lives are worth less than their hounds."
A new voice cut through the air—sharp, powerful, magnetic.
"Then make them hear you."
All heads turned.
From the shadowed corner emerged a tall man with piercing eyes and a presence that commanded the room: Feargus O'Connor, a leading firebrand of the Chartist movement—charismatic, radical, dangerous.
He strode to the center, lifted his arms, and began his speech with the fervor of a prophet.
"Brothers! How long must we endure?!
We built the factories.
We laid the rails.
We dug the coal that powers this so-called Golden Empire!"
"And what have we received in return?"
"Rotten bread! Leaking roofs! Lungs filled with dust so thick we're dead by forty! While the factory lords dine on champagne and mock our 'laziness'!"
A growl passed through the crowd.
O'Connor's voice rose.
"And now—now—they spend millions to build a 'Crystal Palace' to show off their triumphs! Every pane of glass, every bar of iron—bought with our sweat, our tears, our crushed bones!"
Rage erupted like a furnace blast.
"Aye!"
"Well said!"
"To hell with the capitalists!"
"We can't stay quiet any longer!"
O'Connor watched their fury rise—satisfaction flickering in his eyes.
He raised his fist.
"Brothers—unite!"
"I propose that on the very same day Her Majesty and the Prince inaugurate the Crystal Palace—"
"—we launch the greatest peaceful general strike in the history of London!"
"The factories shall stop!"
"The wagons shall halt!"
"The city shall freeze!"
"We march to Hyde Park—tens of thousands of us!"
"We stand before the Queen and before Prince Arthur Lionheart!"
"We show them the workers' strength! We let them hear—"
"The roar of the working class!"
"Strike! March!"
"Strike! March!"
The pub shook with the thunder of voices.
London's undercurrent had turned into a rising storm.
A storm aimed straight at the heart of the Empire.
A few days later — Buckingham Palace
Arthur Lionheart stood alone in his study, illuminated by the cold glow of a winter morning. In his hands lay a freshly delivered intelligence dossier—thick, stamped with seals of urgency, marked by the secret network he had built across the nation.
He read the report.
His brow tightened.
Then tightened further.
A mass Chartist strike.
Timed precisely with the inauguration of the Crystal Palace.
For the first time since arriving in this era, Arthur felt a genuine weight settle upon him.
Cannons could open the gates of nations.
Money could buy parliaments.
Technology could annihilate rivals.
But this—
This raw, ancient conflict between class and capital—
This was something none of his usual tools could silence.
To crush it would be to invite rebellion and shatter the image he and Victoria had so carefully shaped.
To yield would be to kneel before mob rule—and to alienate the industrialists who now stood behind him.
To fight would be ruin.
Not to fight would be ruin.
For a moment, the brilliant strategist felt something dangerously close to helplessness.
"This…" he murmured, exhaling slowly, "is a problem beyond even my expertise."
Outside his window, London glowed with hope for a Crystal Palace rising.
But a different force was rising too—dark, furious, unstoppable.
And Arthur knew:
The next move would determine the fate of his Golden Age.