While Arthur Lionheart quietly prepared a continental feast of division for the naïve "Uncle Sam" across the Atlantic, a very different drama was unfolding in the heart of Europe—
a drama he himself had set in motion.
Berlin simmered beneath late-winter skies, its politics swollen with tension and fractured loyalties. Prussia's new monarch—King Frederick William IV, the "Romantic Majesty"—was paying dearly for the sentimental idealism he had worn like a badge of honour since ascending the throne.
Eager to display enlightenment and uniqueness to all of Germany, he had impulsively launched a series of liberal reforms.
Some had merit—monetary reforms especially.
But the rest…
A catastrophe dressed in poetry.
He loosened censorship.
He pardoned scores of political radicals.
He even dreamed—madly—of summoning a United German Parliament, believing that constitutional harmony might achieve what centuries of blood and iron had not.
A lovely idea.
A foolish one.
The liberal bourgeoisie and university students adored him instantly, hailing him in the newspapers as "the Hope of Germany."
But those praises meant little when weighed against the fury of Prussia's true power base:
the Junker aristocracy—military landlords who regarded such reforms as heresy.
To their eyes, the king's actions were nothing short of treason against tradition, a capitulation to the French revolutionary contagion.
They resisted him in the Landtag with both velvet and knives.
Worse still, the great powers of the Holy Alliance, led by Austria's Prince Metternich, expressed "grave concern" about Prussia's erratic behaviour. Bavaria, Saxony, and the other southern states quickly joined in denouncing any idea of a unified parliament.
Thus the Romantic Majesty found himself in a dreadful limbo—
distrusted by the liberals, undermined by the conservatives, and ridiculed by foreign courts.
Politically isolated
and dangerously alone.
In such misery, the king reached for the only person he believed could truly understand him—
a rising favourite in court, a man with whom he shared discussions on philosophy and art, a man he imagined to be his kindred spirit.
Otto von Bismarck.
At Sanssouci Palace, Bismarck watched the king pace anxiously across the ornate chamber. Inwardly, a cold smile flickered in his heart.
What a sentimental fool, he thought.
Outwardly, he bowed his head with practiced loyalty.
"Your Majesty," he said calmly, "these difficulties are not an end, but a birth. All great enterprises must suffer pangs before their rise."
The king clung to him like a drowning man to driftwood.
"Otto… my friend… do you—do you have any solution?"
Bismarck's eyes glimmered with the quiet triumph of a hunter closing a trap.
"A solution, certainly."
He inhaled slowly, as if weighing an ancient truth, and then delivered the doctrine he had sharpened under the mentorship of Arthur Lionheart—
the doctrine of shifting blame outward and resolving internal crises through external force.
"Your Majesty, the reason you stand in this agony is not because your reforms were too bold. It is because Prussia is not yet strong enough.
"Our voice is not feared.
That is why Austria mocks us.
That is why the southern states defy you.
That is why the Junkers dare challenge your authority."
"We do not need more compromise.
We need a victory."
The king blinked. "A… victory?"
"Yes," Bismarck said, each word clear as steel.
"A swift, righteous, limited war—one that unites our people, silences dissent, and proves that Prussia alone deserves to lead Germany."
The king's eyes brightened like a naïve child.
"But… against whom? France is too strong… and Austria is our ally…"
Bismarck hid a sigh.
He was no longer a parliamentarian—merely a court favourite. He lacked the authority to push the king into war on his own.
He needed help.
A whisper from above.
An external voice that the king admired, feared, and obeyed.
That night, Bismarck sat at his desk and drafted a long, private letter to the man that awakens him from worldliness, the only strategist he believed capable of reshaping Europe with a stroke of the mind:
Arthur Lionheart of London.
His letter was written with exquisite precision—half confession, half plea, all flattery.
He described Prussia's political crisis in vivid detail.
He outlined his idea of using a small foreign war to smother internal strife.
And finally, he wrote:
"My dear friend Arthur, —
I am convinced that war is the ultimate instrument by which political knots are cut.
Yet my poor king is blinded by poetry and reverie; he will never make such a decision on his own.
I do not yet know which 'weaker target' would serve Prussia best at this moment.
I implore you, to indicate a direction—
for me, and for a Prussia lost in fog."
The flattery was perfectly pitched:
deeply respectful, subtly submissive, and cleverly designed to place Prussia's fate directly into Arthur Lionheart's hands.
Bismarck was certain his would respond with an answer that would reshape the continent.
For he knew Arthur Lionheart far too well.
The man was a kingmaker concealed behind velvet curtains, steering entire continents with invisible strings.
A strategist who treated nations as chess pieces and history as his private ledger.
A man whose brilliance drew even Queen Victoria's cautious fascination—
She had grown bolder with him, teasing . And Arthur—with all his iron discipline—found it increasingly difficult to deny his advances.
But even Victoria's charm could not distract him from the letter now arriving from Berlin.
This was the game he alone could play.
And he would answer.
With precision.
With calculation.
With iron wrapped in velvet.
Because Prussia had asked for a guiding—
and Arthur intended to hand them a torch
capable of setting Europe aflame.