The welcoming banquet drew to a close beneath a veneer of forced enthusiasm.
Prussian officials and scholars, flushed with drink, were escorted back to their embassy by their attendants, swaying contentedly as if the evening had fulfilled its obligations.
Bismarck—who had spent the entire night gulping down beer like an unrefined country squire—was forgotten almost as soon as he rose from his chair. Left to his own devices, he stumbled toward the palace gates, intent on navigating his way back to his modest, crumbling lodgings.
Just as he stepped outside Buckingham Palace, a discreet black carriage rolled to a halt before him.
A window lowered. The amused face of Arthur Lionheart appeared behind the glass.
"Herr Otto?" he asked in flawless German. "Was the palace beer to your liking?"
Bismarck blinked in surprise. He had not expected the illustrious Prince Consort to personally await him.
"Not particularly," he grumbled, belching openly. "Rather like your court's pleasantries—damned insipid."
Arthur laughed heartily. He pushed the door open.
"Splendid. I know a place where the drink has a bit more courage in it. Care to join me for another round?"
"Why the devil not?" Bismarck replied, grinning. Without a moment's hesitation, he climbed into the carriage of the Empire's second most powerful man.
Arthur did not take him to any aristocratic club.
The carriage wound through the nighttime streets until they reached a noisy sailors' tavern along the Thames, thick with the smells of sweat, pipe smoke, and stale beer—a place entirely beneath the notice of London's high society.
It was, however, one of Arthur's hidden strongholds.
The two men did not withdraw to a private room. Instead, they settled into a dim, half-concealed corner of the crowded hall.
"Sit, Otto."
Arthur addressed him with a familiar ease, his tone almost fraternal.
From a locked cabinet behind the bar, he retrieved a bottle of well-aged Steinhäger gin, its label yellowed with years, and poured two generous glasses.
"Try this."
At the first whiff of rich juniper, Bismarck's eyes lit up. He downed a long pull, the fiery spirit scorching his throat and warming every inch of him.
"Excellent!" he exclaimed. "This is proper Prussian drink!"
He found himself studying the Prince with new curiosity. This English noble was unlike any he had met—there was a wildness beneath his polish, something untamed.
"Otto," Arthur said, taking a hearty swallow of his own drink, "I confess I'm curious. What brings someone like you into that delegation?"
"Trying to make do." Bismarck chuckled bitterly. "My family pulled a few strings to send me to London—to keep me from causing mischief back home."
"Mischief?" Arthur arched an eyebrow. "What sort? Duels? Chasing after married ladies?"
"A little of both." Bismarck drained another mouthful. "I fought a few duels, made trouble, neglected my studies… After university I became a minor civil servant, but I couldn't stand the spineless fools above me. I resigned within a year."
He shrugged, offering a crooked smile.
"Now I spend my days in the countryside—managing a few hundred acres, worrying over potato yields and which pig to butcher next. Life is… tolerable."
Arthur listened without comment, then lifted his glass and clinked it against Bismarck's.
"Sounds rather comfortable," he said mildly.
Yet something in his voice—flat, cool, almost dismissive—made Bismarck stiffen.
"What?" he demanded, bristling. "Your Highness finds my life amusing?"
"Not amusing," Arthur replied, eyes fixed on the amber liquid in his glass. "Merely… regrettable."
"Regrettable?"
Arthur lifted his gaze. In the flickering candlelight, his dark eyes seemed to pierce straight through Bismarck's defenses.
"I saw many men at tonight's banquet. Learned scholars. Fawning politicians. Timid officers. But in only one pair of eyes did I see a hungry beast—fierce, restless, refusing the confines of a cage."
"That beast possesses strength. Ambition. It desires open plains, battles, conquest. And you—" Arthur tapped Bismarck's chest with two fingers, "—you have spent years drowning it in liquor and trivial duels, whispering to it, 'Be quiet. Be tame. Let us rot peacefully in this pigsty.'"
"Otto von Bismarck," he said, voice resonant, "is that not a tragic waste?"
Bismarck froze.
It felt as if the Prince had peeled back his very soul, revealing the yearning he himself scarcely dared acknowledge.
His knuckles whitened around his glass.
"Then what should I do?" he murmured, almost to himself. "I am a nobody—a provincial Junker with no wealth, no influence. Berlin's bureaucrats will never listen to a drunkard like me."
"Then make them listen," Arthur said sharply.
He rose, crossed to Bismarck's side, and set a firm hand on his broad shoulder.
"Otto," he whispered, yet the words struck like a blade, "a man is meant to carry his sword and carve his name into the age."
Bismarck did not understand the foreign phrase itself, but the tone—the vision behind it—filled him with fire.
"It means," Arthur continued in German, "that a true man forges his destiny with his own hand—not by boasting in taverns about petty duels, but by accomplishing deeds worthy of remembrance."
He finished his drink in a single swallow, then tossed a heavy purse of gold onto the table.
"The drinks are my treat. Otto, my friend, London is a distraction. Return to Berlin."
He turned toward the crowd.
"That is where your hunt begins."
Without another word, Arthur Lionheart vanished into the bustling tavern.
Bismarck sat motionless.
He looked at the purse of gold… then at his own thick, calloused hands—hands meant for far more than ploughs or tankards.
Arthur's words, like hammers striking an anvil, rang again and again in his mind.
A man must carry his sword and seize his destiny.
Slowly, he curled his fingers into fists.
The haze of drink lifted from his eyes, replaced by something fierce and incandescent—ambition.
When Arthur Lionheart returned to the Queen's private chambers, reeking of spirits and smoke, it was already past midnight.
He expected Victoria to be asleep. He tiptoed inside—
—and found her sitting upright on the bed in a silk nightdress, clutching a pillow, lips pursed in a jealous pout.
"So you've decided to return at last, Prince Arthur?" she said tartly. "I wondered whether some fair-haired Prussian lady had lured you away from home altogether."
Arthur smiled. His little wife was jealous again.
He slipped behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and buried his face in her delicately scented hair.
"How could I stray?" he murmured. "My soul was stolen long ago by a certain enchantress named Victoria. I've none left to give another."
"Flatterer." She softened visibly, though she wrinkled her nose. "You smell like a dockside drunkard. Where have you been? And with whom were you drinking to end up like this?"
"I made a new friend," he said, lifting her into his arms and falling with her onto the bed. "A rather fascinating Prussian—rough, provincial… and full of potential."
He recounted the evening's encounter.
"You truly believe that uncouth Junker could one day become… significant?" Victoria asked skeptically, her blue eyes wide.
"I do," Arthur replied, certain as prophecy. "I can see steel in plain stone. I can see the future of global communication in a simple wire. And I can see the future Iron Chancellor of Europe in a disillusioned young drunkard."
"Well," Victoria sighed, nestling into him like a spoiled kitten, "if you say so. But don't you dare return this late again. I was dreadfully lonely."
Arthur was about to comfort her with further sweet words when a sudden thought struck him like lightning.
May 1840.
He remembered well: King Frederick William III of Prussia would die in June.
In a single month, Prussia would have a new monarch—Frederick William IV, a dreamer fond of philosophy and art, but ill-suited for the hard calculus of war and statecraft.
Such a man could never unite Germany.
Yet within two decades, Germany would unite.
And its pillars would be Wilhelm I—
and the Iron Chancellor he had just sent back to Berlin.