In another corner of the banquet hall, not everyone had even noticed who the Crown Prince was dancing with.
Oskar had already been pulled into so many dances that some men—especially the older ones—had stopped tracking the details. To them it was all the same: the prince moved, the women swarmed, the orchestra played, and the court did what courts did.
So Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria was still speaking quietly with his brother about military matters, as if the ballroom were merely a well-lit staff room.
Bavaria, after all, was not a decoration within the Empire. It was a pillar.
Its princes held real commands, real influence, real weight.
Rupprecht himself wore that weight naturally—tall, controlled, the posture of a man used to maps and casualty reports. He had risen far in the Imperial Army, reached general's rank, and among royal men he was widely regarded as something rare:
A prince who could actually command.
His brother, Prince Karl, listened with the same reserved seriousness.
Then a third voice crashed into their calm.
"Brothers—brothers!" came an excited whisper, far too loud for diplomacy. "Something has happened!"
Prince Franz—one of the younger Bavarian princes—appeared breathless, cheeks flushed with triumph, eyes shining as if he had discovered gold.
Prince Karl's frown deepened.
"Franz," he said sharply, "this is the Crown Prince's coming-of-age banquet. Do not behave like a schoolboy who's just seen fireworks."
Franz didn't even try to compose himself.
"He invited Gundelinda to dance," Franz blurted.
Rupprecht and Karl both went still.
"What?" Rupprecht asked, as if he hadn't heard correctly.
Franz nodded rapidly.
"His Highness invited her. Not the older one. Gundelinda."
For a moment neither brother spoke.
In their minds, the same calculation began at once—cold, instinctive, unavoidable.
Prince Karl was the first to break the silence.
"That is… excellent," he said, and the careful restraint in his voice failed just enough to reveal excitement. "If Gundelinda becomes tied to him, Bavaria's position inside the Empire strengthens overnight."
Rupprecht didn't disagree.
He simply looked across the hall toward the dancefloor.
From this distance he could see the picture clearly enough: the towering Hohenzollern prince, the young Bavarian princess in white, the court watching as if witnessing a vote being cast without ballots.
It was symbolism so clean it almost looked staged.
Rupprecht exhaled once.
"Stay here," he said to his brothers. "Watch. Learn. I'm going to speak to Father."
He found Ludwig in a quieter lounge beyond the main hall, where the noise of the banquet became a muffled roar behind heavy doors.
Ludwig III was resting—over sixty now, strong in reputation but undeniably aging in body. The past years had cost him energy. Politics always did.
Rupprecht entered with controlled urgency.
"Father," he said, unable to hide it entirely, "His Highness invited Gundelinda to dance."
Ludwig looked up.
For a heartbeat he simply stared, as if the sentence had to be translated into reality.
Then something woke behind his eyes.
Not greed.
Not hunger.
Relief.
Because the Bavarian court had spent years walking a thin line inside the German Empire.
Bavaria remained proud, old, and influential—so influential that Prussia and Berlin never fully trusted it. Under Wilhelm II the centralizing pressure had only increased, and every Bavarian prince understood what that meant: suspicion, limitation, slow tightening of the leash.
A marriage tie with the Hohenzollerns would change the temperature of the room for an entire generation.
It would not erase distrust.
But it would make open hostility more difficult.
Still, Ludwig's next words were not political.
They were paternal.
"Is she pleased?" he asked.
Rupprecht hesitated. "I… don't know yet."
Ludwig nodded slowly, as if reminding himself of what mattered.
"Then listen carefully," he said, voice firm despite his years. "This is not decided by us. Not by Berlin. Not by gossip. It is decided by Gundelinda."
Rupprecht's expression tightened slightly.
"If she likes him," Ludwig continued, "then we support it. If she does not—then we do not pressure her. We do not sacrifice her happiness to improve our position. Understood?"
It was not a speech.
It was a warning.
A king reminding his son that even in dynasties, love and consent were not completely dead.
"Yes, Father," Rupprecht said—obedient.
But inside, his mind still ran the same hard calculation:
This opportunity was too rare to waste.
Back in the ballroom, the consequences had already begun spreading.
The noblewomen who had dressed like war banners for the evening watched Gundelinda as if she had stolen something that belonged to them by right.
"Why her?"
"Why Bavaria?"
"She looks like she doesn't even want to be here—"
"That's the point. She looks safe."
Men noticed too.
Not with the same jealous fury, but with the sour awareness that something they might have pursued someday had been claimed by someone impossible to compete with.
A flower not yet fully opened—
and already taken.
They could resent it.
They could whisper.
But none of them had the courage—nor the standing—to challenge the Crown Prince of the German Empire for a dance partner.
Across the hall, among the military men, the reaction was colder—practical.
Tirpitz allowed himself a thin smile.
"Well done Oskar, my man," he murmured to Prince Heinrich. "This will steady the Empire and that boys reputation."
Heinrich's nod was almost invisible.
"Indeed, not bad," he said. "Hope he doesn't just do anything foolish with her."
Up at the imperial table, Empress Auguste watched with a quiet, evaluative calm.
"They seem to dance… well," the Empress murmured. "I wonder, will theirs also have violet eyes and silver hair, or be more like that other one."
That, in her mouth, was approval.
Wilhelm II leaned back, eyes narrowed—not displeased, not delighted.
He was merely thinking of alliances and politics.
When the music ended, Oskar guided Gundelinda through the final turn and brought her to a stop with the same controlled gentleness he used in everything when he was being careful.
He did not keep her trapped on the floor.
He released her properly, as etiquette required.
And then he spoke, softly, as if the ballroom did not exist.
"Your Highness," he said, voice polite and steady, "may I invite you to walk in the palace gardens? The flowers are in full bloom tonight."
He paused—just enough to make the invitation feel personal, not performative.
"After that," Oskar added, "I would like to introduce you to my family."
Gundelinda nodded positively at Oskar's words, and soon enough the two of them left the banquet hall together.
For a moment, it was as if the entire palace forgot how to breathe.
Inside the hall, people stared after them—dumbfounded. Those who had clung to even a thread of hope felt it snap. Those who had been planning their next "accidental" collision on the dance floor suddenly realized the evening's most valuable man had simply walked away.
Whispers spread in waves.
"So it's her."
"He chose her."
"It's Bavaria."
"Is it destiny?"
To many in the ballroom, it looked like the oldest fairy tale in Europe: the giant prince in shining uniform selecting the white-clad princess while the orchestra played.
A match made in heaven.
But the truth—at least for Oskar—was far less romantic and far more practical.
He wanted stability.
He wanted peace inside his household.
And, if he was being brutally honest, he wanted time.
A sixteen-year-old princess meant the court could stop screaming marriage now for a while. It meant "engagement in principle" without immediate catastrophe. It meant no woman arriving with hardened ambition and trying to dominate Tanya and Anna's territory like a rival general.
Gundelinda felt… safe.
Sweet. Gentle. Unarmed.
And yet, as soon as they were out in the gardens with the music softened behind stone walls and the air turned cool against their skin, Oskar discovered the real problem.
He had no idea what to say to a girl like her.
He could negotiate contracts. He could do dirty bed talk with his women. He could keep Louise at bay and act smug before women he knew well.
But small talk with a shy Bavarian princess, who he knew basically nothing about?
That was a battlefield with no maps.
So, after several seconds of silence in which he could feel his brain searching desperately for a topic that wouldn't sound like a committee report… he asked the first honest thing that came to mind.
"So, Princess," he said, completely serious, "cats or dogs?"
Gundelinda blinked.
Then, like a spell breaking, her hesitation evaporated.
"Oh—dogs," she said immediately, eyes lighting up. "Dogs, always. And horses. And—" she hesitated, then added as if confessing a secret crime, "I love ducks too."
Oskar's shoulders loosened with visible relief.
"Good," he said. "Then we can survive this conversation."
He snapped his fingers lightly toward one of the nearby guards.
"Bread," he ordered. "A lot of it."
The guard hurried off like he'd been commanded to fetch ammunition.
They reached the pond where the lamps cast soft gold across the water. Ducks drifted toward the shore with the practiced confidence of creatures who knew exactly how court life worked: humans gathered, humans grew sentimental, humans threw bread.
A bench waited near the waterline.
When the guard returned with a bag large enough to feed a small regiment, Oskar and Gundelinda sat down and began tossing pieces into the water.
The ducks came like polite beggars.
Then came a goose—big, stubborn, and fearless—landing with a heavy flap and waddling up as if it owned the palace.
Gundelinda laughed, startled.
"That one looks like a general," she whispered.
"It is," Oskar said gravely. "And it has come to demand tribute."
She giggled again, covering her mouth with her hands as if laughter itself were improper.
Blankets appeared—quietly, efficiently—because the palace trained servants the way Oskar trained factories: anticipate needs before they become complaints. Soon they were sitting side by side under one shared blanket, the air cool around them, the pond calm, the palace distant.
Oskar did something else that made Gundelinda freeze.
A duck waddled too close, bold with hunger, and Oskar simply reached down and caught it—gentle but firm, as if catching a cat.
The duck didn't even panic. It just kept eating.
Gundelinda stared, half horrified, half delighted.
"You can just… do that?"
"I am the Iron Prince," Oskar said solemnly. "All ducks fear me."
She laughed again, and the sound felt absurdly pleasant—like a small patch of sunlight in a life that was usually iron and deadlines.
The duck ended up between them, fat and content, sitting on their laps as if it had decided to supervise the conversation. Guards kept bringing more bread, and the duck kept eating as if it intended to bankrupt the imperial kitchens by itself.
Somewhere behind them, the banquet continued—because banquets always did.
Even when the main character walked out, the stage still demanded actors. And a ballroom full of unmarried nobles was basically a battlefield once wine entered the bloodstream. There would be flirting, farces, scandals, dramatic misunderstandings, and at least one person doing something they would blame on "the music" tomorrow.
None of it mattered to Oskar.
Not here.
Not now.
He watched a goose shove a duck aside with imperial arrogance and found himself laughing.
Then—because his brain was finally relaxed enough to be ridiculous—he said, deadpan:
"Why did the geese and ducks stop begging separately and form a union at the pond?"
Gundelinda looked up, intrigued. "Why?"
"Because," Oskar said, "they realized if they honk and quack together, the human panics and throws more bread."
Gundelinda burst into laughter so sudden and bright she almost dropped the bag.
She pressed her hands to her face, shoulders shaking.
"That's terrible," she gasped.
"It's true," Oskar said. "Never underestimate organized birds."
They talked like that for a long time.
Not about politics.
Not about shipyards.
Not about war.
About animals. About Bavarian forests. About horses and hunting dogs and how geese were secretly demons wearing feathers.
And as the minutes passed, Oskar realized something strange:
He was enjoying himself.
Not the way he enjoyed winning or building.
But the way a normal man enjoyed a quiet moment with someone who wasn't trying to take something from him.
Gundelinda admired him, of course. How could she not? Oskar had become a legend across the empire. Even girls her age whispered his name like a story: the Iron Prince, the giant who built engines and books and cities, the man who stared down the future and refused to blink.
But her admiration wasn't sharp.
It wasn't hungry.
It was… sincere.
And that sincerity made him softer than he expected.
Eventually, the pond grew darker, the air cooler. The duck between them had eaten enough bread to start resembling a small barrel.
Oskar cleared his throat, suddenly remembering he was supposed to be a prince.
"Your Highness," he said, polite again, "how long will you be staying in Berlin? There are… attractions. If you wished, I could show you the city."
Gundelinda's expression softened with regret.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I miss my mother. We return to Munich tomorrow."
Then she hesitated—and gathered courage the way she had gathered it all evening.
"But… if you ever visit Munich," she said, eyes bright, "I would like to show you our gardens. And the countryside. And… everything."
Oskar felt a small spark of victory—not political victory, not industrial, but something more personal.
"I will," he said simply. "I promise."
Her smile made the lamps seem warmer.
After that, he brought her back inside.
Not to throw her to wolves.
To introduce her to his reality.
His household table wasn't like any other noble table. It was less "imperial banquet" and more "organized chaos." Children, bottles, laughter, sharp-eyed women who had seen too much and learned to share power rather than fight over it.
Tanya and Bertha led the first wave like experienced commanders.
Anna followed, calmer but watching everything.
Cecilie arrived with careful posture and careful eyes.
Louise floated in like a mischievous spirit.
Questions came quickly—gentle ones, sharp ones, curious ones. Gundelinda tried to answer with dignity, but the sheer intensity of being examined by Oskar's inner circle made her look like a deer surrounded by polite wolves.
Then—unexpectedly—salvation arrived in the form of a three-year-old.
Little Lailael climbed onto the table with total authority, held out a biscuit with both hands, and offered it to Gundelinda like a sacred treaty.
Gundelinda froze.
Then accepted it.
Lailael giggled—bright, delighted, as if she had just decided you are safe.
And in that instant, the tension cracked.
The women laughed.
The children leaned closer.
Gundelinda finally smiled properly.
And the rest was history.
By the next morning, the news had already spread.
That Prince Oskar—and, more importantly, his household—had taken a clear liking to Princess Gundelinda of Bavaria raced through the German Empire with astonishing speed. Newspapers couched it in careful language, court bulletins spoke of "cordial impressions," and cafés buzzed with rumor. But among the people, the reaction was simple.
They approved.
In the popular imagination, a handsome prince and a gentle princess belonged together as naturally as crown and head. In taverns and markets, in factories and village squares, people spoke of it with something close to relief. The south—Catholic, traditional, proud—saw in Gundelinda a familiar face. The north—Lutheran, industrial, confident—saw in Oskar a symbol of the future.
For a brief moment, cultural lines blurred.
Bavarians spoke of our Crown Prince.
Prussians spoke of our princess.
It was not unity born of policy.
It was unity born of story.
Among the elite, the reaction was colder—but no less decisive.
A marriage alliance between the Hohenzollern and Wittelsbach houses would do what years of decrees had struggled to achieve: it would make the Empire feel less like a hierarchy imposed from Berlin and more like a shared structure. Bavaria was old, proud, and influential. Binding it to the imperial family by blood would stabilize the southern states and make any challenge to Hohenzollern authority far more difficult.
Some sighed.
Some calculated.
Some quietly gave up plans that had depended on a weaker center.
Wilhelm II took the matter seriously enough to summon Oskar the same day.
He did not waste time.
"Oskar," the Kaiser said once the door was closed, "I assume you have formed a favorable impression of Princess Gundelinda."
Oskar nodded.
"Yes, Father. I find her suitable. I can see her as one of my wives in the future."
The words were steady, but not romantic. He did not speak of love. He spoke of compatibility—of calm, of balance. Of a person who could stand beside his life without tearing it apart.
Wilhelm II studied him closely.
"You know," the Emperor said after a moment, "that I have spent years weakening the regional royal houses. Reducing their autonomy. Centralizing authority under the Hohenzollerns."
Oskar inclined his head. Of course he knew.
"Bavaria," Wilhelm continued, "is the most influential of them. And the most difficult. If you marry into their house, I will have to adjust my policy."
Oskar did not hesitate.
"Father," he said calmly, "centralization is not a single act. It is a process. If we push too hard, we invite resistance. Bavaria does not need to be crushed—it needs to be absorbed."
Wilhelm raised an eyebrow.
"Through marriage?"
"Through trust," Oskar replied. "Through gradual alignment. Influence instead of force. Weakening their independence quietly, while giving them the feeling of belonging."
He paused, then added—practical as ever:
"Princess Gundelinda will not inherit Bavaria. Neither will her children, unless catastrophe strikes her family. This marriage poses no threat to the throne. It only reduces friction."
Wilhelm II leaned back, fingers steepled.
He understood the logic.
He also understood the risk.
At last, he nodded.
"Very well," he said. "I will not oppose this. If you believe this path strengthens the Empire, then take it."
Relief passed through Oskar like a released breath.
"Yes, Father."
"You have proven," Wilhelm II continued, "that you understand power better than most men twice your age. Handle this carefully. Do not create expectations you cannot later manage."
"I won't," Oskar said simply.
When he left the palace, the weight he had carried since the banquet finally loosened.
The hardest obstacle had been cleared.
The rest would be… manageable.
He did not return home.
Instead, he took Karl and went straight to Pump World.
The iron did not care about dynasties or marriage alliances. The bar did not ask questions. The weights did not whisper.
Oskar lifted.
Karl lifted.
They lifted.
The clang of iron drowned out thoughts of ceremony, politics, and whispered futures. For a while, there was only breath, muscle, and the familiar burn that reminded him he was still human beneath the title.
Tomorrow, he would go to Munich.
Tomorrow, he would see Gundelinda again.
But tonight, at least, he could roar like a lion and let the world wait.