The welcoming banquet—full of theatrical camaraderie and perplexing hints—left Prince Wilhelm in a state of restless confusion.
After the festivities, most Prussian officials and scholars were escorted toward the Royal Opera House.
But Wilhelm, along with his alleged "court jester" Bismarck—whom he still could not decipher—was invited by Arthur Lionheart to the most private cigar room within Buckingham Palace. The pretext was simple, delivered with disarming charm:
"I have a few rare cigars from Cuba. A shame to smoke them without proper company."
The room itself was small, luxuriant, almost conspiratorial.
Silk wallpaper shimmered in the lamplight; rich leather, sandalwood, and the warm edge of fine tobacco thickened the air. It was a man's room—designed for smoke, secrets, and strategy.
Arthur did not play the aloof British host. He cut and lit the cigars himself, handing them to Wilhelm and Bismarck with an easy grace.
"Try these," he said. "Like Prussian beer, they do a man good—they make him forget what weighs on him."
Wilhelm accepted his cigar stiffly. He smoked, yes—but never anything so decadent, so potent.
Bismarck, meanwhile, took his without ceremony, inhaled deeply, and exhaled a perfect ring of smoke. His expression made clear: this was what life ought to taste like.
For a while, the three men let the silence thicken, the smoke drifting between them like a living thing.
Eventually, Wilhelm spoke. His voice was taut.
"Your Highness, I still cannot understand why you embraced Otto before all your court today. I am the future King of Prussia, and yet…"
He hesitated.
"…yet I was eclipsed by a country squire."
Arthur smiled lightly—too lightly for Wilhelm's comfort.
Instead of answering, Arthur crossed the room to the enormous map of the world mounted upon the wall.
He picked up a piece of red chalk and drew a slow circle around the German Confederation—that fragmented patchwork of more than thirty states.
"Your Royal Highness," Arthur began, calm yet possessing the gravity of a man used to moving nations, "before answering your question, allow me to ask one of my own. Where do you believe Prussia's future lies?"
Wilhelm straightened, almost offended by the simplicity.
"In our army, of course—and under our King's command."
"A bold answer," Arthur said, shaking his head with gentle scorn, "and a narrow one."
He turned to Bismarck.
"Otto, tell His Highness what I would have said."
Bismarck lowered his cigar.
His rough exterior seemed, for a moment, to melt into something sharp and calculating. His words were few:
"Railways. Tariffs. And an open path to the North Sea."
Wilhelm blinked, not fully grasping the implications.
Arthur and Bismarck exchanged a look of effortless understanding.
"Excellent," Arthur said with approval, stepping back toward the map. His tone shifted—colder, more surgical.
"Your Highness, Otto has named the pillars of your future."
He tapped the red chalk against the chaotic lines of the German Confederation.
"Look at Germany as she stands—a tangle of states, currencies, and tariffs. To send a shipment of coal from Berlin to Cologne, you might as well sacrifice your hide at every petty border. Even the strongest army cannot march efficiently through a nation that cannot move itself."
Wilhelm's posture faltered. Arthur pressed on.
"The first step toward strength is not sharpening bayonets…"
He drew a bold iron artery across the map: Berlin to Hamburg, to Cologne, to Munich.
"…but this."
"Railways. The skeleton of a nation."
"Bind Germany with steel. Let people, goods, and resources move faster than any army. When a Bavarian brewer discovers he can sell his beer in Berlin within a day—thanks to Prussian rail—he will not obey the petty whims of his tiny king. When a Saxon mill-owner sees Prussian coal arrive at half the Austrian price, he will not resist you. He will beg for your leadership."
"That, Your Highness, is economic unification—far more stable than conquest."
Wilhelm stared as if watching the world rearrange itself.
Arthur moved north on the map, tapping the narrow, contested region between Prussia and Denmark.
"Schleswig-Holstein—the key to the North Sea."
"Prussia is a giant locked in a room with only one small door—the Baltic. And the key to your back door lies in Denmark's trembling hands."
He looked Wilhelm full in the face.
"Can a giant be called powerful if he must knock on a neighbour's door to breathe?"
A flush of humiliation crept up Wilhelm's neck.
Arthur gave him no mercy.
"Your path is clear."
"One: Bind the German states with a customs union and isolate Austria."
"Two: Forge a national railway network—steel is your sword."
"Three: Take Schleswig-Holstein with a justification so 'reasonable' that Europe cannot protest. Seize the key to the North Sea."
His voice hardened like tempered iron.
"Railways. Tariffs. Military modernization. This is the only road to European dominance."
Silence swallowed the cigar room.
Bismarck gazed at Arthur with something close to reverence. The Prince Consort had not merely understood his ideas—he had expanded them, sharpened them, made them inevitable.
Wilhelm stood before the map, his mind stripped bare.
Everything he had believed—honour, tradition, martial virtue—felt childish before this new vision of Germany shaped by economics, iron, and ruthless statecraft.
At last, he understood why the King relied on Bismarck.
And why Arthur Lionheart embraced Bismarck as a friend.
They were the same kind of creature.
Political beasts, unbound by the old rules, carving nations in the dark.
And Wilhelm—rigid, dutiful, archaic—felt suddenly like an antique relic, still polishing a knight's code while the world forged steel rails beneath his feet.