1636： The Saxon Uprising ARC - By Eric Flint Page 0,111

heard of Manfred von Richtofen?”

Seeing three heads shaking, the admiral clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Well, then! Gather ‘round while I tell you the tale of the Red Baron.”

Magdeburg air field

There was a small crowd waiting for Eddie when he arrived in Magdeburg. Not surprisingly, once Eddie finally discovered the nature of his mission.

No wonder they’d been willing to demolish part of Dresden!

As he listened to what mostly amounted to reassuring babble, once Rebecca Abrabanel explained the heart of the matter, Eddie pondered the political ramifications. Francesco Nasi hadn’t hired Junker simply for his piloting skills. His experience working with Noelle Stull as an investigator for the SoTF’s Department of Economic Resources had given him a wider and more subtle grasp of the USE’s politics than most people possessed.

So it didn’t take him more than a few seconds to grasp what lay at the core of this bold maneuver on the part of Kristina and Ulrik. In essence, a deal was being made. Unspoken, perhaps, but a deal nonetheless. The two royals would throw their prestige and status—which was what they possessed, given Kristina’s age, rather than any recognized “legitimacy”—on the side of Fourth of July Party and the Committees of Correspondence. In return, the FoJP and the CoCs would agree to maintain the USE as a constitutional monarchy rather than pressing for a full republic in the course of an open and full-scale civil war.

As with all bargains, everyone got something and everyone lost something at the same time. The dynasty would insure its position—but, inevitably, the actual power it wielded would diminish somewhat. Direct power, at least. The dynasty could still retain a tremendous amount of influence, depending on the personal characteristics of the specific monarch involved.

Or monarchs, in this case. Eddie wasn’t sure yet, because he’d never met Prince Ulrik at all and he’d only seen Princess Kristina at a distance. But the very logic of what he was hearing led him to the tentative belief that the USE could wind up with what amounted to a dual monarchy, under the surface of a reigning queen and her prince consort. Something like the reign of Archduchess Isabella and Archduke Albert in the Netherlands, before Albert died in 1621.

After all, how likely was it that a queen who’d been relying on the advice and counsel of her husband since she was eight years old—the same man who’d protected her from assassins while being wounded himself in the deed—would treat him as a mere consort?

From the viewpoint of the FoJP and the CoCs, the bargain also had its advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, gaining the allegiance of the dynasty would strengthen their position in the current civil war. Probably a great deal, given that it was really a semi-civil war in which a lot of people were still standing on the sidelines. Many of those people would be swayed by the actions of Kristina and Ulrik. And their actions would further undermine Oxenstierna’s prestige, which had already been badly shaken by his arrest of Wettin and was being continually undermined every day that Dresden withstood the Swedish siege.

On the negative side, most members of the FoJP and just about every member of the CoCs was a committed republican. They had never been very happy with the existence of the dynasty. Not in theory, certainly. Gustav II Adolf’s own character had defused that antagonism while he’d been active and in command of his wits. He was a dynamic and charismatic figure, after all, the man often called “the Lion of the North” and “the Golden King.” Perhaps more importantly, the Swedish king had always been shrewd in his dealings with Mike Stearns. The fact was, for all the many times they had clashed, the two men had always managed to reach agreement when necessary. It was clear to just about anyone in the Germanies that they respected each other and quite possibly even liked each other.

Still, the nation’s more radically-inclined citizens chafed at the idea of being under a monarchy, and the recent developments since Gustav Adolf’s injury at Lake Bledno simply drove home many of the reasons for their unhappiness with the situation. Monarchies are fine and dandy if you have a good king, but what if you have a bad one? Or, what was often even worse, faced a succession crisis?

No, best to be rid of the whole antiquated nonsense.

They wouldn’t be able to do that now, though. Not once Kristina and Ulrik landed