Novel Full Chapter 696: Return of the King
Chapter 696: Return of the King
The air in Berlin was electric.
The war was not yet over, but already the Reich celebrated a victory centuries in the making.
From the Reichstag’s marble balcony, Bruno von Zehntner stood alongside the Kaiser, his hands folded behind his back, bathed in the cold light of German dawn.
Below them, the masses roared, a sea of iron crosses, imperial banners, and black-white-red streamers that snapped in the wind like bayonets.
To the world, it was a moment of spectacle.
To Bruno, it was theater… necessary, immaculate, and final.
He did not speak first.
Wilhelm II, his chest armored beneath his ceremonial cuirass, raised his voice above the crowd.
“Today,” the Kaiser declared, “France returns to its destiny, not as a republic founded in bloodshed, but as a kingdom restored in dignity.”
A hush fell.
Bruno stepped forward, his voice carrying like a verdict.
“Henri de Orléans,” he said, “the rightful heir, returns not as a prince of nostalgia, but as a king reforged. His line survived exile, survived the tyranny of democracy, and has been tempered by the fires of war. The House of Orléans shall rise, not as a rival to Germany, but as a brother long forgotten.”
From behind the glass doors stepped Henri himself.
Tall, clean-shaven, dressed in a ceremonial uniform resembling those worn by the Prussian elite, but draped in the colors of House Bourbon.
At his chest glinted the sigil of the Croix de Lys Noire, a lily blackened by exile, resurrected by alliance.
The cameras clicked. The world watched.
The Hall of Mirrors had not seen such silence since the last king was dragged screaming from his throne.
Now it glittered again with chandeliers and sabers.
Bruno walked the length of the hall with Henri at his side, flanked by officers of the Kaiser’s Leibgarde and a ceremonial detachment of the French Republican Guard, now reformed as the Royal Guard of France.
They passed the bullet-pocked portraits, the broken remnants of revolution, and approached the dais where a gilded replica of Charlemagne’s throne awaited.
It was not the Pope who placed the crown, but the Kaiser himself.
“By the will of the French people and under the aegis of divine order,” Wilhelm intoned, “I crown thee Henri VII, King of the French.”
The crown descended. The hall thundered with applause, from French monarchists, from German generals, from diplomats who clinked champagne in smiling discomfort.
Bruno alone remained still, observing the optics with surgical precision.
A king without a kingdom, now granted one in exchange for obedience, he thought.
But it will do. France no longer bleeds. It kneels.
Later, as fireworks burst above the gardens of Versailles, Henri stood beside Bruno, nursing a glass of vodka.
He broke the silence first.
“Do they see me as a king, or merely your puppet?”
Bruno didn’t flinch.
“Both,” he said. “But that’s the price of resurrection.”
Henri looked down over the illuminated fountains.
“And what of the soul of France? Can it be ruled by someone she barely remembers?”
Bruno sipped his drink. His voice was level.
“Souls are made of myths, Henri. We’re giving her new ones.”
—
Far from the pageantry, President Salvador Cárdenas stood before the Congress of the Republic in Mexico City.
The mood was somber. The air was dry. And the ghosts of the Bourbon Restoration loomed heavy over the chamber.
The projection behind him showed stills from the coronation, already delivered by German broadcast: Henri’s crown, the Kaiser’s speech, and the banners of the new monarchy unfurling in Paris.
“Gentlemen,” the President began, voice flat and bitter, “this is not merely the end of a republic. It is the end of an illusion.”
He walked down from the podium, steps echoing in the silent chamber.
“France fell not because she lacked courage. She fell because democracy was never designed to survive a world remade by kings and machines. What fell in Versailles was not a government… but a belief.”
Whispers swept the room. Several South American envoys shifted in their seats, exchanging glances.
“You think Mexico will be spared? That Argentina or Brazil will hold firm behind oceans and neutrality? Look now at Europe, look at France! Look at what happens when the old blood returns with the steel of empire behind it.”
He gestured to the screen again, where Bruno stood like a shadow behind the French crown.
“That man… he is not content to simply rule the German Reich from the shadows. He reshapes the continent in the image of its past. And if we do not choose our place now, we will be assigned one later.”
A beat.
“Today it is France. Tomorrow it could be Colombia, or Chile, or even Mexico. Republics overthrown. Monarchs returned from the dust of exile. Latin America turned into a museum curated by the boots of Europe.”
He stared down the chamber.
“I will not let that happen. Not here. Not now. Not ever.”
The world held its breath.
In Europe, the House of Orléans wore a crown once more.
In America, old revolutionaries clenched their fists.
And across the oceans, as the drums of empire beat louder, the fire of resistance began to smolder.
—
The chamber was still.
President Cárdenas’s final words had landed like thunder.
His voice faded, but its echo remained, ringing louder in the minds of those assembled than the crowning chants in Versailles.
Rows of Latin American delegates, some in military uniforms, others in formal republican dress, sat frozen in uneasy silence.
The air felt thick with old fears and new resolve.
From the Venezuelan bench, General Escudero, a thick-necked man with a saber at his side, muttered something to his aide in hushed Spanish:
“They’ll come for us too. We’ve always been too proud not to matter.”
Beside him, the Brazilian representative, Deputado Leme, once a conservative monarchist turned staunch republican out of pragmatic necessity, tightened his grip on his cane.
He was pale.
The Paraguayan and Chilean envoys whispered rapidly in Guaraní and Spanish, exchanging glances like men sensing the wind change on a battlefield.
Even the Argentine ambassador, a man known for his inflexible neutrality, stared up at the grainy projection of Henri’s coronation with a haunted look in his eyes.
And then, slowly, the whispers turned to murmurs.
The murmurs to quiet nods. And the nods… to a unified silence.
A single voice broke it.
Minister Alejo Ramírez of Uruguay, a younger delegate with a trembling jaw, stood.
His voice quivered but held.
“We do not love Washington. Nor do we love Berlin. But we love our freedom more than either. Mexico is right. The monarchs come not to govern but to return us to chains… dressed in gold.”
He looked to President Cárdenas and gave a slow, deliberate nod.
“Uruguay will stand with the Allies.”
The dominoes fell quickly.
Brazil followed, reluctantly but firmly, its leadership unwilling to risk isolation in a world where ancient bloodlines were waking with fire behind them.
Chile, next, swore military cooperation and partial mobilization to defend its coastline and industry.
Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador, still bitter rivals, agreed to present a united front—if only to avoid becoming pawns in someone else’s war.
Even Argentina, after a long silence, finally relented.
“We will not kneel to Bourbons, Habsburgs, or Hohenzollerns,” said the delegate. “The age of empire must not be reborn on our shores.”
President Cárdenas watched them, stone-faced.
His hand trembled slightly as he adjusted the papers on the lectern.
He didn’t smile. He didn’t celebrate. Instead, he gave a grim nod to the aides at his side.
“Then prepare the cables. Contact Washington, London, Ottawa and Sydney… Latin America… will answer the call.”
He turned once more to the screen where Bruno stood tall beside the new King of France.
“Let them see we are not afraid.”
Outside, the cathedral bells of Mexico City rang for noon mass.
The cross atop the Palacio Nacional cast a long shadow down the Zócalo.
But beneath it, Latin America had made its choice.
Not for monarchy.
Not even for alliance.
But for memory.
For revolution.
For the future they still believed they could forge for themselves.
Europe may have been consolidated beneath the rule of Monarchy, with only a few pockets of resistance remaining.
But the new world, the colonial world, had begun to stir with the flames of resentment.
The fall of the French Republic for the fifth time, and the crowning of an old King returned from exile had been the final nail in the coffin.
This was no longer a war regarding pragmatic alliances forged under the banners of mutual gain, but rather an ideological one.
The old world versus the new.
Empire versus Republic.
Tradition versus modernity.
For forty years Bruno had done everything in his power to prepare for this day.
And now, he would finally have a chance to unleash all that he had built upon a world that refused to kneel in submission and the sisters of fate that guided its resistance.