Chapter 11 – The Age of Revolutions (1600–1800 CE)
By the seventeenth century, the world no longer looked like the one Ivar had first bled into.
Steel had not vanished, but it had found new companions: musket and cannon, powder and shot. Kings did not only wield crowns; they wielded parliaments, treasuries, colonies that sprawled across oceans.
And yet, for all the changes, men still killed one another for ambition, faith, and pride. That had not changed at all.
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The English Civil War
England tore itself apart in the mid-1600s. Cavaliers with flowing hair fought Roundheads with grim mouths, kings bled, parliaments rose.
Ivar fought in both camps, though never for their causes. To one side he was a mercenary knight with twin blades flashing amidst musket smoke. To the other, he was a hardened veteran who laughed at cannon fire and led charges through hedgerows thick with powder haze.
At Naseby, he cut through musketeers like a storm splitting trees. When a soldier asked him why he fought, Ivar only shrugged. "Because I'm here. Because you're here. Because war never asks permission."
When Cromwell's iron discipline triumphed, Ivar slipped away, knowing the world had no use for kings who mistook divine right for immortality. He had seen too many crowned heads fall to ever be surprised.
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The New World
In the decades that followed, ships carried Europe's hungers west. Colonies sprouted, forests burned, and the native peoples were forced into wars they had never wanted.
Ivar crossed the Atlantic not once, but many times—sometimes aboard Spanish galleons, sometimes English caravels, sometimes Dutch merchants. He fought in jungles where the air itself felt like a blade, where disease killed more soldiers than muskets. He stood with native tribes when settlers sought to crush them, and with settlers when tribes struck back in vengeance.
He did not choose sides. He chose survival. But each time, he whispered thanks when he lived, never cursing the gods for the chaos men made of the earth.
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The American Revolution
By the late 18th century, rebellion had taken root across the ocean. Colonists rose against the British crown, demanding freedom in words that echoed Spartacus' dream centuries earlier.
Ivar fought among them, though not in uniform. To Washington's men, he was the stranger with storm-colored eyes who appeared when the fight was hardest, cutting down redcoats with blades faster than musket fire. At Trenton, he moved like a phantom through snow and smoke, his swords flashing as soldiers whispered of angels among them.
When asked his name, he gave none. Only: "A friend to survival."
He knew this revolution would succeed. He had seen it in their eyes—the same fire Spartacus carried, but tempered with patience, discipline, strategy. For once, rebellion was not only rage. It was craft.
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The French Revolution
But across the sea, France showed the other face of rebellion.
The streets of Paris turned red with blood in 1789. Bastilles fell. Kings trembled. Guillotines kissed necks with relentless hunger.
Ivar walked those streets, sea-green eyes watching calmly as mobs cheered liberty and murdered in its name. He fought in the chaos—not for the revolutionaries, not for the crown, but for the innocents caught between. He cut down men who would have killed children in the name of freedom. He dragged women from alleys where mobs tore dignity away.
Once, outside the shadow of the guillotine, a revolutionary pointed at him with wild eyes.
"You! You fight for whom?"
Ivar wiped his blade clean and answered simply, "For those who cannot."
The man spat. "Then you are no patriot!"
"No," Ivar said. "I am a survivor."
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Napoleon
As the century closed, a new storm rose: Napoleon Bonaparte. A general with fire in his bones, ambition in his blood, and destiny in his mouth.
Ivar fought under him for a time, marching with the Grande Armée as it thundered across Europe. He respected Napoleon's brilliance—how the man bent armies like reeds, struck where no one expected, moved faster than history could keep up.
But he also saw the shadow of pride. He had seen it in Caesar, in Cleopatra, in Crassus, in Spartacus himself. Pride was always the wound beneath the armor.
At Austerlitz, Ivar's blades carved paths through Austrian lines. At Jena, he cut down Prussians in the fog, his twin swords glinting like lightning. Soldiers whispered of him as a demon, a spirit, a storm given flesh.
But when Napoleon crowned himself emperor, Ivar turned away. He had no use for men who believed they could outlast history.
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The Perfect Demigod
Through these revolutions, through these wars, Ivar never cursed the gods. He thanked them. Always.
When a musket ball grazed his skull and he healed by morning, he whispered thanks to Jupiter. When a river closed his wounds after Trenton, he bowed his head to Poseidon. When a clever trick saved him from a guillotine's blade, he thought of Hermes.
He was the gods' perfect demigod—not because he was their strongest, but because he was their most grateful.
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Toward the Next Century
By the dawn of the 19th century, Ivar had walked through storms of steel and storms of fire. He had seen crowns fall, nations born, empires crumble, revolutions devour their own children.
But he knew the world had not finished yet. The greatest wars had yet to come.
And he would walk through them all.
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Do you want the next chapter (12) to cover the 19th century into the World Wars (Napoleonic aftermath, Industrial Revolution, WWI & WWII), or keep the pacing slower—a full chapter just on the Napoleonic Wars and their aftermath before moving on?