"Your Majesty, I suspect that you and I are not looking at the same map—nor, indeed, the same world."
The words of Arthur Lionheart, casual yet laced with supreme confidence, instantly darkened the expression of Tsar Nicholas I, a man as imposing and cold as the polar north itself.
"Prince Arthur," Nicholas asked, his voice as sharp as Siberian frost, "am I to understand that you question my judgment—or the military maps of the Russian Empire?"
"Not at all, Your Majesty."
Arthur turned with a polite smile—one that did not reach his eyes. "I only believe that your maps, while testaments to past glory, are… outdated."
"Outdated?"
Nicholas' brow furrowed.
Arthur knew this type of man: a ruler of iron will, inflated pride, and rigid convictions. To move such a monarch, one had to shatter his entire worldview and replace it with a grander, more irresistible vision.
With a gentle touch, Arthur set the globe upon the table spinning.
"Your Majesty, allow me to introduce an old philosophical, It teaches that the world is a single, interlinked whole, not a patchwork of isolated realms. In essence… a global village."
Nicholas blinked. "A… global village?"
"Precisely."
Arthur traced a slow circle around the spinning sphere.
"Where once a journey from Paris to St. Petersburg required a month by carriage, railways have reduced it to a week. Soon, telegraph cables will allow messages to cross continents in mere minutes."
"Our world grows smaller, Majesty. And in a shrinking world, the rules of power inevitably change."
Nicholas did not fully grasp the implications, but his political instinct sensed the significance.
Arthur continued, turning the globe to reveal the vast landmass spanning Europe, Asia, and Africa.
"Now, Your Majesty—look here."
His voice carried the measured authority of a strategist unveiling a revelation.
"This immense continuous landmass—densely populated, rich in resources, cradle of civilisation—I call it the World-Island."
"The World-Island?"
The phrase struck Nicholas like a thunderclap.
"Yes."
Arthur placed his finger on the western and eastern extremes.
"And the British Empire and your Russian Empire sit precisely at its two great gates.
We are the natural custodians of this World-Island."
His finger moved further.
"The Americas, Australia—merely distant peripheral lands. Expansive, yes, but secondary. For the next century, they cannot challenge the centrality of the World-Island."
Nicholas leaned forward, captivated.
Arthur delivered the decisive blow:
"The future of global supremacy will not be determined by skirmishes over barren Balkan hills or minor seas like the Black Sea."
"No, Majesty. True supremacy lies in our two empires shaping the commercial arteries and political order of the entire World-Island."
Arthur drew two clean lines across the globe with a golden stylus.
"One, a maritime trade route stretching from London across the Mediterranean, past Africa, through the great European colonies of the East, and onward toward the Pacific."
"The other—a continental route under Russian dominion—running from St. Petersburg across the breadth of your empire to the Far Eastern coast."
"Imagine it, Majesty." Arthur's tone was calm, almost seductive.
"Every shipment of goods crossing from East to West would travel aboard British merchant fleets—paying tariffs set in London."
"And every manufactured product moving from West to East would traverse the length of Russia—paying duties set in St. Petersburg."
"At that moment, the economic lifeblood of the entire World-Island would lie firmly in the hands of Britain and Russia."
"We would become the head and deputy head of this global village—its rule-makers, its collectors of tribute."
"Compared to that, would a war over the crumbling ruins of Constantinople still seem a noble endeavour?"
…
Silence.
A heavy, breathless, absolute silence.
Nicholas I stood frozen, staring at the slowly spinning globe as though seeing it for the first time. His old worldview—territorial expansion, warm-water ports, small Balkan conflicts—crumbled like chalk beneath a rising tide.
"Global village."
"World-Island."
The ideas—utterly novel, sweeping, visionary—hit him with the force of a storm. For the first time, he reconsidered Russia's destiny from a truly continental, global perspective.
His ambitions suddenly felt small. Petty. Even foolish.
He turned to Arthur not as a rival, but as a scholar gazing at a master who had revealed the hidden architecture of power.
"Prince Arthur… tell me…" Nicholas' voice was hoarse, almost deferential, "what should we do now?"
Arthur smiled inwardly. The fish was well and truly hooked.
"Your Majesty," he said with warm sincerity, "the first step in our grand project for the World-Island is simple: stability and peace within it."
He paused.
"And for that, I have a modest proposal…"