George Washington's Ghost

The twenty-four Electors: princes, a couple of princesses, one Duchess and various ‘Protectors’, could vote for whomsoever they pleased at the forthcoming ‘Imperial Conclave’, due to commence early next week. Although, from the outside it seemed odds-on that the Kronprinz, presently the uncrowned Kaiser Wilhelm VI of Prussia, the mercurial forty-four-year-old son of the old Emperor, ought to be a shoe-in at the Sanssouci Palace – Germany’s rival to the magnificence which had been Versailles before it was destroyed in the Great War – the traditional seat of the Kings of Prussia and in more recent times, of the German Emperor. However, nothing was quite so disruptive or corrosive as an Imperial election; and as was traditional, the most bizarre rumours were freely circulating in the city. Laughable as it might seem, many in the Crown Prince’s retinue constantly obsessed about suspicions that several of the more Catholic Electors favoured a Hapsburg, or even a revanchist Bourbon candidate. Of course, this was patently absurd because not even an Elector could seriously expect the people of the Grosse Reich to stomach a dispossessed French princeling on the throne, and the only available substantive Hapsburg contender would be the embattled King of Spain or one of his teenage sons, all of whom in terms of bloodlines were more Bourbon-Medici-Aragonese than Hapsburg other than in name. Nonetheless, that such improbable possibilities could be discussed at all, was illustrative of the unusually febrile atmosphere in the capital and the reason why so many of the great men of affairs presently resident in the city, literally, dared not go home until a generally acceptable new Emperor was actually crowned.

Infuriatingly, in accordance with twentieth century tradition – supposedly to avoid intimidation or bribery – Kronprinz Wilhelm was effectively, in purdah, inaccessible to the Electors and they to him, for the duration, other than in the course of holy worship, or in the joint fulfilment of ceremonial state obligations. Practically, and ludicrously, this meant that several of the Electors, members of the old Kaiser’s inner circle were not allowed to talk to other members of the interim Reich Administration.

The right and the left hand of the government literally did not know, and where not permitted to communicate, what was going on with each other.

And people honestly believed that the Germans were the most rational, organised nation on the planet!

“Hector and George dined with cousin Albert last night,” the King sighed. His distant relative, the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, was one of the two Thuringian Electors, very much a man staunchly in the Crown Prince’s camp.

Eleanor knew that cousin Albert – goodness knows how many times removed – had the rare knack of making her husband dyspeptic. It was ever thus if families. She had always found Albert harmless enough, albeit a little over-bearing, and a little too fond of the sound of his own voice. Not to mention, for a man with such a colourful past – in rotund middle age he remained an incurable philanderer – rather too self-righteous. He was also an inveterate schemer. Wealthy, having never had to seek, let alone pursued a profession other than opinionated lordliness, Albert had made a career of scheming for no better reason than, he could. At times such as these when it seemed to many that ‘everything was up for grabs,’ the only certainty in an uncertain world was that cousin Albert

was probably having the time of his life.

Meanwhile, the over-large gang of visiting monarchs, politicians and diplomats in Berlin to attend the funeral of the old Kaiser and the anointment of his successor, had been farmed out around the numerous summer and winter palaces of the capital and its surrounding royal estates; the Charlottenburg had been reserved for the British and, as they dribbled in from all over the world, the representatives of the Dominions. By tradition only the Dominions, not colonies, not even the larger ones sent representatives to the great set-piece pageants of foreign states. Therefore, while Chief Ministers and Governor-Generals from Dominions, such as South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the nefarious Maharajas of a clutch of self-governing states within the Indian Raj, and representatives of the largely self-governing sparsely populated Canadian dominions planned to attend the State Funeral of the old Kaiser, the King alone represented New England, Labrador and Newfoundland and the majority of all those other places stubbornly painted imperial pink on maps of the globe.