And, finally, eight months and a week after it started, here is the last part of the End of the Century intermission. Enjoy!
Part III: The People that Make the World
Francisco Serrano and
Juan Prim, two of the main makers of Spain, died many years ago, before the Unification with Portugal: Serrano died in December 1885, while Juan Prim followed him just a few weeks later. Both of them were interred with full military and civilian honors in the Panteón Nacional de Hombres Ilustres, in ceremonies attended by the Royal Family and the Government in recognition of the great role they played in the formation of Spain.
Leopoldo the First, Emperor of the Spains, is 65 years old, and, although his health weakens, it does not diminish his compromise with the people of the Empire of the Spains. An agreement ensured that his official residence would change every six months, so he spends half the year in Lisbon and the other half of the year in Madrid. He cannot help but feel proud of how his country of adoption has not only accepted him, but greatly prospered with him as Head of State, and the smooth unification of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns and nations has proven to be one great idea, making him regret that time in 1870 when he renounced the throne of Spain. He can only hope that his son, Prince of Asturias Guillermo, will be up to the task of leading the nation into the Twentieth Century that looms before them.
Antonio Cánovas del Castillo has managed to recover a position close to the leadership of the Liberal-Conservative Party, although nowhere near to being able to become President of the Council of Ministers again. He currently holds the portfolio of the Ministry of Interior, where he is introducing reforms in the National Police Corps and in the prison network, trying to improve their efficiency and suitability to the new times. However, time stops for no one, and 72-year-old Cánovas seems to be bound for retirement after the next elections, which are to take place in 1901.
Alfonso de Borbón, he who for a few days was named Alfonso XII during the Hohenzollerns' War, is currently a high-ranked officer in the British Royal Army. Now a 43-year-old, he married in 1888 with Blanca of Borbón y Borbón-Palma, the daughter of Carlos, Duke of Madrid and Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne, thus pretty much unifying both claims upon the same person. This person is their first son, Juan, born in 1889. Juan was followed by Isabel (1893), María (1895) and, finally, Francisco (1898). He has mostly forgot about the idea of returning to Spain and taking back the crown, although there are still some fleeting ideas about the possibility.
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo is one of the foremost engineers and inventors Spain can boast of. His analogue calculating machines, capable of doing complex calculations within seconds, have started to spread around, particularly in the Navy, for use in shooting artillery, while the Army has requested whether it would be possible to make a smaller device for field artillery. His work with dirigibles has added many improvements to the project for their control and stability. And his work following Tesla's invention of the radio has pointed him towards the idea of controlling projectiles from long distances, something that has become a secret research project of the Spanish Navy. He also has ensured that a young engineer by the name of Mónico Sánchez Moreno can travel to the United States and further study the developments in the field of electricity to bring them to Spain.
Francisco Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral is an Admiral of the Spanish Navy. He is currently the man in charge of the African Fleet, headquartered in Luanda. With his varied background as governor in several of Portugal's colonies, he has also become an important advisor for the governor of Angola, and has also been one of the main supporters of the expansion of the franchise in there for the natives.
Winston Churchill is a young journalist, working for the newspaper The Morning Post as a war correspondent. He has been present in the Moroccan Civil War, the Second Boer War and several expeditions by the British Army into Sudan, which he also joined as an officer. However, right now his eyes are looking towards Parliament, as he intends to become a member of the House of Commons in the next elections, to take place in 1901. His American inheritance notwithstanding, he even dreams with possibly becoming the United Kingdom's Prime Minister, but that is too far in the future for him to be considered a possibility.
David Lloyd George is the Liberal MP for Carnarvon Boroughs, having held that position for eight years running despite a small scare after the failure of the Young Welsh organization he led for a few years. He also combines his position as a Member of Parliament, where he has harshly criticized the Government's actions in the conflict with the Boer rebels and the costs derived from it in both human and monetary capital, with his job as a solicitor, a position in which he has defended many a client.
Friedrich III is the German Emperor, and, even though he is close to the age of seventy, still in good form. Seeing the great revitalization that democratization brought to Spain, he has sought the gradual transformation of Germany's political scene, bringing it closer to the same system used in Spain and the United Kingdom. Thanks to the rewriting of the Constitution that he fully supported, he has lost a good part of his power, but still remains the theoretical most powerful person in Germany.
Otto von Bismarck has been deceased for a year already. Although somewhat disappointed with the direction Frederick III took Germany towards after his retirement, undoing part of his work, he could not help but notice how Germany flourished under the Emperor's rule, and he could be glad to say that his foreign policies were still followed by his successors in the chancellorship. It was also thanks to him that the German social programs took off, which many of his successors worked on, securing the vote away from the growing German Socialist Party.
Napoleon IV continues ruling over his small kingdom with quite a lot of pride, both in himself, his family and his people. His rapproachment with Spain and Germany has paid off, and the Corsican Army, while relatively small, is quite capable of defending the island and the territory of Tunis, the colony in northern Africa they managed to take control of in a daring campaign led by the King himself. However, with the political climate becoming strained, it is possible that the Corsican dream may yet die...
Jean Jaurès is a founding member of the French Socialist Party (born in 1898), and has been a member of the National Assembly for twelve years already. One of the foremost anti-militarist people in the Assembly, he has been arguing for years in favor of doing the best to dispel the revanchist feelings that pervade French society towards Spain and Germany, arguing that such a move can only lead to war, death and destruction. He has been far more successful in his efforts to support Alfred Dreyfus, unjustly accused of spying for Germany during the Hohenzollerns' War, through his constant speeches and demands that he be exonerated, since there is proof of his innocence. He is also working to introduce important social reforms to give workers the many rights they have been denied so far.
Georges Clemenceau is the owner of L'Aube, a relatively important newspaper, particularly between the voters of left-wing and centre parties. Formerly part of the National Assembly as a Deputy for many years, a defeat in 1891 for his seat prompted him to return to journalism, as he had done for years before representing the people as a politician. It was as part of his job as a journalist that he approved the publication of the highly controversial article “J'Accuse!”, written by Émile Zola, arguing in favor of Alfred Dreyfus' exoneration and pointing at the General Staff for incompetence, anti-Semitism and covering up evidence that proved the guilty party was someone else, among other crimes.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie has become the main proof for why women should not be restricted from attending and teaching at universities. Possessing a frightening – to some – mind, Madam Skłodowska-Curie has been able to work on many tasks related to chemistry and physics. Her research on the strange properties of uranium and other similar chemical elements, which has been dubbed “radioactivity”, have opened a new field of work, as well as many potential applications. Of course, that will require work to understand the properties of radioactivity, but there is little doubt that she will be able to unearth and show them to the world.
Theodore Roosevelt is the very popular 41-year-old Governor of the State of New York, a fervent persecutor of corruptive practices within the state and the main representative of the Progressive wing of the Republican Party, after two years as New York City Police Commisioner and another year as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His great efforts in that task, as well as forwarding other Progressive policies, however, prevented his candidacy to the Presidency, as the main GOP leadership saw him as a threat to their interests. Some Republican leaders actually suggested to nominate him for the vice-presidency, which would have put him out of business (so to speak) for four years, but Roosevelt replied that it was either the Governorship or the Presidency, so there went that. He does plan to present himself as a candidate for the 1904 elections, even if it is as a third-party candidate.
Aleksandr II died in 1893, at the age of 75, and he was cried for by pretty much everyone in the Empire of Russia, being called “The Great” and “The Liberator” by them for his efforts to liberalize and modernize the nation, casting away the chains of the Ancién Régime. His son, who reigned as
Aleksandr III, a far more conservative man than his father, could do nothing to prevent the liberalizing turn Russia was taking after the reforms carried out by his father, lacking the power to revert those changes, although his death in 1898 might have prevented further problems. The current Emperor of Russia is
Nikolai II, who, although somewhat naïve to some matters of state, has proved to be a good balance between the policies of his grandfather, who took upon himself to help his grandson learn the trappings of leading the nation, and his father.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov is a lawyer and one of the leaders of Narodnaya Volya, the second main left-wing party in the Duma, Imperial Russia's Parliament. Despite his youth (he is barely 30 years old), he has proved to be an able orator and savvy politician, as witnessed by several people during the many labor-related trials he has acted in (which have led to him being nicknamed Stalin, “man of steel”, for his unbreakable spirit in helping the poor and the workers) and during the last two years, ever since he was voted in by the people of Nizhni Novgorod, whom he represents. For the moment, he is content with his current role and with his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya, with whom he has one daughter, named Maria Elizaveta after their mothers, although there are rumors that he might consider the possibility of being the next candidate to Prime Minister for Narodnaya Volya.
Pavel Miliukov, founder of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Конституционная Демократическая партия, nicknamed Kadets), is the current Prime Minister of the Russian Empire. While a young party (it was created in 1883, after all), it managed to surpass Narodnaya Volya in terms of importance within the Duma in the 1893 elections and win the elections in 1897, as they provided the people with a centre-left party they could vote to. Most of his policies – industrial development, introduction of social reforms and workers' protection – have been welcomed by the lower classes of Russia, for too long oppressed by the nobles, who are funding the main opposition party, the Union of the Russian People (Союз Русского Народа) in an attempt to stop the “attacks” against them.
Nikola Tesla lives in his house in New York, and works in his main laboratory in South Fifth Avenue. His work with Westinghouse, developing the Alternate Current motor for his company, saved both Westinghouse and him, and provided him with enough money to fund most of his experiments. In mid-1895, he was able to publish the first image of a hand's bones (rumor has it that it was Mark Twain's hand), taken thanks to something that was later associated to the radioactivity discovered and studied by French scientist Henri Becquerel and the Curie-Skłodowska matrimony. Currently, the field of work in which he is concentrating is that of radio, trying to improve on the initial designs he patented a few years ago, in order to eventually create a new means of communication for mankind to use.
END OF INTERMISSION
CHAPTER VIII WILL COME SOON (OR, MORE LIKELY, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE)
