An idle king November 1635

Berlin Colonel Erik Haakansson Hand gazed down at the man who was simultaneously King of Sweden, Emperor of the United States of Europe, and High King of the Union of Kalmar. He was Gustav II Adolf, the pre-eminent monarch of Europe as the year 1635 came to a close.

The Habsburgs might dispute the claim. And if that powerful dynastic family could by some magic means recombine their splintered realms into the great empire ruled a century earlier by Charles V, they could probably made the claim stick. But the great Holy Roman Emperor was long gone. Today, it would take genuinely magical methods to reunite Spain and Austria-not to mention the newly emerged third branch of the dynasty in the Netherlands.

France was now weak, too. Gustav Adolf's general Lennart Torstensson had crushed the French at the battle of Ahrensbok a year and a half ago. Since then, Cardinal Richelieu's control of France had grown steadily shakier. King Louis XIII's younger brother Gaston, the duke of Orleans-usually called "Monsieur Gaston"-was and always had been an inveterate schemer who hated Richelieu with a passion. In times past, the cardinal had easily out-maneuvered him. But the disaster to which Richelieu had led France in his ill-fated League of Ostend's war against the United States of Europe had produced widespread dissatisfaction and unrest, especially among the nobility and the urban patrician class.

In short, Gustav Adolf ought to be basking in the most glorious sunlight of a life which had been filled with a great deal of glory since he was a teenage king. Instead, he was lying on a bed in a palace in one of the most wretched cities in the Germanies with his mind apparently gone.

Gustav Adolf's blue eyes stared up at Hand. Did he recognize his cousin? It was hard to say.