Queen Olga Nikolaevna of the Urals, from a European point of view, is undoubtedly a beauty, and her portraits are often included in the top ten European royal beauties of the 19th century.

But she is not a woman who is content to be plain, she is three years older than her sister Alexandra Nikolaevna, but she married four years later than her sister, and it is not for nothing. Historically, she had the opportunity to marry the Count of Hesse-Kassel, who was also the heir to the Danish throne, but she gave the prince charming to her sister.

This is not a generous one, as a princess of a powerful Russia, she will not worry about getting married, only better is not the best. She is waiting for a better marriage partner, but a big country like Britain and France obviously has no chance, and her biggest goal is only to marry a real king, even if it is only the king of a small country. So historically she married the heir of the king of Württemberg, Karl I.

The size of the Kingdom of Württemberg is not a small country in Europe, she has a population of millions, and is the top state in the German state, with Stuttgart as the center, dozens of cities in the territory, the geographical location is in the Rhine River Basin, the transportation is relatively developed, and the industrial level is good. Politically there was a constitutional monarchy, and there were not even any uprisings in the last revolution, because they had fulfilled all the demands of the revolution.

The national strength is also relatively strong, in the German Confederation, after Austria, Prussia and Bavaria, can be ranked fourth, Napoleon when he was on an expedition to Russia, Württemberg can send 16,000 men to accompany the battle, and the more powerful Prussia, only sent more than 20,000 people.

Württemberg is a relatively good country, but the husband is by no means a good match, Karl I is very ridiculous, he is a homosexual, and marrying such a person is not destined to be happy. Historically, the Olga couple had no children, and she adopted a nephew.

The sexuality of a prince, in an open European society, is impossible to be hidden, Olga cannot be unaware, but marrying Karl allows her to get a country, so she doesn't care.

So later, when Russia found out that there was a possibility of marriage with China, it quickly rejected Württemberg's family business, and when she learned that the Chinese emperor and grandson could also get a country, even if that country she had never heard of before, it was a country located in South Asia, she did not hesitate to accept it.

What happened after that was even more unexpected for her, as she not only got the kingdom of Assam, but also returned to Europe by chance and became the queen of the newly formed kingdom of the Urals. The queen, not the queen, has real power.

Olga herself has the character of a powerful woman in the history of the Russian royal family, and with the encouragement of royal advisers with ulterior motives sent by the Tsar, she is actually destined to become a queen like Catherine.

As for the absurdity of her husband Zhou Chun, Olga doesn't care. If she could become a queen like Catherine the Great, she could be ridiculous. But she wasn't interested, at least not yet, and until she gave birth to an heir to the throne, she had to be single-minded and make sure that the prince's blood was pure, or else she would cause trouble in the future.

The princes of the Urals were very simple, just a temporary royal palace, the yamen of the governor of the place in the past, Chinese architecture, plane structure, not deep, semi-open.

Olga likes to walk through the courtyard, but because of the design of rockeries and some winding corridors, it seems to have a strong sense of hierarchy.

Just passing by the rockery, suddenly met a noble young man chasing the palace maid, the man was startled when he saw Olga, immediately stood aside, bowed, Olga curtsied, smiled and nodded, and then left, she did not care about the debauchery in the court, even if the most debaucherous was her husband.

They found many young women of different ethnic groups in the Urals, and a group of Chinese gentlemen gathered together to discuss and discuss, and it was very chaotic.

Olga walked through the rockery to the front hall, she wanted to meet the president of the chamber of commerce in the flower hall, the chamber of commerce is a title in the Russian context, the Chinese call themselves the guild hall, the person who came is the head of the Shanxi guild hall, the Chinese generally call these public presidents the head of the bank, and the businessmen think that the chamber of commerce is also a guild, no different from the silk and cotton shops.

The largest merchant group in the Urals was the Shanshan merchants of the Shanxi Guild Hall. The Jin merchants were the largest merchant gang in northern China, and this is undisputed. But the Shaanxi merchant gang is more unique, their history is the same as the Jin merchants, they all started from the Ming and Qing dynasties, and accumulated wealth in the salt industry, but the Shaanxi merchant group has been smaller, and the Jin merchant culture is similar, in some places it is attached to the Jin merchants, united, in China is already like this, in those places that are geographically closer to Shaanxi, such as Sichuan, Guizhou and other places, their guilds are built together, called Shanxi guild halls.

The same is true in the Urals, Shaanxi merchants expanded from Guanzhong to the northwest, and the geographical advantages were more advantageous than the Jin merchants, but the Jin merchants had stronger capital strength, so they still united to expand and established the Shanxi Guild Hall in the Urals, becoming the largest local commercial force.

The queen meets business leaders for only one purpose, and that is for money.

After taking over power in the Urals, one of the biggest problems was always financial.

The development of the Urals, the Chinese have done a good job, at least better than the Russians developed back then. It already has a better agricultural base, an industrial and commercial atmosphere, and in many places is better than the Russian territory on the other side of the Volga, but on the whole it is still a relatively poor frontier region.

The better development is still the mineral industry that laid the foundation in the era of Peter the Great, and there is no shortage of minerals in the Urashan area, and it can even be said that the minerals are abundant, and the Chinese continue to develop here, and the scale is larger than before. The output includes the most important raw materials for the industry, such as coal and iron ore, as well as precious metals such as gold.

But the minerals here have always been exported, and not to China, in the Chinese industrial zone, there is no market for the minerals of the Urals, not because the quality is not good, but the transportation cost is too large, and the minerals here are easier to transport from the Volga and railways to the Black Sea and export to the industrial countries of Europe.

The industry is very backward, only relying on the railway to form some locomotive factories, the railway is bound to locomotive factories, not the production of locomotives, but maintenance, so the railway is a promotion to the machinery industry. Relying on the Volga water transport, there are also a number of shipyards. Other than that, the industry is very withered.

Commerce is quite developed, because a large number of products are cash crops, such as minerals and other products, must be traded, so commerce is relatively developed.

But none of this can sustain the operation of an independent state, especially the Urals, which used to be China's frontier, and the Chinese government can vigorously subsidize here, mainly relying on military expenditures to transfer financial funds here, and a large amount of military spending maintains the general military service system in the Urals. At the same time, agriculture is exempted from taxes, which is supported by farmers.

When Olga came to power, he found that the Ural kingdom, as an independent state, was simply unable to support these financial expenditures. Unless she is willing to abolish universal military service and adopt a low-militarized administration, her finances will only go bankrupt.

But Olga felt that it was a pity to abolish the Ural military system that the Chinese had invested huge amounts of money to build, and her Russian court advisers had repeatedly opposed this, believing that the most valuable place in the Urals at present was the reserve troops that were easy to recruit here.

For Olga, the geopolitical characteristics sandwiched between the two great powers of China and Russia make her afraid to adopt a weak militarized management style, unless she really wants to become a typical Chinese vassal state like North Korea and Annam, without any ambition or motivation.

There is another crazy idea that the Russians dare not mention directly, and that is that the Russians want to use the military power of the Urals. If the Urals carry out a general mobilization to help Russia fight this war, it will be foolproof.

So after the coronation, Olga has been trying to maintain the difficult finances of the Urals, which is obviously not supported by the taxes of the Urals alone, but fortunately this is a Chinese territory before, not an independent country, and the finances are very clean and there are no debts, which is better than the financial situation of any royal family or government in Europe.

In addition, she and her government are not the only such countries, they also have the relatively wealthy kingdom of Assam, but they do not need to bear any military costs, so in the past few months, Olga has been embezzling Assam's taxes to bear the finances of the Urals, but the taxes alone still can't afford it.

Olga was already beginning to reform the tax system, and China's tax rate was too low compared to European countries, and according to Olga's plan, she believed that the tax rate in the Urals and the Kingdom of Assam should be raised to the level of Prussia, which was the only way for small countries to maintain their military power. But there was widespread opposition among civilian officials, who had come from China's imperial examinations, and who had always resented militarization.

So Olga was forced to follow the old path of European countries, which was to borrow to get by.

To borrow money, of course, is to borrow from rich people, and whoever has money, of course, is a businessman who has money, at least on this earth.

So she had communicated with the biggest business forces before, Olga would not borrow in vain, she would give the other party privileges, such as licensing them to set up monopoly companies in certain fields, and the other party expressed his willingness to consider it, and this time she came to reply.

The person who came was a wealthy merchant from Jingyang, Shaanxi Province, surnamed Wu, who was the head of the Shanxi Guild Hall, who had been operating in the Urals for many years, mainly dealing in tea, silk and medicinal herbs.

Wu Xingshou said that colleagues in the association had discussed that they could lend money to the Ural government on the condition that they were allowed to set up a money company, not an ordinary money company, and that they should be allowed to print money.