"Oh, dear Alexander, Alfred, haven't they come yet?"

In Topkapi Palace, a luxurious study that originally belonged to the Sultan, Queen Maria asked her husband with some distraction.

The wedding of the only daughter was on August 15, and it was now imminent, but the British fleet or convoy had not yet reached Constantinople, and no news had even been received on the way.

This made Queen Maria wonder if the stupid and arrogant Englishman would unilaterally ruin the engagement.

Although he is not satisfied with his daughter's marriage into the British royal family, if the British unilaterally break the contract, there will be no place to put his face as a top nobleman in Europe.

People in the world often say that Orientals love face, but in fact this is simply nonsense.

Western aristocrats value face no less than Easterners.

It's just that those cattle-like mud legs in the West have never had dignity, and naturally they don't pay attention to face, and their numbers account for the vast majority of the population, so they have such an illusion.

Victoria's refusal to give in before, and let her daughter's status rank after her daughters and the Prince of Wales has made Queen Maria extremely dissatisfied, and now the British have not shown up, which makes her very angry.

But for Alexander II, the next most important thing is, of course, the enthronement ceremony of the Eastern Roman Emperor, his daughter's wedding or something, just the icing on the cake, which has to be a little later.

So he shook his head and comforted his wife:

"Don't worry too much, don't you know that we are now unbreakable friends with the British? They could not have deliberately ruined Mary's wedding.

After all, Alfred was a lieutenant commander in the British Royal Navy, and now that the Ming people were pressing forward in the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic, he was also very busy. ”

Queen Maria was not easily fooled, she frowned and said: "I have long heard that Alfred likes to sail, and even completed a circumnavigation of the world a few years ago, can such a man who is not at home really bring happiness to Maria?" ”

"Okay, okay, don't say such childish things, you also know that as the daughter of the Roman emperor, Maria's marriage is not happy or unhappy, the only thing we have to consider is whether it is worth it."

Alexander II pinched his eyebrows and said, "Alfred is not only the second heir to the English throne, but also the first heir to the throne of the Greek Kingdom......

Although Victoria had always been very opposed to Alfred's succession to the Greek throne, and wanted her second son to inherit the ancestral land of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in accordance with her late husband's wishes, it was ......"

Alexander II did not go any further.

But the scorching light in his eyes could not be concealed.

Empress Mary then understood why her husband had changed his previous attitude and was so enthusiastic about marrying his daughter to an Englishman.

It turned out that he was plotting Greece!

Indeed, Eastern Rome without Greece is not a complete Eastern Rome, and Byzantium without Athens is not true Byzantium.

After acquiring Constantinople, it's hard not to look to Athens and the Peloponnese.

The Kingdom of Greece was not actually a legitimate kingdom.

At least in the eyes of the Ottomans, the Greek kingdom was nothing more than a rebellion, nothing more than a northern puppet.

In 1460, the Ottoman Empire annexed Greece and the Balkans.

They used the Albanian bureaucracy to run Greece, and the Greek bureaucracy to run Romania and the Slavs, and maintained their rule for a long time.

It was not until the London Conference of 1832 that Britain, France, and Russia forced the Ottomans to recognize the independence of Greece and appointed the seventeen-year-old Prince Otto, who ruled the Wittelsbach dynasty of Bavaria, as the first monarch of Greece.

And the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the foundation of the British royal family, had a complicated in-law relationship with the Wittelsbach dynasty of Bavaria.

It can be said that Greece is almost a puppet of the British.

The British even ceded the Ionian Islands to Greece.

This is also a very small act of the greedy British who voluntarily gave away their land, which shows the purity of the northern puppet nature of the Greek Kingdom.

The Ottomans were under great pressure from the Russian Empire and relied on the British in the Crimean War, so they dared not speak out about this.

However, with the birth of the Three Emperors Alliance and the Three Kingdoms Entente, the Ottomans also made plans to recover Greece.

It's just that it was already difficult for the Ottomans to recover an Egypt, and they really didn't have the ability to recover Greece, so today's Greece is not only widely recognized by continental European countries, but also takes the opportunity to greatly expand its territory.

All this was not only taught by the British, but also contributed by the Russians.

Although the Greek royal family was Protestant from Bavaria, the population itself was predominantly Orthodox and had always had friendly relations with the Russian Empire.

Alexander II also angrily denounced the Ottoman Sultan more than once, demanding that the independence of the Orthodox little brother be guaranteed.

But this time and that time too.

Now Alexander II has settled in the castle and has become the object of his rage.

He had even begun to study the logic that the independent jurisprudence of Greece was insufficient, and that it was supposed to belong to the Ottomans and be inherited by himself.

It's just that after all, this is not right, it is not good, and it is easy to be resisted by the locals.

In Europe, where the territory follows the rulers, it would be wonderful to be able to get Greece through marriage without bloodshed.

Of course, there are many problems here.

For example, it was necessary to make sure that Alfred died before his own daughter, and that they had no offspring......

Only in this way could his daughter become the first heir to the throne of the Greek kingdom.

To be honest, the probability of this kind of thing happening is very slim.

But it's always good to have hope!

……

For several days, the Russian side still did not receive news of the arrival of the British mission, which made Alexander II anxious.

He summoned the British ambassador to inquire about the specifics.

The British ambassador assured, rather mysteriously, "Prince Alfred of the British Empire and the delegation congratulating His Majesty the Tsar on his coronation will arrive in time and with great surprises, so please do not worry." ”

With such assurances, Alexander II could only suppress his arrogance and concentrate all his attention on organizing the celebrations.

The time soon came to August 15, 1875.

On this day, the weather was also beautiful.

The sky over Istanbul is cloudless, and the slightly fishy sea breeze brings a touch of coolness to the ancient city.

Taksim Square is full of friends.

Envoys from all over the world, arranged by the Russian attendants, were seated in order of their ties to the Tsar's royal family and their international status.

Sitting on the highest place, holding a scepter, is Alexander II, dressed in costume.

He did not wear the traditional costume of the Russian tsar today, and that kind of thick clothes would not come out at all in this season.

Alexander II was dressed in a light silk purple robe in a rich Byzantine style.

The beard on his face is no longer the Bismarck-like bulldog beard of earlier days, but the traditional beard of Orthodox Christians.

Almost on an equal footing with Alexander II, only slightly shorter, was a priest in a church robe with a cross in his hand.

His ministry and his trademark beard speak of his faction.

He was the Patriarch of the Orthodox Slavic Church, St. Andrew's St. Petersburg the Apostle and the Patriarch of All Russia.

The patriarch will baptize Alexander II and complete the most crucial ceremony for the reconstruction of the Eastern Roman Empire.

After that, he will also officiate at the wedding of the Russian princess and the English prince.

The wedding, which was held in accordance with the Orthodox faith, was also seen by many Russians as another diplomatic victory.

However, until now, the British ambassador was still alone in the British mission area.

But he didn't panic at all, and even ate the crème brûlée on the table with grace.