1680 November 27th. In the castle "Tree kronor" (Three crowns) in Stockholm, Sweden.
A baby boy just got birthed by his mother Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark, and it was her firstborn child and Charles the XI (11th) of Sweden's child. He was born at midnight, and the start shone akin to silver set ablaze. Green streaks of light shined all across the cold northern sky.
This boy happened to be born as the crown prince of Sweden when it was a great power in Europe. However, this baby boy was not meant to live nor exist in the first place. This is where our history diverged, with the birth of a child.
This child's eyes shone like the stars above. His mouth was moving as if it tried to say something, for it did not cry, nor did it scream. Instead, it reached out its tiny little hand towards the ceiling and mouthed the words 'I am the strongest.'
"Have you heard?" A maid said
"Yes, it seems like her Majesty birthed a prince. But it did not scream nor cry." Another one replied
"Gasp!" A third one gasped, as she was not informed
"Is he alive?!" The third one said
The maids were gossiping about the boy's birth while they were cleaning the kitchen.
In the queen's chamber is a child, baffling everyone around him. He is being held by the royal physician checking the prince for any defects, which doesn't seem to be the case. And after a while, the physician gives the child to the mother.
She held him in her arms and said, "May god's grace be a long and bountiful life to you, my son."
The birth of a crown prince was celebrated all across the kingdom of Sweden, and many gifts were sent to the young child. One of the noteworthy gifts was a gilded crib for the baby to sleep in. And his grandpa, king of Denmark and Norway, sent him a peculiar Musket carved with strange symbols only found on old stones in the northern lands they inhabit.
It took eight months before the baby made any noise and its first words were "papa" when his father Charles XI was playing with his child, who had begun to walk on his own. The king got stunned by what he saw and heard, the doctors had thought the child would be mute, but that didn't seem to be the case for this little Swedish prince.
At the age of two, he got himself a brother who would be named after his father and grandfather Charles, but the Prince was like he always were, silent and watching. At the age of three, the prince spends most of his days getting lost in the castle's many rooms. Whilst looking at all the paintings and other ornaments littered across the castle. It was his favorite pastime.
He often tugged at the closest person and pointed at some ornament while saying, "What's the story of this one??" his big childish eyes sparkled like stars. Many maids felt compelled to help this Prince after he had charmed them with his cute behavior.
At the age of six, his brother Charles wrote a letter to their father, stating that he would like to join him on a military expedition. So the crown prince had to outdo his brother in getting his father's affection. So he wrote him a letter asking him to teach him how to be a king, just like his father.
He was baptized at the age of eight, In Riddarholmskyrkan in Stockholm. He was given the name Magnus Varg (The great Wolf) by the priest who baptized him. His father and mother had not agreed on that name and were about to confront the priest. But as they saw into the eyes of the priest, they saw how they were glassy white.
"I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Your name and that of our people shall be known, across sea and land. Varg!"
When he was at the age of ten, he got his first fencing coach, and he began attending the Swedish University of Uppsala. He was seen as a prodigy by the standards of this time. However, he did not know why he had such ease with his studies.
He even got ideas like how objects attract each other based on their mass. And how there might be a way to separate sunlight into colors through a prism, but he studied hard regardless, not that the boy needed to.
It would be three tragedies that would befall the prince and the kingdom, the death of Varg's mother would be the first of them.
His mother, Ulrika Eleonora of Denmark, died on 26 July 1693. A day the boy and the royal family will forever remember, he was at the tender age of Twelve when she was put into her eternal resting place. He bid his mother farewell one last time before they closed her casket.
He graduated from Uppsala university at the age of fourteen. It took him four years before he graduated. It would have only taken him two years if it wasn't that he had to learn so many languages, which were Latin, French, German, English, Spanish and Swedish. He was fluent in all but retained a thick Swedish accent when speaking English for some "unknown" reason.
He graduated with full scores in everything, he even plagiarized an experiment that Isaac newton did with a Prisma, and while doing so, he proved that infra-red light existed. After which, he chose to graduate finally, not was that his only contribution to science, he proposed that space and time were one of the same, the fabric of the universe and gravity was simply the curvature of it. That light could be bent if something "large" enough were present.
He wrote an experiment that would use an eclipse to look at the positions of the surrounding stars, map them out, and see if they have moved. His discoveries and theorem stunned and split the international scientific community.
At the age of fifteen, he got his father to approve of the mass recruitment of 500 men, 500 women around the same age as him, and one hundred-one sons and one hundred-one daughters of nobility. He made groups of 5, with one noble per group.
The nobles were trained to teach and lead the others in the group. And every week, he tested them to see which group got the best scores and how well they could cooperate. The prince picked first, and he didn't discriminate and chose two girls and two boys to be under his supervision. Half were commoners and the other nobles.
Then the second of three tragedies hit him and the Kingdom. His father, Charles XI of Sweden, died on the 5th of April 1697, which caused the teenage prince to stop in his tracks when he was inspecting Stockholms harbor. His gaze wandered far away, looking at the horizon.
The King was now dead. However, he felt it was more than just a loss of a father, for he was more than that. He was a teacher, husband, soldier, traveler, and king. A person many men, women, and children could look up to and say, he was indeed a man worth imitating.
The person everyone looked up to and someone they could rely on when they were in need. He gave himself few comforts as a king. The famous "Gråkappan" (Grey cape) was now dead, and the prince was now the soon-to-be King of Sweden. Is he capable of protecting his country from its neighbors, or will the nation crumble under its own weight?
This soon-to-be king would have his world shattered to pieces before he would have the crown placed on his head. It just so happened that they had planned his father's funeral on the 8th of May, 1697, and it was currently the 7th. He was sitting in his study writing letters to the Regency Council. It acted as the head of government until his coronation.
It was late into the night when he could smell a faint scent of something burning. He stood up from his desk and went towards the door and opened it into the maze-like castle, where he saw large amounts of smoke snaking its way along with the ceiling.
He stood there in a daze looking at the black smoke getting thicker. He could not believe that his home was now burning. He was struck with further horror as he was now possibly trapped in this burning castle.
He gazed upon the deep dark clouds of smoke for what felt like an eternity before his body started to respond, but he still stood rooted in place. His mind drifted toward his life choices, the friends he had made from his entourage, his father, who had perished beforehand, and everything he had taught him.
He could still remember when he and his father traveled through western Sweden and visited some farmers. They offered them food and a place to sleep. He could still remember how they had to make their bread with tree bark as they didn't have enough flour to feed them. In comparison, the nobles lived in luxury and squandered the wealth they took.
He began to be repulsed by luxurious things and chose to live minimalistic. Even though he would one day become king, he did not style his hair or wear fancy clothes like that of nobles and kings. Instead, his choice of attire was simple, and he often wore his military uniform or similar garments.
He remembers how he used to push his younger brother into piles of snow and how they used to play with each other. The voice of his mother, telling him to stop bullying his younger sister Ulrika. Now he was here, staring into the pitch-black smoke right before him. He felt an oddly familiar feeling.
The maids and servants found him standing in a daze watching the smoke, they tried to get him to follow them, but he just continued to stare at the smoke. They surrounded and dragged him out of the castle so that he would not perish in this disaster.