CHAPTER 281: CHAPTER 280: ROOTS OF AMERICAN POWER

The system interface floated in front of Rex, but this time it wasn’t ambient or passive... it shimmered like a blade drawn across reality, pressing against the surface of his mind.

There was no music. No loading animation. No cute chime or holographic spin. Just silence... and then:

Then the world unraveled.

Lines of text began to scroll, not typed but carved, as if etched into digital stone. Diagrams appeared, family trees that twisted and sprawled like a serpent’s skeleton. Maps burned onto the screen, highlighting borders not of countries, but of blood, like an ancient puzzle finally coming undone. And then came the images. Blurred at first, then sharpening... portraits, coronations, funeral processions, secret handshakes in ballroom.

This wasn’t just information. This was history stripped of its perfume, power stripped of its disguise.

"Truth is not hidden," the system continued, its voice cold and mechanical. "It is buried. Beneath myths. Beneath elections. Beneath wars. But not anymore, at least not for you."

Rex didn’t blink. No, it was most like he couldn’t. It was like being trapped in a dream with your eyes forced open. His heart pounded, not with fear, but with the rush of something rare... revelation.

He felt it. Deep in his bones. As if something ancient and venomous had just stirred in the corners of the world.

For years, Rex had been told the old world had died. That monarchies fell, and democracy rose. That crowns became museums, and kings were now tourist attractions.

But the system said otherwise.

"You want to understand power?" it intoned. "Trace the blood."

The screen zoomed in on Europe, but not the Europe drawn in schoolbooks, or painted on glossy travel brochures. This was a Europe of blood. Crimson lines traced through centuries. Its borders carved not by wars or treaties, but by wombs, weddings, betrayals and whispers in candlelit halls. And the most terrifying realization of all? The same families still sat at the top.

The lines weren’t geopolitical. They were genealogical.

It started with the British Royal Family... or at least, what the world thought was Britain.

"The British Royal Family," the system murmured, "is not British."

The British Royal Family, famous for their pageantry and polite scandals... weren’t even British by blood.

Crimson threads traced back to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a German dynasty that once ruled tiny principalities no schoolchild remembered. It was this house that took over the British throne when Queen Victoria’s daughter married Prince Albert, a full-blooded German noble.

And then, in 1917, under pressure from public outrage during World War I, they simply rebranded. Changed their name. From Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor. A monarch-level marketing stunt. The illusion of nationalism to hide the truth of inheritance.

It wasn’t patriotism. It was preservation, brand management in simple terms.

And while tabloids kept the world busy with who wore what and who slept with whom, their cousins, distant and close, sat on the boards of powerful banks and investment firms. BlackRock, Vanguard, Schroders, Rothschild & Co. All quietly tied to the old noble networks.

Prince Michael of Kent... a cousin to the late Queen, ran companies dealing with Russian oligarchs. Prince Charles had deep relationships with Middle Eastern monarchs, brokered billion-dollar green deals, and sat on think tanks influencing global climate policy. The House of Windsor wasn’t just smiling from balconies; they were drawing blueprints for the future of the planet.

The screen flowed like a ghostly tapestry, zooming in on Queen Victoria... her eyes blank and unsmiling in early photography, but her reach unmistakable. She was nicknamed "The Grandmother of Europe", not for sentiment, but strategy. She had nine children, and nearly all of them were married off to monarchies across the continent like pieces on a chessboard.

Spain. Germany. Greece. Russia. Denmark. Sweden. Norway.

They were all connected, connected through her womb.

It wasn’t some coincidence. It was breeding.

The goal? Ensure that if one nation rose, they’d be on the throne. If another fell, they’d still be in the bloodline.

Rex leaned forward as portraits of royalty flashed by. Their faces were eerily similar... the same chins, the same brows, like echoes across time.

"Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, the last Emperor of the Romanovs, wasn’t just a distant cousin to Britain’s King George V... they were first cousins. Practically twins in appearance. They called each other "Nicky" and "Georgie". They wrote letters like schoolboys, shared holidays, even played together as children.

The screen zoomed in on the chaos of 1917.

But when the Russian Revolution came unexpectedly,the Bolsheviks stormed the palace and Nicholas begged his cousin for asylum, the British Crown turned away.

Not couldn’t.

Refused.

The screen dimmed. Gunshots echoed. Blood splattered onto a basement wall.

Then silence.

Nicholas, his wife, and his five children were executed in a basement.

In the end, the Romanovs were executed and the empire collapsed.

Why?

"Blood is thick," the system intoned. "But power is thicker."

Yet...

The Romanovs fell," the system whispered, "but their blood didn’t vanish. It diluted. It spread. It adapted."

Many families, like the immensely wealthy Yusupovs, the Dolgorukovs, the Vorontsovs... didn’t all die with the tsar.

They fled west, they had marriage ties with British and French nobility.

They fled to Paris, to London, to New York. They changed their names. They sold Fabergé eggs and tiaras for startup capital.

They became investors, bankers, industrialists. The same money that once threw grand balls and hunted wolves in snowy forests now moved quietly behind the scenes of oil companies, hedge funds, and military contractors.

Even in exile, they married, they invested, but never erased.

Rex watched a line chart animate before him. Names once spoken in palaces now appeared on boards of directors. He saw a photo from the 1950s... a "Count Alexei" smiling beside Rothschild executives at a London banking gala. Another, a "Lady Vera," leading a Manhattan fundraising campaign for a prominent U.S. senator.

One family had three generations working in the IMF.

Some even invested early in American railroads, British banks, and insurance companies.

He watched as names like BNP Paribas, Lazard, and J.P. Morgan, Lockhead Martin lit up.

They never needed thrones again," the system continued. "They discovered something far more stable: money markets, banking networks, corporate law."

And behind them all... marriage.

...

Every time the bloodlines seemed to thin, a strategic union would appear. A forgotten duke would marry the daughter of an oil tycoon. A viscount’s heir would be linked to a media magnate’s niece. A Russian-born heiress would fall for a French CEO. Each time, it wasn’t just love, it was legacy management.

"They bred like empires," the system said. "Not for affection. For continuity."

Then, the screen split.

Left side: Modern Europe. Flags. Presidents. Parliaments.

Right side: The blood web. Windsors. Habsburgs. Grimaldis. Bonapartes. Medici. Romanovs. Rothschilds.

One side ruled in sight. The other ruled in silence.

Rex’s pulse slowed as realization settled in. Even after democracy spread like wildfire, after kings were deposed, the bloodlines didn’t vanish. They just became something else.

Royalty turned financiers. Monarchs turned magnates.

Take the Dutch royal family, for instance. Their holdings in Royal Dutch Shell and Philips ran deep. Or the Belgian royal family, who quietly maintained controlling stakes in steel, biotech, and real estate conglomerates... much of it inherited, some of it seized during colonial exploits.

And what about the Habsburgs?

Officially dethroned after World War I, the ancient dynasty that once ruled Austria, Hungary, and parts of Spain... didn’t die. They merely retreated. Resurfaced

(End of Chapter)