I am not what is called a civilised man.
Prince Dakkar knew the British were trying to track him down, but his childhood adventures when he had mischievously escaped from his parents and his caretakers before his father had decided to send him off to Europe to acquire his education of hide and seek in the mountains of Bundelkund with his friends as a youngster before he had returned and after he had returned, and he had begun organising a revolution against the British invaders who'd occupied his home country for centuries, the Prince had looked to the caves and the mountains with hope when he remembered the caverns which could the sick and the wounded without any chance for the British finding them. The caves riddled the mountains, it would impossible for anyone who didn't grow up in the Provence and explored them as a child to find the right caves.
But the fighting had died down now his family had paid for his attempt of liberating the country. The Prince closed his eyes, squeezing them tightly shut while he sat at his fire, remembering the sounds of the British guns as the soldiers fought against the rebels and restoring their version of order to the landscape.
And in his mind's eye, the Prince could hear the sounds of his children and his family as they died. No matter how often he tried, the deposed Prince could not exorcise the memories out of his mind, but now he used the memories to fuel his loathing for the British.
Had they died hating him for what he had brought on their shoulders?
Honestly, when Prince Dakkar had returned to India with thoughts of using his acquired intellect forged by many years of education, he had not imagined or suspected when he returned, his mind burning with plans, strategies, ideas and the building blocks of a plan to sound out those among the population of the Provence who felt as he did, but he had not expected to find love.
Privately, Dakkar sometimes suspected his parents had come to the decision to send him abroad outside of India in order to forge the rebellion, believing that a highly intelligent, highly educated young ruler would have the nerve, the skill and the ability to plot such an uprising. But Dakkar had not planned originally to fall in love, it had been the last thing on his mind. But when he had found his wife, Dakkar believed he was the luckiest man in the world.
He had married a beautiful, noble lady, and his plans were delayed for the marriage and for the arrival of their young children, but Prince Dakkar was a patient man. In any case, the extra time had given him greater opportunities to find allies, to form a spy network to give him the intelligence he would need to wage war against the British. And it was a war, Dakkar was not naive to disbelieve that fact. For a time when he had been raising his children with his wife, Dakkar had almost forgotten the cause, but every time he saw a British diplomat, soldier, or general, listened to their propaganda or their commands through their puppets, Dakkar knew he did not want his children to grow up under the British yoke.
So he had continued with his planning with the aid of his wife and her contacts. The final years of organising the rebellion were spent growing the spy and intelligence networks in India, but whenever he saw his children, Dakkar knew he had to succeed.
India was his country and the Indians were his race, the British were the invaders and they had no right to do what they were doing now. The Prince had always had that hatred towards the British burning within his heart, but the things he had done in the rebellion he had painstakingly organised, using his keen mind and the intellect forged and evolved by long years of travelling the world. He had made friends with many people who cared about those seen as beneath them, and he had been inspired by them and the studies he had made of legendary generals, from Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte.
He'd even come up with a plan to transform India and make his country stronger than it had been before. Many years ago, Dakkar had studied history and he'd discovered the existence of the early submersibles. He had learnt of William Bourne's submarine which was essentially a modified rowing boat with as cover topping it and came equipped with flexible leather bags for submerging the submarine prototype, but Dakkar's interest was piqued and he studied early submarine history and he had made copious notes of the failures and the successes behind the experiments.
One of his favourite submarines was the Nautilus, a turn of the century submarine constructed by the American, Robert Fulton for Napoleon Bonaparte to be used against the British during the Napoleonic Wars, but the French Emperor soon lost interest in Fulton's project and the submarine was scuttled despite Fulton's attempts to sell the design elsewhere. At the same time, Dakkar became an admirer and a friend of Julius Kroehl, a German inventor who'd emigrated to the United States of America, and the Prince had formed a friendship with the man after learning of his designs for diving bells and his early designs for submarines, but he had returned to India before he could see his friend succeed. Still many of those ideas of Kroehl's lived on in his designs, the double-hull construction for one thing, and the proposed airlock.
But one of his favourite designs was the Ictineo 1. Dakkar had diverted to Spain to watch the launch, and he had spent many long hours debating with the submarine's designer Narcis Monturiol about the construction of such vessels, and he had even proceeded to venture into the ocean depths as a guest of the Spanish inventor. To say it was an incredible experience despite its primitive human muscle propulsion was an understatement, and when he had ventured beneath the waves, Dakkar felt…free, truly free for the first time in his life.
He wanted that freedom for his people.
However, despite his awe and fascination about the freedom being inside a submarine afforded him, Dakkar was uncertain what it was about submarine technology which amazed and intrigued him, but he had made the study of submarines into a hobby and he had even built a few prototype models, but as he had returned to India he had known he would need to transform his country into a more scientifically and technologically advanced land than it had been before.
He had known taking India back from the British was only half of the battle, keeping them out was the hard part. The British possessed a large and powerful army and navy, it would not take them long to retake India if the rebellion was successful or not. Dakkar had known that, and so he had spent many months working on designs for war machines and ships for the defence of India so the British and other powers would no longer be a threat to them. One of his prized designs and had required many long months of work, constantly going back over the details and the plans, again and again, designing an advanced submarine design, and he had come up with ways of working on the design with a series of tests.
But those plans may as well be on fire, with the rest of the rebellion. He could not believe just how badly he had failed. There were many reasons for the failure, and he knew it but as Dakkar looked at the fire he knew now was not the time to dwell on them. His family were dead, he and his friends with him in the cavern were hiding for their lives. This was not the time to point the finger.
The prince was just numb with shock at how his family had been captured in his place and put to death. What kind of power would do that to innocent children?
But as the Prince thought about it, Dakkar realised that the rebellion had failed because the British had been too powerful, but it did not help the rest of the world allowed the British to do what they were doing.
As he sat before the fire, Dakkar realised the civilised world was pure evil, and he wanted to leave it for good. But how could he do that? He could not just leave and pretend the tragedies of his family's deaths hadn't happened. Or could he? Suddenly the Prince realised he had the plans for the submarine, he could finalise the designs and build one so he could escape with his companions into the depths of the sea.
Yes, soon he would leave the evil cruelty of the civilised world, once and for all.
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Author's note - I always wanted to write a prequel of sorts into Dakkar's thoughts before he became Captain Nemo. I hope you enjoyed it.