Montenegro is one of Europe's most forgotten countries. A small Balkan nation along the Adriatic and north of Albania, Montenegro has existed in one way or another for a surprising five hundred years, initially an extension of the Orthodox Bishopric around Cetinje born out of the ruins of the Serbian Empire, and becoming a vassal state of the Ottomans. It was elevated to a Prince-Bishopric in 1516 and remained an Ottoman Vassal until 1852 with the ascension of Petar Petrović-Njegoš as secular Prince of Montenegro. However, this had one strange interruption: in 1767, a mysterious man rumoured to be the long dead Tsar Peter III of Russia appeared in Cetinje, and amassed a base of support against the relatively unpopular ecclesiastical nobility. He himself didn’t claim to be Peter, rather insisting his name was Stephen. Nonetheless, he managed to oust the current Prince-Bishop and install himself as Tsar of Montenegro, for about five years. During this time, he managed to centralise and secularise the government and quell the infighting between the Montenegrin clans to a peace not seen in years. However, Ščepan Mali (Stephen the Small) as he came to be known, was perceived as a threat by the Ottoman Empire, and he was discovered one day in 1773 with his throat slit.

So what if he hadn’t been assassinated? What if the Ottomans, for whatever reason, ignored this upstart tsar until it was too late to do anything about it? Could Montenegro form into a new great power, or at least a foil to Ottoman power in the Balkans? Could a bigger Montenegro eclipse the need for a Serbian state, or would it make it stronger? How would this new small state get along with Russia? Or would it lean more towards Western Europe? Would it survive past Napoleon?