Royal Navy battlecruiser orders arrived at roughly annual intervals. Lion was laid down in September 1909, Princess Royal followed in 1910, and Queen Mary was laid down in March 1911 as an improved Lion. That cadence could have given designers an opening to try a different fuel or armament arrangement in the next ship. The dates identify where archival research might look for a one-off experiment, although they do not prove that one existed. This places the counterfactual within procurement timing rather than treating it as a blank-sheet design.
Notable Point · 23:37-24:34
Annual ordering and a possible experimental break
The Lion-to-Queen Mary construction sequence is used to ask whether the 1911 ship could have marked a deliberate experimental break in annual battlecruiser ordering.