The Kaiser Friedrich III class as the point of divergence

The practical divergence begins with ships built from 1896 onward, but it deliberately includes the Kaiser Friedrich III class even though its lead ship was laid down in 1895. Tirpitz had advanced the class in anticipation of the memorandum that became the basis for the navy laws. Treating it as the first Tarkin-influenced battleship gives the counterfactual a concrete design starting point instead of changing an arbitrary later class. The timing shows why a political divergence must be aligned with procurement decisions already underway.