In the Pendragon timeline, there was no Dominion War to take Shinzon away from Remus. He would have died in the dilithium mines, were it not for another regime change in the Romulan Star Empire in the mid 2370s. The Continuing Committee revisited Narviat's plan to infiltrate the Federation, and came up with a variant strategy. To that end, they had Shinzon liberated from the Reman mines, and Tal Shiar geneticists managed to reverse the cellular damage. Shinzon began training as a Tal Shiar assassin, eventually alongside of other members of his cloning creche.