Pierre-Emmanuel de Siorac is already at the age of twelve the double of his successful father, a Huguenot nobleman in the diplomatic service at the court of Henry IV. He is educated, speaks English and Italian, knows how to wield a sword and, thanks to his father's clever upbringing, already has an eighteen-year-old soubrette in his bed at that same tender age, who teaches him all about love. His mother is the Duchess of Guise, an ex-passionate liaison of Siorac's father. And since King Henri himself baptised him, Pierre grows up surrounded by the court from the very beginning. This court amuses itself, fucks, dances, while in the background - a good thirty years after the bloody St. Bartholomew's Day - the dramatic conflict between Protestants and Catholics continues. Frivolity alternates with ice-cold power calculations, the sensuality of the one barely conceals the political fanaticism of the other. The internationally allied Catholic party can no longer stand the French king's policy of tolerance. And Pierre-Emmanuel, as Henri's young interpreter and confidant, witnesses how the idea of murder germinates and the regicide appears in the crowd.
