In the dying days of empire, when the map of Europe still hung open to revision, an English viscount receives an extraordinary offer: a throne. The kingdom is Thracia, a volatile Balkan land caught between old powers and new ambitions, and someone must wear its crown. Viscount Usk must decide whether to abandon his English life, his loyalties, and perhaps his heart for the sake of a people he barely knows. Sydney C. Grier constructs a masterful tale of political intrigue and personal reckoning, where revolution breods in mountain villages and diplomatic cables fly between capitals. The question is not simply whether he will accept the crown, but whether a man can truly rule a kingdom without first understanding what it means to belong to one. This is romance in the grand tradition: not merely love between individuals, but love affair with power itself, with duty, with the treacherous seduction of greatness.
