The Robber Princess

Chapter 1. The Idiot, the Wastrel, and the ...

Chapter 1

Baron Heinrich von Brickelstein surveyed the gilded ballroom one more time. The guests would be ready to enter soon and he wanted to be satisfied that he had done everything in his power for the evening to progress smoothly. Not that he was looking forward to it, for what was the highlight of the evening to most guests was yet another round of humiliation for him. He was dreading the next hour and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

In a few minutes, the guests would arrive from the dining room for the ball. Dozens of the usual couples, their bellies full of contrefilet and truffles and their faces flush from the overflowing Chateau Lafitte, would glide across the red carpet and be formally "announced" as if they were complete strangers. Then they spend the remaining evening happily and pretentiously strutting around in the grand, marble halls. There had been a time, long ago, when Brickelstein too looked forward to such occasions with great anticipation. But he had endured too many of them for the pageantry to impress him any longer. Over the years he had observed that whatever their national political or cultural differences, the nobility had one insipid trait in common. They revered the pomp and lavish ceremony, as if reenacting the legendary Congress of Vienna during which the important people waltzed night after night while the little ambassadors were relegated to the back room, saddled with trivial matters like redrawing the map of Europe. Perhaps it was his overfamiliarity with it all-and familiarity breeds contempt-or perhaps his disdain was for the people he had to interact with-and over-familiarity breeds over-contempt. He did not know.

What he did know was that this evening would be more tiresome than usual, for it was no ordinary function. This was, oddly enough, the first state dinner and ball in Brickelstein's lifetime between his country, Eidelmark, and its neighboring kingdom, Rochevaux. That Eidelmark and Rochevaux had interacted so seldom had always struck Brickelstein as odd, for the two countries culturally were more similar than dissimilar. Both were small-maybe too small to warrant the grandiose designation "kingdom"-but prosperous and fiercely proud. Except for the occasional Napoleonic or Axis occupation, both countries had endured as independent monarchies since the dissolution of the Burgundian Empire. In many ways the two nearly forgotten countries were anachronisms: culturally of the 19th century yet as consumers and occasional producers of technology, very much in the 21st.

They did differ in two ways: Eidelmark was German-speaking and had retained much of the Teutonic authoritarianism that its larger northern neighbors had shed. Basic civil liberties were well respected, but in terms of popular access to opportunity to govern, Eidelmark was more similar to Singapore than to the typical Western European democracy. But Rochevaux, being French and Italian-speaking, had felt Napoleon's influence more strongly. Its monarchy was somewhat more tempered, more constitutional. High society were still powerful, but so were the common citizenry and the noblesse had come to respect that. Yet notwithstanding these differences, Brickelstein felt like he understood the Rochevauxians better than nationals of most other countries. Despite his apprehension about the ball, he felt quite comfortable in Rochevaux Palace. Something about it gave him confidence that Rochevaux could again be a valuable and trustworthy ally.

The two countries had another, coincidental commonality: Both were ruled by dynasties whose matriarchs had originated from Russia, having been exiled for their Catholicism. Eidelmark's Queen Gertrude was from the Bobrinsky line, descended from Catherine the Great, and upon arriving in Eidelmark the dynasty had taken the more German the family name Folkering. Rochevaux's Queen Rega was a Maximilianov, descended from Maria Nikolaievna and ultimately Czar Nicholas I, but in deference to national sentiment her great-grandfather had adopted the surname Massimiliano-Rochevaux.

But sometimes an overabundance of national pride can sour otherwise good international and even transnational relations, given the right circumstances. Unfortunately, those circumstances had presented themselves after World War II. Both countries had been occupied-originally by Italy but when the fascismo regime fell, the Nazis quickly took its place. Eventually the Nazis themselves were forced to retreat also. Cut off from Austria and not daring to enter Switzerland, they crossed through Rochevaux back into Italy and ultimately France-but not before looting much of Eidelmark's royal treasury. Many of Eidelmark's stolen crown jewels were never recovered and Eidelmark's government and citizenry alike long had believed that Rega's grandmother, Queen Constance, had been complicit in their looting and ultimately had appropriated Eidelmark's crown jewels for herself. Historians had never uncovered any evidence of this, but such conspiracy theories lingered and were a sensitive issue for both countries. Eidelmark and Rochevaux had not had diplomatic relations since and theirs was the only closed international border left in Europe. All that was about to change.