故事简介(英文书籍)
Seven years previously, the Balkan state of Herzoslovakia had one of its periodic revolutions that resulted in the death and bodily mutilation of its monarch, King Nicholas IV and his wife Queen Varaga. The latter personage was the cause of the uprising, as she was formerly a dancer at the Folies Bergère called Angèle Mory. This woman had been bribed by a Herzoslovakian revolutionary organisation called the "Comrades of the Red Hand" to lure the King into a trap when he visited Paris but instead she double-crossed them, seduced Nicholas and subsequently married him. The populace did not like their Queen coming from such common and dubious stock, hence the uprising and the establishment of a republic which has been in force ever since.