A Balkan throne, a princess in exile, an Englishman with a sword and a capital where every second man is paid by somebody. Brebner wrote swordplay and small kingdoms for readers who could not get enough of them after The Prisoner of Zenda; he did the machine cleanly, and Maritza is allowed to be the most competent person in her own book. Fifty-eight plates by painters including Munch and Gérôme follow a court in exile through suppers, coffee tables and garden tables, the small rituals of the fallen and the displaced.
