True love never ran smoothly for the beautiful Sophia Dorothea, darling of Celle, who first lost her heart to Philip Königsmarck on her seventh birthday.

At sixteen, a pawn in seventeenth-century German politics, she was forced into marriage with George Lewis, Crown Prince of Hanover and the future George I of England, who cared only for women and war.

Clara von Platen, the uncrowned ruler of Hanover, jealous, ruthless and sexually insatiable, is spurned by Königsmarck when he re-appears in the life of Sophia Dorothea. In revenge, she plans his ruin-and that of the sad princess he so recklessly loves.